My Top 2000 Songs #1083: My Past Lives

It's summer 1990. Just finished my second year of law school, working as a summer associate at a Chicago law firm--way up in the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower), tallest building in the world (at the time), which made for some cool views but long elevator rides. At least one day a week, I'd spend my lunch hour at the nearby Tower Records on Wabash (long gone, like all Tower Records stores). 

I still distinctly remember picking up Too Much Joy's Son Of Sam I Am CD on one of those visits. It had actually come out two years earlier, but there'd been a recent CD reissue, and the endlessly dorky, bombastic, yet absurdly fun "My Past Lives" was getting some radio airplay on the local station. Dim memories of hearing the song once or twice back in '88, in that void between college and law school, so I snagged the disc.

Sure, it's pretty dopey, a sort of updating of "Sympathy For The Devil" but rather than Jagger settling for just being incarnations of Lucifer, singer Tim Quirk was... everyone? Ever? Dunno. (Or maybe it's an alternative to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire," just more random in its historical selections?) But the band brings the big beat and guitar skronk, predating all those mid-90s post-grunge alt.rock novelty-ish songs which seemed to adopt the song's aesthetic, and the "I could write a book about my past lives" refrain latches on tight.

Live 1990:

Live 2022: