THE GOOD OLD DAYS

My very earliest memory of music – and I’m going back to when I was 5 or 6 years of age - is of a huge big cupboard that was in my gran’s house - the sort of thing pictured above.

While there was a record player behind one of its doors, the thing that fascinated me most was the huge big dial that turned in a circle and moved a red line from left to right or the other way around. There were loads of words printed on the window in front of the red line – and when I asked, I was told these were cities all over the world and the when the red line hit that word, I would be able to hear songs and talks from a radio station in that city.

Turns out that I wasn’t the only kid fascinated by such a thing :-

mp3 : Martin Stephenson & The Daintees – Sunday Halo

The vocalist announcing all the places on the dial with the ‘Berlin, Munich, Brussels, Bonn etc’ refrain is none other than Cathal Coughlan whose band, The Fatima Mansions, got an honourable mention in dispatches the other week.

I’m not sure if it was the sounds that came out of the cabinet or the fact that I was allowed to play with the dial as I would a toy that led to me having such a long love affair with music. But I think it speaks volumes that while I can barely recall that much detail about things in my life from 40 years ago, I can still picture the radiogramme.

The other great influence in my early musical life was my dad – in as much that with the exception of hearing Tony Blackburn on Radio 1 just before going to school ("and what do you think Arnold – ‘Woof Woof’"), the music played in my house would be the stuff my dad listened to (mum was too busy holding down a job AND running the house to sit down and listen to anything).

By the time I was 10 or 11 years old, I was beginning to form my own views on music – and I even started to ask for Record Tokens for birthdays and Xmas so that I could buy singles by the likes of Gary Glitter, The Sweet, David Essex and The Average White Band (yup, Pick Up The Pieces was one of the first things I remember buying).

My old man at this time would have been 37 or 38 years old – a fair bit younger than I am now. The sort of stuff he was listening to seemed very grown up – you certainly never got to see the likes of Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash or Supertramp on Top of The Pops. Mind you, he also loved Status Quo, and they seemed to be on every week.

But such was my continued exposure to these acts that I knew all the words to songs that my dad played a lot. And its a frightening fact that I still do so many years later. I suppose it’s all got something to do with your capacity and to learn and retain at such an age….

Moving on a few years in time, and I really had found my own feet in terms of music. I knew what I liked, and I also realised that my old man really hated what I liked – something I recalled in this posting during the 45s series. But what I also found was that I totally detested any sort of music that my dad liked…I suppose it’s all got something to do with your desire and instinct to rebel at such an age…..

The thing is, back in 1979, my old man was in his early 40s – still younger than I am today, and this got me thinking and posing a question to myself.

If I had kids who were in their late teens just now, would they be appalled by my taste in music and have a hatred for the likes of Orange Juice, The Smiths, Magazine, The Jam and New Order??

Of course, I can console myself with the fact that with history having a fair chance of repeating itself, my kids would eventually see the light. It might take them another 15-20 years, but one day, they would finally accept that Edwyn, Steven, Howard, Paul and Barney were class acts in the singing stakes – and that the boys and girls who backed them were pretty special as well. In the same way that in my mid-30s, I cottoned on to the fact that my old man had some great taste:-

mp3 : Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues (live)
mp3 : Neil Diamond - I Am I Said

But don’t worry folks, I still can’t abide Supertramp or the Quo.

Happy Listening