Interactive Lightning Round Poll: Loved Songs

So, coming up with ideas of songs to nominate was fairly quick. Deciding on one wasn’t too bad. But then trying to write this up wasn’t so easy. And now looking back, I ended up writing much more than I had intended.

The song is “Not Coming Down” by Sound of Contact from the album Dimensionaut. The band only lasted for one album with notably Simon Collins (son of Phil) on lead vocals and drums and Dave Kersner on keyboards, guitar, and backing vocals. The album is a sci-fi concept album of an unnamed man who travels time, space, and dimensions. He struggles with isolation and loneliness and tries to reunite with his soulmate. Many of the songs do stand alone outside the arc of the story, which is part of what I like about the album. The story doesn’t hold up much to me. But the themes do. The music is very much crossover prog and the hooks are good though it does run long  at nearly 74 minutes.  A solid album, released in 2013. The song ended up sticking with me in 2015.

In March of 2015, my youngest brother was getting married in Thailand, and I flew from Florida to California to meet my parent and my other brother and his family so we would all fly to Thailand together. Second night I was at my parent’s house, my dad collapsed and had to be hospitalized. He had a blockage in his small intestine and would need a noninvasive endoscopic procedure. He and my mom would not be able to make my brother’s wedding. The surgery would take place the day before we were to fly out. But it got delayed and my brother, his family, and I left the day before. Now for reasons I am still not sure of, he couldn’t get an endoscopy and the surgeon had to cut into him, which prior to us leaving was explained as something risky at my father’s age (he was 86) and they would need to get signed permission. The result was my mom was alone to make that decision when it happened, and she agreed to it but not understanding fully about the possible consequences. My dad got a serious infection as a result and ended up in the hospital for weeks and then in a nursing facility. I ended up flying back and forth between California and Florida several times.

My phone at the time didn’t have much memory so I had a limited number of albums to listen to as I flew cross country and didn’t really have much thought about adding or replacing music. The album and this song were there and it stuck with me as I played it on my flights back and forth. The theme of the song is open to interpretation, and I projected my dad’s fragile state as what he wasn’t coming down from. I listened to it countlessly.

My dad had moments where it seemed like he would recover, but in the end, he was placed in hospice and passed away four months from the time he had collapsed. I was able to bring my son out a  couple of times on my trips out and back so that was good. My dad and I did not have any common tastes in music so I doubt he would have cared for this. And while it’s anchored to the end of his life, it is one of the few songs that makes me think of him.

So that’s my story. Later on, I found out that most of the song had been written by Dave Kerzner and it was inspired by the passing of his friend Kevin Gilbert (Toy Matinee, Giraffe) and the “fragility of life”.

The video is pretty good. I had not watched it before until I was looking for it on YouTube.