This post covers the ‘Bs’ in my collection and there are some classics, some forgotten tracks and some eyebrow raisers!
Well, we start off with one of those classics, the fantastic Easy Lover by Philip Bailey, the lead singer of Earth, Wind and Fire and Phil Collins, the lead singer of Genesis. As soon as I heard the track, which just sounded fantastic, I was straight off to the record shop to buy it, and it’s one of those that still sounds fantastic today. The blend of the voices is perfect and the tune is an absolute belter. There is also a video for this that has Collins playing up his cheeky chappy persona to the occasional bemusement of the cool and stylish Bailey. From the sublime to the apparently ridiculous with Baltimora’s Tarzan Boy. It was a hit in October 1985 at about the time I was preparing for life outside the RAF following a fairly catastrophic ankle injury during basic training – a ripped achilles tendon suffered at the start of 1985 that took years to heal properly – and I needed silly songs like this to lift my mood. A bit like the amazing film Inside Out, any happy memories of this period are inevitably tinged with sadness, but my friends at the time rallied round me and I have vague memories of the crowd of us letting loose on the chorus when drunk and I suppose I bought it to hold on to those feelings when I needed them. Who would have thought that Tarzan Boy would be so deep and meaningful?!
Bananarama have always been a favourite group of mine and from their first album, the brilliant Deep Sea Skiving, I have the rather gorgeous and very catchy Shy Boy. I bought this after seeing them on Top of the Pops, as I did with a number of singles. I loved the way that their dancing wasn’t choreographed to within an inch of its life and their voices blended together perfectly. Robert De Niro’s Waiting was arguably their best received single, and it showed off their more polished style very well indeed. From one all-female group to another with one of the best ballads of the 80s and the song that was the second dance at our wedding, being my wife’s favourite slow song at the time. It was very close to being our first dance, but a record that I will cover in the ‘Cs’ beat it by a whisker!
Finally, in this first section we have The Barron Knights, a parody group who had three successful singles in the space of four years. They specialised in songs that had linking lyrics before moving onto the parodies themselves. Live in Trouble parodied I Can’t Stop Dancing by Leo Sayer, Angelo by Brotherhood of Man (arguably itself a parody of Figaro by ABBA!) and Float On by The Floaters. A Taste of Aggro was even more successful, reaching Number 3 in the charts with the help of Boney M’s Rivers of Babylon, The Smurf Song and Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs. They were very good musicians in their own right which definitely helped the quality of the songs and the lyrics always left me laughing however many times I heard them.
As an aside, the second of the Barron Knights singles has the stamp of Strood Record Centre on it. That was my first port of call every weekend for years especially after I had finished the Panini Football 78 and Football 79 sticker albums. I pretty much built up my record collection at that one shop, because at that point I usually had £5 a week to spend on singles. Why that amount? Well, I used to have to go by bus to school and I didn’t get a free bus pass which most students from my neighbourhood received. Every week, my parents gave me £5 for my fares that week. In seven years at secondary school I was asked for a fare maybe half a dozen times! The assumption was that we were all on free bus passes and I saw no reason to offer my money to the driver, hence my extremely large singles collection! I feel safe admitting to that now as I think 40 years is past the statute of limitations, and in any case it was the only good thing about being at that school in the 7 years I was there.
This next set starts with two singles from 1991, the year before I switched over to CD for best part of 30 years. By that time my single buying had slowed to a trickle, mainly because of the increasing price and declining manufacturing standards. They are an interesting pair. The only Beautiful South single I bought on vinyl spluttered to a halt at Number 51 in the charts despite being absolutely gorgeous. It’s well worth a listen, but it pretty much sank without trace at the time. The other one is Secret Love by the Bee Gees. Again, it was a very unusual choice for the only vinyl single from that multi-talented trio. To be honest, I had completely forgotten it until I embarked on this cataloguing. However, when I did put it on the turntable – for the first time in over three decades – I recognised it as soon as it got to the chorus. What a song it is! Take a listen when you put my Spotify playlist to use – you know you should!
