It's late January 1981 and for some reason, “Same Old Lang Syne” by Dan Fogelberg is played heavily on the radio. Shouldn't a song with that title have been out a month earlier? Regardless, it's one of the most evocative songs I will ever know. He steals behind her in the frozen foods; she went to hug him and she spilled her purse; and then it was off to her car to drink the six-pack they bought at the liquor store because all the bars were closed on Christmas Eve. Dan Fogelberg wrote those scenes like people talk, like people live.
Then as now, I see a particular Foodtown and a particular parking lot where I can imagine Dan and his old lover toasting one year going and one year coming while I'm inside the store rolling a cart down that very same frozen foods aisle, tossing a bag of Bird's Eye Mixed Vegetables onto a pile of groceries I have been instructed to pick up if I want to use the Ford later. There's a Kohl's now where that Foodtown was — and a Bed Bath & Beyond sits on the site of the formerly adjacent liquor store. Still, I see it. And isn't it, well, odd that at least around here on the day in December that 56-year-old Dan Fogelberg died in Maine that we experienced a nasty nor'easter in which the snow turned into rain?
“The Language of Love” by Dan Fogelberg is the No. 352 Song of All-Time, but I maintain a particular soft spot for “Same Old Lang Syne,” the only chart hit I know of whose title more or less refers to my birthday…and whose lyrics make me think of buying frozen peas.
P.S. Very first word of “Same Old Lang Syne” is Met.
I'm sorry to hear of his passing, and at such a young age. But I cannot deny how much I hated that effing song, and have always been thankful that it's only forced into my eardrums like a spiked battering ram for one month a year. I've avoided it so far this year, but when I hear it for the first time, I will mentally raise a soy eggnog to Dan.
There's a whole lot of good memories that come along when my husband and I hear “Same Ol Lang Syne”, “Run for the Roses” or the knee-slapping “Morning Sky”. You're right. It's 1981 all over again.
Too young. What a shame. Be at Peace, Dan
JoAnn
“Same Old Lang Syne” is one of those songs I cannot hear more than once annually, otherwise I have the same reaction as Laurie. Whenever I hear it for that first time each year, usually some time in mid-December, I'm instantly transported to an overpriced convenience store in New Rochelle on a Saturday night, hunting for a six-pack of something cheap to sneak into my girlfriend Maryanne's all-women's dorm.
She's married now; so am I. But for those few minutes, there we are. Sappy? Yeah. But this was one song that was blessed to have been a hit before the birth of MTV. It has its own video downloaded into my brain; there's probably a whole different one in yours, too.
Rest in peace, Dan.