Ramble Tamble

I got a gift from my eighth-grade self the other day. Back in eighth grade I was at my friend's house and he was playing me a Creedence Clearwater Revival record for some reason, I guess maybe trying to sell me on the whole CCR vibe, which actually I wasn't really interested in being sold on? And later he played a Melissa Etheridge record because I didn't believe his claim that someone had a song that went "Somebody Bring Me Some Water"?

But anyway I remember being struck by the opening track on this CCR album, which was long and mostly instrumental, and so I filed it away as a Song To Get A Hold Of At Some Later Date. And years went by, and every once in a while people would mention CCR and I would remember that I was supposed to Get A Hold Of some song, even though I'd long since forgotten what it sounded like or why I should care. Then one day I found the album in my redneck uncle's collection and got excited and fired up said song, "Ramble Tamble," only to turn it off a minute later because the song was typical CCR stuff and so surely I'd misremembered the name of the song. I mean surely this by-the-book CCR song wasn't what had gotten me all fired up back in the eighth grade.

That's when I started to doubt myself. Maybe Eighth Grade Me was dumb and had dismal taste in music and, at the time, this standard CCR sound seemed noteworthy. I became very disappointed in Eighth Grade Me. I scowled at EGM. I resented EGM for being part of my history.

But then the other day I was screwing around with iTunes and quickly thought about that song so I said, Whatever, I'm downloading "Ramble Tamble" and I'm going to listen the shit out of it and see what in the hell stupid EGM saw in it. So I did, and sure enough, the song totally changes two minutes into it, segueing from typical CCR into a slower extendo-jam, complete with the kind of moody descending guitar line that I'm always a sucker for.

So when that long instrumental section began, I knew instantly why EGM'd perked up that day at his Etheridge-loving friend's house, why EGM'd filed it away for future reference, and I took back all the horrible, petty things I said about him and felt better about the world in general, once again being secure in the knowledge that I've always had my shit totally tight.