Next up is Belle and the Devotions with Love Games. It was the UK entry for the last Eurovision song contest I watched and the only UK entry I ever bought as a single. It’s a Motown inflected blast that is virtually forgotten these days, as it’s scandalously low position of 35 in the countdown of 50 UK Eurovision songs attests to. 1984 was the year I joined the RAF and after that lots of things like Eurovision slipped off my radar, but it went out on a high with one of my favourite ever entries. A couple of US artists, Pat Benatar and Berlin follow, the latter instantly recognisable, the former largely forgotten but well overdue for a re-visit. From the sublime to the arguably ridiculous with Wicksy from Eastenders, in the days I used to watch it, otherwise known as Nick Berry. I don’t care what anyone says, it’s a lovely little ballad and he had a pretty decent voice. The final duo are both throwbacks to earlier eras. Matt Bianco with their infectious remake of Georgie Fame’s Yeh Yeh, and Big Daddy who were probably the first ‘mash-up’ band singing covers of modern tracks in an oldies style.
The single top left is an Old Gold find at the much missed Woolworths, according to the price sticker! When I had finished at Strood Record Centre, that was often my next port of call. Acker Bilk’s Stranger on the Shore was a piece of music I heard on the radio, and I grew to love it over the years. Did you know that it spent 55 weeks on the chart? It entered the Top 50 on December 6 1961 and left it on December 19 1961! Three records from synth legends Blancmange next, with each one a classic of its type. Living on the Ceiling had a Cairo set video, but its distinctive instrumental flavour came from the use of the unmistakably Indian tabla drums and a sitar. Either way, it was a sound that was utterly unique and extremely catchy. Don’t Tell Me was similarly catchy, but musically very different. That was something that fascinated me, Blancmange’s chameleon like qualities which ensured that you never knew quite what was coming next. What came next, for me, was the best ever cover of an ABBA song. The Day Before You Came has a quiet power in both versions, and the Blancmange video cleverly, and rather cheekily, uses some of the appearances of Agnetha from the original video alongside Neil Arthur. If I was forced to choose a favourite, I would very slightly favour this version.
Timmy Mallet in the guise of Bombalurina might, I admit, be something of a marmite single, but it was Number One on the day that Janet and I got married so I had to get it. It was played at our wedding and two of the guests danced quite brilliantly to it, so I always think of that and smile when I hear it. Only one Bon Jovi single, but what a single! It is of course, the brilliant Livin’ on a Prayer from Slippery When Wet, an album that I bought mainly on the strength of this track. Both single and album are just great. Two David Bowie singles, Space Oddity and Absolute Beginners complete the picture above and both, in their own way, are quintessential Bowie with that individuality that he was famous for. I don’t have Life on Mars, my favourite ever David Bowie track, having fallen under its spell quite late on. Perhaps I will find it in a record shop somewhere, but I will have to be careful or I might start collecting ‘missing’ singles which could become very expensive and time consuming!
The final set of ‘Bs’ starts with one of the most recognisable tracks of the 80s. Self Control by Laura Branigan was one of those songs that you could play in your bedroom on the record player or dance to in the disco at full volume with the bass pounding through you. Either way it was totally fantastic, and it was one of those singles that I played almost non-stop when I bought it. Her voice and the staccato delivery made this utterly distinctive, then and now. Break Machine was one of those tracks that sounded great in a disco, so I bought it on the strength of that. It was quite a clever idea, catching hold of the Break Dancing wave via a single that sounded more like an off cut from Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down album. It may not have held up as well as some other records but it’s still fun. Back to the 70s now with Brian and Michael and the rather lovely, rather brilliant Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs. It may have been parodied by the Barron Knights, but that just served to demonstrate the quality of the original. I loved it then, I love it now, but I urge you take a listen to the B Side The Old Rocking Chair, one of the most beautiful evocations of love ever committed to record. If it doesn’t make you emotional I will be very surprised. It’s not on Spotify so I have found it on YouTube instead
Two very different Brooks follow in this section. First, we have Elkie whose outstanding voice is heard to its best effect in No More The Fool, which has power to spare and a fantastic chorus. It is one of the classiest ballads you can imagine. Mel, by contrast led a full scale assault on good taste with the theme and lyrics for To Be or Not To Be. It comes from a remake of an anti-Nazi comedy that was one which I thoroughly enjoyed as a teenager. Yes, it will offend many, but I think it’s one of the greatest comedy records of the decade. I loved Sam Brown’s Stop, but I didn’t buy it. Instead I bought the follow-up Kissing Gate without hearing it. It’s good, but perhaps not as good as her more famous single, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. The last pair of ‘Bs’ are very familiar to most people, but as with many others in my singles collection, the ones I bought – only one for each artist – were not the obvious ones. Bucks Fizz had a very good run of hits in the early 80s, the starting point being Making Your Mind Up. Much though I liked it, it is not my favourite of theirs, my favourite is the one I bought, Land of Make Believe. It’s got an unsettling undertone in both the lyrics and the tune, with the nursery rhyme quality hiding something that is darker and more complex. Kate Bush wrote some amazing tracks, but I bought the single that showcased her ability to interpret someone else’s songs. Her versions of Rocket Man and Candle in the Wind are both excellent and her voice is in fine fettle.
