They call it the Proust Effect: when a sensation triggers a vivid and specific memory from our past.
For Proust himself, the sensation was taste: a morsel of madeleine cookie melding with tea on his tongue in In Search of Lost Time. For some, it’s smell: a whiff of your mother’s perfume, or the unmistakable scent of whiteboard markers.
But for me, this summer, it was sound that ferried me back to a bygone era. Specifically, it was two dozen 1980s bands resurrecting the lost soundtrack of my youth — live on stage, right before my eyes. And ears.