Chromesthesia …

My favorite “Desert Island Classic” … just the ticket for this kick-back, take me back, afternoon. I embrace and identify with this music as much as any, much more than most.

When they drop me on that desert island, challenged to survive on my own from that point forward, I’ll need a few things: A solar turntable, speakers that I can move around, and an original vinyl copy of the Derek and the Dominoes “Layla” album, oh, and maybe a nice grape Nehi.

Al Wheeler, a college roommate who was never my roommate, turned me on to the album in 1970. Everyone had to pay for a room on campus to reimburse the college for the new dorms they built, but Al rented a place in town too, so I had a private room.

“Layla” played in rotation for months at my place. Occasionally some of us would go over to Al’s for more of the same. He lived on the second floor of a huge old Victorian with several cavernous rooms defined by 12-foot ceilings that framed art gallery walls that showcased their peeling plaster. Each chip, like a concave half peach in an archaeological dig, revealed color from an earlier time, conjuring images of homeowners of an era now known only in old stories and history books.

It was a great place. Al’s small kitchen was more than enough for him, the rooms all tall, bright, and breezy…and somewhat surprisingly, the toilet worked. It was an oasis, an escape from the paranoia that was a very real part of life in North Alabama fifty years ago.

That Layla album played 24-7 over there too. We crushed up some Mescaline, shaking it violently into large bottles of cheap wine, a necessary staple that fueled epic paint parties. Chromesthesia, sound becoming color, was responsible for turning that music into memories that have become welcome kaleidoscopic flashbacks.

My faded T-Shirt shapeshifts into an amazing technicolor dream coat, a time machine and painter’s smock, with the first seven notes of Clapton’s opening riff.