Well, there you have it for the ‘Bs’. Next up, the first half of the ‘Cs’ – yes there’s quite a lot of those!
I started watching the CBBC dramatisation of A Kind of Spark last week and pretty much instantly bought the novel. I am of the opinion that good novels are good novels, whoever the target audience are. For many years I read to my children at bedtime, and in those years I came to the conclusion that some of the most enjoyable reads were to be found in the YA section. Unfortunately, YA books have been all too easily dismissed as a result of that label, rather like the romantic comedies written by female authors and aimed at a mainly female audience – I refuse to use the frankly insulting term used to dismiss them. I am, as it happens, a huge fan of books by such authors as Sophie Kinsella and Cecelia Ahern amongst others. So, what did I think of A Kind of Spark when I read it?
The Autism Experience
Well, I can only start in one place, the portrayal of autism from someone who can understand the experience intimately. Elle McNicoll is on the autistic spectrum, like myself, and it definitely shows. I thought I knew a lot about my own experience with undiagnosed Asperger’s, but I had only scratched the surface as it turned out. All I had done was to read about the views of Neurotypical (NT) researchers who could not hope to understand what goes on inside an autistic mind. So much fell into place when I started reading it. My initial fascination with history and with dates and the encyclopaedic knowledge I stored up about it is reflected by Addie, the central character, and her fascination, first with sharks and then with witches. Like me, her mind worked overtime when focused on a subject that interested her, but failed to work effectively in areas that didn’t. When I was at school I was very good at English and History, but struggled with Mathematics and Science. Like Addie, my handwriting was abysmal at first, although I trained myself to write in a very neat hand. I’ll come back to that later. Due to my dyspraxia my motor skills were very poor, which was most obvious in sport, art and design and technology. I used to dread all those lessons because I knew I would fail at them. This led to me having flashes of frustration and temper, another thing I will return to. Finally, like Addie and her sister Keedie, I was, as Addie points out near the end, very easy to bully at secondary school in particular and that made my entire seven years miserable, particularly as it came from the staff as well as the other pupils. In those days, I was always told to ‘pull myself together’ and to ‘deal with it like a man’, both at home and at school. It led me to withdraw into myself as that was the only place where I could find any respite.
When you read about autism from an NT perspective, the characters are automatons with little understanding or inclination to display or understand emotion. Now, that may be the experience of one section of the autistic community, but Addie’s experience of heightened emotions, heightened reactions and heightened impacts was finally my experience told in a way that chimed exactly with what I felt. This is why music can have such an effect on me, because I can end up living a song in a way that is as intense as anything I experience in everyday life. It explains why certain characters in books, TV series and films can have such a huge effect on me. This dichotomy between the NT view of autism and my own experience confused me until I started reading this book.
Coping strategies
As Addie says towards the end of the book, those of us on the Autistic Spectrum have to live in a world that isn’t built for us. As a result we fall back on certain strategies to deal with situations that we cannot fully understand throughout our childhood and indeed into adult life. Before reading this book I had heard of stimming, which are calming physical actions that help to bring your mind back to some state of equilibrium. I was aware of certain repetitive actions and behaviours which I indulged in, but these were always presented negatively by the NT people in my life. I was told I was weird or told to grow up so I tried my best to ignore my need to use that approach and ended up causing myself far more stress in the short and long run. If I did indulge in the behaviours it was in the safety of my own room and with a sense of guilt.
