Sometimes, you remember just where you were when you connected with a piece of music so powerful it erupted in your head.
In the summer of 2000, I rushed in late to a packed all-media screening of “Gone in 60 Seconds.” I’d had a vexing day at the office, and was hoping the film would revive me.
It did, more quickly than I imagined.
After a flurry of titles, the soundtrack was filled with slow rhythmic claps, and over that came American voices, ancient yet present, not so much singing as chanting: “Green Sally up, and green Sally down.
Lift and squat, gotta tear the ground.” The piano chords came in, simple but seductively syncopated, and then, beneath it all, a beat that was bigger than big.
It echoed, it boomed, it made John Bonham’s thuds in “When the Levee Breaks” sound like someone banging on a tin can.
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