Monday 7 April 2014

My Life in Music

Music can lift your mood, make you shake your booty or move you to tears.  I can always remember lyrics to old songs even if I can't recall what I had for breakfast.  Music evokes memories good and bad.  There was nothing more personal than someone making you a compliation cassette and who didn't sit on a Sunday recording the charts and hoping the song you liked would get airplay?

My parents had us young and my mum always had music on in our house (ironically my dad is hard of hearing and wears hearing aids, so music was something played when he wasn't there or we'd never be able to have a conversation with him).  Mum liked (likes) Erasure, Roxy Music, The Police, The Carpenters, OMD, Jean Michele Jarre - to name a few.  That said I remember Dad having Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond and John Denver LPs but never hearing them played.

My folks were students when we were wee and I remember getting a ghetto blaster one Christmas and Santa giving me copies of George Benson and Diana Ross, I also got a proper copy of Now 6 and vividly remember Queen's 'One Vision' (fried chicken) being on it.  My brother and I were bought walkmans one year as we took a holiday round Scotland, we had strict instructions to listen to the music and not even look at each other (we bickered, a lot).

A few years later Dad bought me a record player and I played Dirty Cash (Adventures of Stevie V over and over).  In my teens I subjected the parentals to the Use Your Illusion Albums on constant repeat, that and the Black Crowes.  I liked a wee bit of the Madchester stuff but that was mostly peer pressure.  Proud to say I never liked NKOTB or Take That.  Hell no, I had dyed black, permed hair (think Brian May), Doc Martens and cheesecloth skirts.  Oh yeah.  My first concert was Metallica, although it went downhill from there (god I loved the black album).

As I went to Uni I was more into dance music, although very different to rock I think that when you're lost in the music (dancing like a fanny) it's much the same.  I remember being very drunk in a club called Room at the Top and dancing like I was having a fit to 'encore un fois'.  The shame.  Years later I went to Homelands and had a great time seeing the Chemical Brothers, my dancing would have been the same.

I've had a few trips to T in the Park - scary, sorry but it is.  :-)  Glastonbury was great but for the love of god I can't remember who we saw.  My boyfriend's mate worked for virgin records and was chaperoning Soulwax, we all got upgraded to the 'VIP' campsite - that meant your tent didn't get stolen, there was bog roll and the campsite was shared with Radio One DJs and soap actors. 

Bizarrely my husband and I have very different taste in music, I will quite literally to anything and he likes what I affectionately call 'indie shit'.  What makes this so bizarre is that when we were flat mates we went to gigs together - I distinctly remember seeing the Stereophonics.

Nowadays I've no idea what's good, I'm so out of it.  iTunes is great but there was something magic about going into Rainbow Records and getting your single.

I'd started writing with the intention of talking about music I've discovered through their use on children's films but I've gone off piste. 

In no particular order, candidates for the soundtrack of my life (not necessarily by choice)
  • Frankie - first single, bought in John Menzies, Princes St
  • Whitney Houston - first LP I bought
  • Sacrifice- first slow dance, Benmore Outdoor Centre ca. 1992
  • Any GNR track on Use Your Illusion Pt I & II
  • Creep, Radiohead - following friend's band through various pubs and Craigshill Social Club
  • It's Raining Men - dancing to this for hours in my bedroom with my mate, v drunk after a break up
  • 500 Miles - v drunk with a huge group of friends including my now husband, dancing at my leaving night when I moved to live with my boyfriend in London
  • Coldplay - on repeat for a month to piss off aforementioned boyfriend when we broke up and I was waiting to move out
  • Everybody Knows, Divine Comedy - first dance, wedding
  • Poker Face - singing this to my first son when he was born
  • Brothers in Arms (cover version) - Lochaber Marathon, being very calm and focussed
Some of my favourite Songs
  • Janey's got a Gun - Aerosmith
  • Sexy and you know it - LMFAO, it just cheers me up, it's so silly
  • Proud Mary - Tina Turner
  • The Pretender - Foo's (angry, running fast music)
  • Put on your Sunday Clothes - Streisand
  • Song 2 - Blur
  • Livin on a Prayer - Bon Jovi (drunk dancing is obligatory)
  • 9-5 - Dolly Parton (she's a genius)
  • Insomniac - Faithless
  • Welcome to the Jungle - GnR