The next strategy, which I had not heard of, back in the darker days of my childhood where no one wanted to understand the ‘weirdos’ – I was called much worse, for example by other kids and even a teacher who referred to me by a term routinely used to describe people with cerebral palsy – purely because no one cared. Anyway, the strategy was masking. Masking is where the autistic person tries to mimic the behaviour of those around them in a vain effort to fit in. When I started to read about masking from a non NT perspective, elements of the last 50 years of my personal and social development finally fell into place. The way I constantly fought against my own instincts at home, at school and with friends was explained, as was the sheer exhaustion of having to do so, minute after minute, day after day, year after year. Keedie, Addie’s older sister, doesn’t tell anyone at the university she is at that she is autistic because she wants to make a fresh start. Eventually the effort completely exhausts her. I read this and remembered a three week stretch in my second year at university where I could barely get out of bed and I certainly couldn’t face anyone else. I stayed in my room, too exhausted to study or socialise, recuperating until I felt ready to face the world and mask again. This happened over 30 years ago, and at the time I had no idea what was wrong with me. Thanks to Elle McNicoll I do now – nothing! After so many years of practice I am now quite adept at masking, but the payback is that most weekends and holidays I spend a fair proportion of the time trying to recover from the mental effort that may be, apparently, less onerous as a result of experience, but which is definitely cumulative.
When you cannot mask any longer and someone does something so bad that you can’t control yourself you can end up having a meltdown. In a way, it’s another coping strategy, but it is definitely not one you want to resort you, it’s one you end up having no choice to resort to because you ‘snap’. In a world where NT people, often consciously, like to push you to that point, it’s a wonder it doesn’t happen more often. If I meltdown it tends to be verbal rather than physical, but I will also just walk away from a situation and keep walking to try to put mental and physical distance between myself and the situation. The reality of Addie’s situation is that her meltdown is met first with laughter and then with retribution by the NT world who pushed you there in the first place. On the couple of occasions I got physically aggressive, like Addie I was the one blamed and the one punished.
This book is apparently the most read book by Scottish secondary school pupils. All I can say is that if the NT students are educated and the students with one of the forms of autism are reassured by this book or the series, then it will be a huge step in the right direction. Thank you Elle McNicoll for opening the door for us, but to the NTs who might read it, please warn us before you come in as we don’t like surprises!
In this ongoing series of posts, I will keep to one golden rule. I will leave nothing out. If the single is in my collection it will be photographed and maybe commented on! There are songs I no longer like and songs I have no idea why I ever liked (!) but they were all songs I liked in my younger days and they should be acknowledged.
So, without further ado, let’s get on with it.
The Letter A
So, in alphabetical order, here are the first six. It starts off with an all-time classic. The Winner Takes It All was the first ballad I became totally obsessed with. I played it over and over again to learn every word and appreciate every nuance of Agnetha’s incredible delivery of such deeply personal lyrics. It is still one of those songs that can make me emotional every time I play it. The fact that I only have two ABBA singles shouldn’t be seen as a negative, because I had enjoyed pretty much everything else they released, but not to the extent of wanting to buy it. I got the Super Trouper cassette and bought the cassette of ABBA’s singles as soon as it came out. The ABC single was the one track of theirs that I really loved, and the B side, which is a classical overture is even better. You really need to take a listen if you haven’t.
Going from the sublime to the ridiculous! Yes, I have a Russ Abbot single, yes, I enjoyed his comedy, and, yes, I thought it was good fun at the time. Guess what? As these novelty singles go, I think it is a good example of the genre and it’s still very catchy. Trapped by Colonel Abrams was a great one to dance to and I think stands up pretty well. Finally, my one Adam and the Ants single, the classic Stand and Deliver with that instantly recognisable introduction. They were a real favourite of mine at the time, so why only the one single? Well, unusually, I had the album Kings of the Wild Frontier quite early on due to the title track, which I still think is their best song.
