Musical Memories: Jane’s Addiction, “Summertime Rolls,” and dancing on a rooftop

Musical Memories: Jane’s Addiction, “Summertime Rolls,” and dancing on a rooftop

Songs are stories. A song can conjure up a time and place like nothing else. Some songs are inextricably etched together with moments in my life. These are Musical Memories. For a couple of summers, I lived on a rooftop, crowded into an apartment with a gaggle of bearded, sweaty men with strange accents. They called themselves "Texans." During the day, we'd dress up like cowboys, throw rubber chickens at one another, then have a shootout. We got paid to do this. In the evenings, we'd go back to our rooftop apartment and drain many, many cans of very, very…