Many of you will remember Huey Lewis and the News as a rock’n’roll band that was especially big in the ’80s. The song “Power of Love” is a memorable part of the movie “Back to the Future.” You may remember Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly playing the guitar and getting blown across the room.

Huey doesn’t perform any more as he has Meniere’s disease which affects hearing and balance. Performers, Friday night, included Tyler Glenn (Neon Trees), Tom “Bones” Malone (Blues Brothers) and Marc Russo (Doobie Brothers) who performed Huey Lewis tunes with a variety of very talented, young musicians from Caleb Chapman’s Soundhouse located in Utah.

Sanpete’s own Adam Reader is one of several who have originated this new Hall of Fame. (Check out his YouTube channel “Professor of Rock” where more than a million people follow him) Another Sanpete connection at the show was none other than Governor Spencer Cox.

The governor not only was onstage giving a little congratulatory speech, but also as a backup singer on an a cappella “doo-wop” musical number. Well done Guv!

Hearing the old Huey Lewis music reminded me of the concept of how music has a strong connection to the memories of our lives. Quite a few memories came to mind Friday night.

My wife has an ongoing, gigantic project of working her way through lots (and I mean lots) of pictures, newspaper clippings, and letters, etc. She’s digitizing much of this stuff which relates to our family.

A while back, she was going through some of her deceased mother’s memory books. She was organizing, scanning and reading.

You know the old saying; “you can’t clean an attic if you can read.” The point of that is that it’s hard not to pause and read everything you find, and therefore the work never gets done.

One of the newspaper clippings that Diane found and liked was a poem. She shared it with me. It has brought to mind again a concept that most all of us experience and it relates to music.

The clipping didn’t show the name of the poet; but I’m suspecting that it was either Ben Burroughs or James J. Metcalfe. Several other similar clippings were attributed to them. Here it is:

Music is a diary… Of days of long ago… The sadness and the happiness… And friends we used to know… When we are young, each song is just… Another tune to sing… But as the years go drifting by… What memories they bring!… Each melody reminds us of… A certain time and place… And on the keyboards of our dreams… We see a special face… Yes, music is a diary… Of memories to keep… Some that we cherish while awake… And others while we sleep… Some folks consider music as… Our most important art… And they are right because it keeps… A record of the heart.

It is an interesting phenomenon to hear a song on the radio and immediately be transformed to another time and place. Most people like to continue to listen to the music of their youth – for that reason, I suppose. That must be why “oldies” stations are able to thrive.

As the poem says, songs remind us of happy times and sad times. Past relationships are brought back to life. Awkward moments at dances are remembered. Sometimes feelings of homesickness or “love sickness” are part of the remembrance.

I left home in the fall of 1970 and did my freshman year of college at USU in Logan. It was mostly a very happy time. But, I had little twinges of homesickness here and there.

James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” song was out that year and got lots of airtime on the radio. It’s a great song, but I do associate it with some melancholy moments in life. But “melancholy” is what the song really speaks to, from events of JT’s personal life. And that’s what makes it such a great associative musical memory.

I’m sure we could all sit in a room and tell lots of stories about the musical memories and associations with songs that we all have. It’s a fun, heart warming, common experience we have as fellow humans.

In fact, last Friday night we did something just like that. I met up with a friend of mine from high school. As two friend couples, we had dinner before going to the Hall of Fame show. (I recommend the Chicken Piccata at The Cheesecake Factory)

We sat and reminisced and laughed. Music and movies were the main topics.

This friend of mine is another “JT” — a bonus beyond James Taylor. James Thalman is a retired journalist and still dabbles in the rock’n’ roll world of Northern Utah on his bass guitar. He and I, along with Duane “Fudge” Sickels (RIP) were the “Three Musketeers” (Stooges maybe) who “set Logan on its ear” in 1970.

We were a part of and had just moved on from the rock ‘n’ roll world of Richfield High School. To memorialize our first day of arrival in Logan, we dined at the A & W Drive-In burger joint. We then went to the rock music festival movie “Woodstock” at the Cache Drive-In movie theater. (JT and I had seen Jimi Hendrix live in concert at Lagoon two years earlier in August of 1968 as 16-year olds.)

I believe that the same memory-making phenomenon that exists with music also applies to movies. When we think of certain movies, we often remember whom we were with, what the circumstances were, and when it was. Much of our laughter Friday night at dinner was recalling and re-enacting dialogue from the movie “Young Frankenstein.”

As Carly Simon sang in the song, “Anticipation” – “…these are the good old days!” Let’s remember that the activities we do now, which may seem routine and unimportant, are the things we’ll be remembering in the future with fondness. — Merrill