A trio of Bryan Adams singles next, with Run to You and Somebody in 1984, his first two big hits and tracks that still sound brilliant. Everything I Do is the song of his that you either love or hate, except it wasn’t always like that. It was the fact that it stayed at Number One for so long – 16 weeks to be exact! Take that out of the equation and it is one of the great ballads of the 1990s. The two A-ha singles are fairly common, if not ubiquitous, in virtually every 80s collection. I listen to them now and wonder how on earth it was The Sun Always Shines on TV not Take On Me that got to Number One. However, they both still sound great. Finally in this sextet, you have one of my favourite ever songs, All Out of Love by Air Supply. The tune, the vocals and the general air of heartbreak is just marvellous and as a slow dance record in my teens it was simply perfect – not that anyone was queueing up to dance with me of course! Just as well I loved listening to it and singing along with it.
So, next up is Wales’ greatest rock band – I won’t be swayed on this so don’t try! I was obsessed with The Alarm from the very first time I heard 68 Guns. It was one of those records where I remember exactly when and where I first heard it. It was on Top of the Pops, and the opening just absolutely blew me away. The energy, the aggression, the superb tune and the amazing lyrics combined to make this an all-time classic. I heard it on the Thursday night and I was straight down to the local record shop on Saturday morning to buy it. A couple of months later I bought the follow-up Where Were You Hiding Where The Storm Broke? As with 68 Guns it is a classic piece of socially conscious rock with a sing along chorus and energy to spare. However, it is the B-Side which is really special here. Pavilion Steps reflects on the closing down of so many of the spaces where young people congregated, particularly in the 80s as the social fabric of the country started to break down. This was a theme carried on by the rabble rousing The Chant Has Just Begun, but this excellent single pretty much vanished without trace. Absolute Reality did get them back on TOTP, but even the epic Spirit of 76 couldn’t break through to the mainstream. 68 Guns stalled at Number 17 in the charts, but it was ridiculously their highest charting single. They are one of the great unappreciated groups of the 80s although their template must have had some influence on MCR when they made Black Parade. If you don’t know much about The Alarm get yourself to Spotify or YouTube and find some of the greatest socially conscious rock of all time. I always think that this group were the start of my leftwards move politically, and for that I thank them!
Although they were one hit wonders, Alphaville left a lasting legacy with the outstanding Big in Japan. This German group had many more hits in Europe, but at the time European groups found it very difficult to follow up even the biggest of hits with significant chart entries. At the time, radio or TOTP would make or break a record, and they tended to take a fairly sceptical view of any but the most radio friendly tracks, something that also affected Nena as she struggled to follow 99 Red Balloons.
A real mixed bag here! One of the things I used to like doing was trawling the record shops for Old Gold or The Original singles and similar oldies imprints. In this little set, you can see Amen Corner and Louis Armstrong, both hits way before my record buying began in earnest. In a sense, it was like discovering old songs through the internet these days. Next, we have two left field electronic tracks, the ‘marmite’ style track O Superman by Laurie Anderson and the electronic reworking of an obscure 50s track, Peter Gunn, featuring the original guitarist Duane Eddy. It’s a superb remake in every way. Finally, an absolute banger that I loved dancing to. Solid by Ashford and Simpson is a total soul classic and still gets me singing (shouting) along with the chorus whenever I hear it.
Two pairs of singles finish off the letter A. The rather brilliant debut single and follow-up from Rick Astley showcase that amazing voice to very good effect. Never Gonna Give You Up has, of course, entered popular internet culture thanks initially to Rick Rolling, but strip all that away and you have one of the finest singles of the 1980s. Together Forever would be the best track of many other debut albums, so don’t underestimate that one either. Finally, a couple of smooth ballads from the American group Atlantic Starr, the first of which, Secret Lovers always gets overlooked when the great ballads of the 1980s are played but it’s well worth checking out if you haven’t heard it. Always is a decent track as well, but it’s not at the same level.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that little whistle stop tour of the A’s. I have handpicked ten of those tracks to go with this article which I will be adding to next time when I work through the B’s.
