What’s your all-time favorite album?
First of all, that is an impossible question to answer. For someone who is as steeped in music as I am, how on earth can I choose one? I always find it tricky to do a Desert Island Discs challenge for that reason. I truly believe that if you can answer that question you are either someone for whom music is an insignificant element of your life or you are choosing an album based on your current mood.
So, I will be answering this in my own way by looking at favourite albums from my formative years, musically speaking.
My First Albums
For Christmas 1974 I received a cassette player/recorder and my first two albums. The linked article is one of my absolute favourites and reflects my feelings on playing the two of them back to back as I had done on that Christmas morning as a 9 year old. It is genuinely an excellent read and I recommend clicking the link! Suffice to say, the old magic was still there. The two albums were Parade of Disney Hits which covered films from their first feature film Snow White to their ‘latest’ Robin Hood, and Keep on Wombling which included perhaps the finest Christmas song ever made ‘Wombling Merry Christmas’. As they were my only albums for about 18 months you can guess how often they got played!
Looking Back to the Greats
The first album I bought for myself was Elvis’ 40 Golden Greats in salmon pink vinyl, which I still have, and it was the January after his death on 16 August 1977, the first celebrity death that really hit home for me. When I got the album I found so many great tracks to listen to for the first time. My favourite track at the time was probably In the Ghetto and I’ve been an Elvis fan ever since. Not long after I bought The Beatles 1962 – 66 (the red album) which covered their Pre Sergeant Peppers output. Track after track after track just enthralled me and my friends who were similarly discovering them for the first time. My favourite track on this album was In My Life.
Changing Tastes
Three albums totally changed my musical landscape in the early 1980s. First was Regatta De Blanc by The Police which was simply mind blowing. The track Message in a Bottle just spoke directly to me and from then on I was a massive fan of them. Next was Bat Out of Hell by Meatloaf, an artist I discovered on the only occasion we had a coach instead of a bus for our trip into school. The driver had the radio on, and Dead Ringer flooded my senses, partly because I was right under the speaker, and partly because of the feeling of absolute excitement that the music awoke in me. I went out and bought Bat Out of Hell, and every track electrified me, but my favourite was the final track For Crying Out Loud, an emotional closer that is still my favourite final track from an album. The last album was Declaration by The Alarm which introduced me to the idea that my Conservative upbringing, politically, was not actually the full story. Their songs sung amazingly by the late great Mike Peters started me on my political march leftwards, something that gathered pace when I joined the Royal Air Force The track Blaze of Glory is stunning in its power and its force. Oh, and by the way The Alarm were responsible for the greatest Christmas cover version ever, Happy Christmas War is Over, when they replaced the children with a Welsh Male Voice choir to stunning effect. It’s way better than the original in my view.
So, there you have it, seven albums, 10 years and scores of memories. Maybe check the albums out for yourself if you haven’t heard them. You can find them on either YouTube or Spotify. Happy Listening!
Which topics would you like to be more informed about?
I am, and always will be, a learner as well as a teacher. The area I would most love to know more about is Popular Culture. For me, it is the true voice of creativity. High Culture is the mandated voice of creativity handed down to us by the rich and the influential, and will always be set up to divide society into the cogniscenti and the others. It reflects what is acceptable and unthreatening, whereas true Popular Culture is something over which they have little control. I would love to undertake a PhD in the future focused on the field but I know I need to have much more understanding of the discipline.
This Blogmas, starting on December 1, I will be taking my first steps along the path to my goal. I have been busy on ebay all summer and I have Christmas magazines ranging from 1896 to the 2010s. I will add a new one from this year to finish the collection and I will then try to investigate each magazine from a popular culture standpoint looking at it’s role as both a reflection of and a shaper of the British Christmas. Each day for, I think, 14 days I will research and write about a magazine and then on the final day I will try to tie together the themes that have been important and influential across the years. If it gets a good response, then I would like to either turn it into a full researched PhD or a book.
So, my question is, would you be interested in reading this series of articles in December? Let me know in the comments if you would, and if there are particular topics you would like me to look at. I don’t often ask for audience participation but I would really value it on this. Many thanks in advance.
