Entertainment For Lively Minds
Echoes from childhood, sharp like yesterday.
From nowhere, the dim and distant past springs back to life. It's Saturday afternoon, and I'm doing the weekly run to Sainsburys. I've got the salad stuff, the veg, the fruit and the meaty bits. I'm heading in the general direction of the beers via the deli counter. Off to my right is the CD and DVD section, something I rarely look at. There's a "This week's offers" bit, though, so I think I'll take a quick shufty, just in case.
On the top shelf, all alone, is a CD in a cardboard slipcase with the title, "1957 - When Skiffle Was King". Now this is the sort of thing I'm happy to pick up in a supermarket; some sort of cheapo compilation that might contain a gem or two. I take it down for a look see.
It's stickered at £3, which, if it has even one or two good tracks, is a bargain. I turn it over. The first few tracks are as I might have predicted; Lonnie Donegan, Tommy Steele and so on. Then I spot the name of track four: "Last Train To San Fernando".
Whooooooosh. Wobbly waves cloud my vision.
I'm four years old, walking home from the barber's with my Dad, who's holding my hand. He's whistling a fetching tune. Blokes used to whistle in those days, where did that pleasure go? "Dad, what are you whistling?" "That's one of my favourites" he says, and starts to sing it to me as we walk, "Last tra-aaaaain, to San Fernando" is burnt into my cranial circuits, there to remain probably until I pop my clogs.
Here it is, finally, four and a bit decades later, in my hand, on a bloody CD. It's by someone called Johnny Duncan and his Blue Grass Boys, apparently, which is news to me. Marvellous. Sold.
Anyone else got a song that's come flashing back from the gloomy depths of their unreliable memory, shiny and new like it hadn't ever been away?
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Proustian Rush!
This is going to sound a little bit odd, but do any of the readers of "a certain age" remember watching TV in school before, or in the very VERY early days of video? Anyone remember the ITV programmes that used to have a clock that would count down before the programme began - the clock would usually be on a blue screen - to give classes a chance to"settle down" before watching began? This clock would usually be accompanied by some incidental music, some funky, some acoustic, but all of it very interesting. The tunes sort of remained buried deep in my subconscious but were brought roaring back to me with the purchase of a fantastic CD called "Watch with Teacher". A couple of the tunes literally stopped me dead, producing a very funny sensation within me!
How we used to live
Strangely, when my brother and I first heard the last track on Teenage Fanclub's album "Bandwagonesque", called "Is this music?", we both agreed that it reminded us of the schools programmes music, accompanied by the clock.
The Herbaliser track on this month's Word CD ("Amores Bongo"), to my ears has traces of "Terry and June" (muted trumpet) and "Catweazle", and therefore makes me come over all seventies.
Unfortunately the internet, by making all our music and TV memories instantly accessible, has greatly reduced the frequency and power of those memory rush incidents.
Blimey, it's The Doctor!
That's a neat trick, Grant, considering "Watch With Teacher" is released on July 7th! Did you get a preview copy, or something?
No, completely legit!
I got it from www.moviegrooves.co.uk they do an excellent line in soundtrack stuff! It's on their homepage now!
You swine.
Yet another reason for the plastic to get trashed. I can't take any more. Sob.
Ohhhh, danger Will Robinson...
...could spend a lot of money there. Curse this damned nostalgia!
After an early childhood
Listening to ELO, John Denver and classical music (all of which I like anyway), I remember watching Top Of The Pops and hearing a now immortal opening line; "Buster, he sold the heat / with a rock-steady be-eat."
Every time I hear One Step Beyond now, I'm immediately put in mind of that performance.
I don't know the song you mention.....
......but the way you've written it - "Last tra-aaaaain, to San Fernando" immediately made me think of Billy Connollys "Last train to Glasgow Central".
I'm wondering if Connollys version is a parody of your version?
Yer
'tiz:
Beach Boys
...and I was 8 or 9. My dad had a Beach Boys greatest hits, and I loved it. I've grown up to not be a great fan, but when I hear God Only Knows or Sloop John B I'm straight back to my childhood.
My problem is that I actually like and listen to a lot of the music that was around during my childhood, so I almost have to force it to remind me of when I first heard it.
I guess the fact I don't really listen to the Beach Boys leaves it box fresh for me.
Last train for Billy Connolly
Compare and agree!
Three
for me;
From Ma Oeuf: Crystal Gayle's anodyne 'Don't it make my Brown Eyes Blue' and Stevie Wonder's god-awful 'I Just Called to say I Love You', which I have complained bitterly about in a previous thread only to be (rightly) ticked off by Mr. Hepworth for suggesting it had coloured my perception of the rest of his catalogue. Both bad songs in their own right then, but redolent of mid-70's Sunday afternoons when Dad was playing cricket and Mum ruled the Hi-Fidelity.
From Pa Oeuf: Feel the Benefit by 10CC. It's not cool, but I love it and the band and they remind me of Dad sitting in the living room and marking school books. I stole Dad's copy of Deceptive Bends and still have it now. He's not getting it back.