Here’s the link https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4FjFIa3zqlRGgTqpT5swkj?si=0cacc6e2ae9045e7
In this edition of the blog I will be reflecting on 5 songs that introduced me to 5 acts which remain an abiding passion of mine musically. Now, as you can imagine, I could easily have picked 10 acts or 20 acts and just kept going! However, there are certain moments where you know that your musical heroes and, occasionally, your musical tastes are never going to be the same again. These moments tend to occur in your childhood and teens, but they can also happen later in life when a particular artist just connects with you in a way that you weren’t expecting. So, here are 5 songs which have had an abiding impact on me and which have helped to shape my musical journey.
Song 6 – Hey Rock n Roll by Showaddywaddy
From my early music loving days I have already mentioned The Wombles, Glam Rock, Don McLean and many others, but for me one group stood apart as my first real experience of music fandom. An eight piece band from Leicester, Showaddywaddy were formed from two bands on Leicester’s pub circuit. The Choise were a four piece with Dave Bartram on vocals, Romeo Challenger on drums, Trevor Oakes on guitar and Al James on bass. Their sets featured 50s and 60s style songs written by the band. The Golden Hammers, also a four piece, had Buddy Gask on vocals, Malcolm ‘The Duke’ Allured on drums, Russ Field on guitar and Al Deas on bass. After jamming together on occasions, they decided to join forces permanently in 1973, and Showaddywaddy were born. The name came from the backing vocals of a song they would go on to play on New Faces, the Britain’s Got Talent of its day, called Hey Rock n Roll. In the competition they won their heat and then came runners-up in the Grand Final. Almost immediately, they were signed to Bell Records and Hey Rock n Roll was released, getting to Number 2 in the charts in mid 1974 and spending 14 weeks in the Top 50. They were helped in building a fan base, no doubt, by their appearances on Top of the Pops and also being named as David Cassidy’s support act right at the beginning of their career. Their multi-coloured outfits were a good way to stand out and their combination of tight musicianship and exuberant stage personas soon made them favourites across all age groups.
So what was it about Hey Rock n Roll that captured my imagination from the start? Well, first of all, it was the drums at the start, which made use of both Romeo Challenger and Malcolm Allured to create a thumping intro, which, as I found out when I saw them in concert, was incredibly exciting live but also translated very well to record. It was unmistakeable as soon as it came on the radio or TV, and even today it still hits the spot. Add this to the foot stamping chorus and it was quite simply irresistible to me.
Over the course of their career, Showaddywaddy spent more than 200 weeks on the charts and appeared more than 50 times on Top of the Pops as they racked up no fewer than 9 Top 5 hits and toured one of the best live shows of the era. Despite this, they were never popular with music ‘aficionados’ who viewed them with contempt. I didn’t realise this until I got to secondary school and mentioned that I liked them. For my tormentors it was another piece of ammunition to bully me with, but sadly, it was also something my ‘friends’ loved to jump all over both then and for decades after I left school. It was used as a shorthand, by a couple of my contemporaries in particular, to ‘prove’ that I had no musical taste. The fact that they were still mentioning it over three decades later was, to say the least, frustrating! I learnt to avoid any mention of Showaddywaddy at school, which I still think is a very sad state of affairs, but I continued to buy their records and go to their concerts and, to this day, I still love listening to them. They were something of a ‘safe space’ and gave me the opportunity to escape my daily bullying and for that I will always be grateful.
From the other end of their career, as a sort of bookend, I want to introduce you to the self-penned B side for their final single ‘Do Wah Diddy’. The song is ‘You are Love’ and it is just gorgeous.
Song 7 Message in a Bottle by The Police
My next track comes from a group I was aware of for a little while before I became a committed fan. Their first album contained a couple of tracks I would grow to love, but it was the lead single from their second album that hit the sweet spot for me and made them the first group, and pretty much the last, to feature in a poster on my wall. From the first time I heard Message in a Bottle, I knew that it was something special. Andy Summers’ fantastic guitar intro was a masterpiece of its kind, Stewart Copeland’s drumming was something completely new to me and Sting’s vocals just soared above his contemporaries with individual, idiosyncratic brilliance. Their use of reggae fused with the energy of punk made them a group that genuinely sounded like no one else, before or since. Regatta De Blanc was an exceptional album and a 15th birthday present alongside the afore mentioned poster. However, Message in a Bottle was the standout track with its lyrics of loneliness and alienation perfectly reflecting my teenage mindset as I continued to survive school rather than thrive within its Lord of the Flies style ethos. How I would love to have been cast adrift away from everyone else, and how I would love someone else to understand my thoughts. The Police did understand and they continue to be a musical touchstone of mine.