What would your life be like without music?
The first post I wrote for this blog when I restarted it was about an extended period of deafness that arose due to a combination of hearing issues in my left ear and the complete blocking of my right ear due to wax build up. During that time I was working online so I was able to teach with the use of headphones, but otherwise I was pretty much trapped in a world of very muffled sound. There was some ability to hear, but it needed to be carefully managed and it was only for conversation. Music was lost to me for six months because I couldn’t pick up a tune.
That time was extremely difficult for me because music had been part of my life for about 50 years by then, and it was the very basis of my online persona at that point. Without it I had less to say and it definitely isolated me from people in both spheres of my life. Looking back, it took almost all of the colour out of my existence and the loss of music was a huge part of that. Even today, I look back and shudder when I think how grey and dispiriting that time was. I genuinely can’t understand people who rarely listen to music because to me it’s as central to my life as breathing. Do they feel grey and dispirited?
What would happen if I became deaf again? Perhaps I could deal with it a bit better but I know it would remove a huge part of my life, a part that is irreplaceable.
If you want to read the original post, which I still think is very interesting, here it is https://davidgpearce205.blog/2021/04/22/the-sound-of-silence/
How do you celebrate holidays?
The only holiday I really go all out on is Christmas. I may have mentioned this once or twice! I absolutely love everything about it and I can’t get enough of films, music and books about the season.
My Christmas planning will start around July most years as I start looking for possible presents. Finding that gift that even the recipient didn’t know they needed is one of the absolute joys of the season. I talk to people through the year and get inspiration from their, occasionally, throwaway comments and think, ‘That’s what I will get them!’ By the end of the summer I usually have three or four presents and this year is no exception.
For a number of years, in three of my previous posts, I organised a Secret Santa for my colleagues. It wasn’t on my radar until September, but I would start to get ideas for how to change things up if needed and I would chat to colleagues to see if any ideas could just add to the festive feel of my favourite event at work. I also did a yearly talk for my students about Christmas in the UK which was a bit hit and miss, but when it worked well it was amazing. To be honest I just loved the research and finding new facts and anecdotes that would liven it up.
When my children were younger the preparations were full on, especially as we didn’t have a huge amount of money. I had to work out how to make it as good as possible for as little money as possible, and that meant finding things in the Christmas clear out sales in January and putting them away. It was always a great distraction from some of the harder aspects of relative poverty. My favourite Christmas present for the children was a competition win of a new XBox which replaced our old PS2. Some of my oldest son’s friends were mocking the primitive technology in my earshot and I got really irritated as it had been a stretch for us to afford even that. When they came round to see the new XBox I wasted no time in giving it back to them, asking them if they had one! Very unfestive, yes, very petty, yes, but very satisfying!
I start planning the food I am going to cook around now and I buy my Christmas food as early as possible. This year, my high level cucumber relish production will be scaled back but I know I will still feel festive when I prepare it.
I have already started preparing my ideas for Blogmas and I will unveil the main element of my December blogging in the next few weeks.
So, there you have it. Christmas is a year round, fully planned festival for me and I still love it.
Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.
I don’t like thinking about failures in the kitchen for two very good reasons.
First, it’s never something I can laugh about afterwards. As such a good cook I find it deeply irritating. It’s stressful at the time and it gnaws at you afterwards. If it’s a big meal like a Christmas Dinner it’s even worse because you are stressed anyway, so a disaster can cause, and has caused, a meltdown.
Second, a failed meal means wasted money and for many years money was in short supply, so a kitchen disaster was one that I could literally ill afford. How to rescue it was always more of a concern. It’s easy to find it funny in retrospect if you are richer but if you are poorer you can find yourself having to think about the knock on effects before the next paycheck. As such, the ‘comic’ potential of the ‘epic fail’ is self indulgent and reflects your economic good fortune.
Yes, failure in the kitchen, as in any other area of life, is inevitable, but if you can laugh about it afterwards consider yourself lucky.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 