Much as I did enjoy their entire musical output, for me the first three albums, Outlandos D’Amour, Regatta De Blanc and Zenyatta Mondatta were their high water mark, and arguably the best three albums from the debut LP put together by any group. My second choice from their discography was a difficult one to make, but I decided to go for a deeper cut from that Regatta De Blanc album. Bring on the Night perhaps encapsulates the tightness and quality of their playing more than any other album track. It is hypnotic, brilliant and utterly unique.
Here’s where it got difficult, as I desperately tried to prune my choices down to 5! I decided to look at moments when a new sound or group came out of nowhere and set me on a new path. For that reason, a number of songs that I could have chosen fell by the wayside as they became musical cul-de-sacs, with an impact that was restricted to that one song, or they only led me to one particular artist rather than a whole new genre. Accordingly, the next three look at songs whose impact was not restricted to one specific artist.
Song 8 Souvenir by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
It is inaccurate to say that I was unaware of OMD in particular, or electronic music in general before September 1981, but up until then it had been something of a background noise which hadn’t yet captured my heart or my imagination. Souvenir was the song that opened the door which led to my immersion in synthpop. In tone and style it seems somewhat atypical of OMD’s output, but as an introduction to them it is perfect. It is a classical piano piece, which any romantic composer would have been proud to write, channelled through the synthesiser and given a timelessness that few other songs of the genre can match. The words are apparently incidental when you first hear them, but they are, to my mind, in fact integral to the song. It was a single I have played over and over again, and I think it is a tone poem, reflecting upon the importance of the creative process. There are of course different interpretations that you can place upon it, but that is the way I see it, especially in the context of my increasing interest in classical music. A few years ago, I finally saw OMD live and had a great time listening to a group who have seemingly put an early poster of themselves in an attic somewhere! No song that day affected me more than Souvenir, which brought tears to my eyes from the opening notes as I discovered anew its power to move me.
My companion piece from this genre was incredibly difficult to choose, so central has it been to my life over the past four decades, but I thought it was appropriate to choose another synth song that makes me emotional every time I hear it. From their 2020 album, Hotspot, here are one of the greatest British bands of the last 50 years, the Pet Shop Boys with gorgeous Burning the Heather.
Song 9 The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
This song opened up the world of hip hop and rap to me and to many others. Musically, I loved its urgency and the thumping rhythm track which underpins the whole song. It was unlike anything else I had ever heard up to that point and it made me sit up and take notice from the opening bars. This music was combined with lyrics that reflected the real experiences of the writers and their community. Even now, the lyrics are hard hitting and raw. My abiding interest in social commentary through music made this a perfect introduction to a genre which was, at the time, almost entirely absent from the charts. The vignettes of the inner city characters were superbly drawn and unsparing in their focus on the reality of life. This is not a song that allows for any happy endings because for many there were no happy endings. Even listening to it now, I am struck by just how bleak it is. If you’ve never heard it before, or you haven’t heard it for years, take a look at the lyric video below of this incredible piece of music.
What do you choose to go with that tour de force? How about the follow-up, the stunning White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It?) Just hearing these two songs, you have no doubt that you are in the presence of genius.
Song 10 Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day
The revival of punk rock style bands in the US was one I was initially suspicious of, for no other reason than assuming it would be a pale imitation of the original movement. In many cases that was probably not an unfounded suspicion, but in two cases at least it proved to be incredibly wide of the mark. Both groups were introduced to me by my sons and they became favourites of mine.
First up, we have Green Day, whose socially conscious lyrics were always going to appeal to me once I had the opportunity to listen to them. Songs like American Idiot, reflecting the disillusion of a generation were similar to their punk forebears in style and content and delivered with no nonsense musicianship that drove the songs along at 90 miles an hour. It is perhaps strange then that I have chosen their most atypical song to reflect their output, but it was the song that sent me back to their previous work. Wake Me Up When September Ends is a song full of emotion, beautifully sung and quietly devastating. It is hard to imagine many other bands of this type coming up with such a masterpiece, although The Stranglers mined similar territory to great effect when they made Golden Brown. The song reflects the feelings that Billie Joe Armstrong had following his father’s death when he was only 10. Given the personal nature of the song, it is perhaps unsurprising that he has become increasingly irritated by the stupid memes that circulate every year on October 1 telling him to wake up. Sadly, these people either don’t know or don’t care what the subject matter is, in the search for cheap likes. Armstrong himself has the best answer to those people with his comments about writing a sequel called ‘Shut the Fuck Up When October Begins’!
The companion track to that incredible track is another modern classic from the superb My Chemical Romance. Their Black Parade album was one that hit me with its power and passion from the first time I heard it, making me a huge fan immediately. My choice from that album would be the title track, but there was another track that spoke to my teenage self more than any other modern song. For 7 long years, this would have been my personal anthem and even now I can just find myself back there wishing I could have taken the lyrics with me in a time machine to that awful secondary school in the late 70s where they might have been something to hang on to.
So, there you have it. My 10 songs have finished, but the musical memories haven’t.
Coming Soon – The A-Z of my singles collection!
I put The Sound of Being Human on my birthday wish list because I really enjoy books about music. It turned out that being a book about music was just the start of its appeal. It is by turns a heartfelt autobiography, a flick through Jude Rogers’ record collection, an introduction to the structure and chemistry of the brain and a psychological journey into the phenomenon of this amazing gift called music. Any one of those parts would have made this a very interesting read, but put together it became a book that me laugh, made me emotional and made me think in a way that few other books have done. It was written with humour and beauty that made me take Jude Rogers to my heart in a way that I was quite unprepared for.
Let’s start with the autobiography. It details Jude’s journey from her childhood as she discovered the power of music. The death of her father, who is a continuing presence in her musical life, is dealt with beautifully, sensitively and with quiet courage, both in this book and in her life. We learn how she discovered Wham’s greatest song – Freedom of course! – while tying her shoelace, her introduction to Abba whilst standing at the sink in her grandmother’s house and her love for Neneh Cherry’s Buffalo Stance alongside her love for Smash Hits. In many 80s set books these cultural touchstones seem like a checklist of the songs, groups and magazines that have to be namechecked for the purpose of the audience. Here, Jude Rogers cleverly both foregrounds and backgrounds the songs so that her own stories become the focus of the reader’s attention. By doing this, she is able to bring fresh life to them. She explains her reaction to hearing Freedom for the first time by looking at it in musical terms, and her reaction as a 6 year old infant school pupil absolutely mirrored mine, even though I was hearing it as a 19 year old just about to go into the Royal Air Force! It brought home to me the universality of music where age upbringing and personal circumstances are of little consequence once a song has captured your imagination.
The chapters are arranged as a playlist and each song is considered in depth as its importance in her life. However, it is also considered in term of its effect on the physiology of the brain and its psychology. Although she is not an expert, as she freely admits, her reading and her contacts are both wide-ranging and the way she puts some of these difficult concepts across is an object lesson to writers in terms of making them accessible to a non-expert audience. For example, she introduced me to the term anhedonia, a word and indeed a concept I was completely unfamiliar with, and within a few sentences outlined what it meant. Oh, and she included a joke that made me laugh on the train – a rare feat! She also reflected on the time when music stopped working for her, something I have been trying to explain to myself in vain, and a subject I reflected on myself only this week, far less eloquently. https://davidgpearce205.wordpress.com/2023/03/30/reviewers-block/
I have rarely read a book that has affected me in so many ways. I followed Jude’s journey with her, feeling the highs and lows keenly as, in some ways, the events reflected my own. Even when they didn’t I was emotionally involved throughout. It was also endlessly fascinating on an intellectual level, to the extent that I even started highlighting parts of the text to investigate the concepts and the academics involved! Finally, it introduced me to songs that I have never heard before and which I will definitely be listening to in the near future once music starts working again.
I would usually say that this book will appeal to one audience or another depending on their interests. In the case of The Sound of Being Human I will, instead, say that this is for anyone who is human as it simply speaks to all of us.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 