Entertainment For Lively Minds
When We Were Very Young
My taste in music was shaped in part by the activities of my parents.
Father insisted that we listen to The Light Programme on 1500m long wave because it saved the batteries on our Pifco portable radio. Many Sunday evenings were (forcibly) spent listening to a truly distorted edition of Sing Something Simple on account of a PP9 battery that was well past its sell by date.
Mother preferred the music of her homeland. Swedish folk music dominated the family Dansette. This music used to drive me out of my head.
Mark E. Smith? Captain Beefheart? Who needed them? I had the fuzz-toned Cliff Adams Singers and Jokkmokks Jokke.
Do any other readers have horror stories about their musical upbringing that they wish to share?
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You have my utmost sympathy...
having just watched the clip. I hope you don't have nightmares.
There wasn't really a lot of music...
...in my house when I was a kid, but I do remember my dad playing Vertigo-era Quo and Bonnett-era Rainbow, to both of which I subsequently developed a healthy aversion.
Thing is, though... I'm growing to quite like that stuff now I'm older: -
Luckily...
...my dad loved The Kinks, Stones, Small Faces, Stax and Motown. And my mum loved Elvis, Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
However...she also loved Johnny Mathis. Christmas morning, every year for what felt like forever, When A Child Is Born, on repeat play while she prepared the Christmas dinner...
It sounds like sprouts.
I fear I've done that to my kids
... with the Phil Spector Christmas record. Oh well, too late to stop now...
Johnny Mathis
My Mum as well! Perhaps there's a support group somewhere.
Oh yes, Indeed.
I had plenty of common ground with my dad despite his not letting me listen to the Stones but my mum was Scottish and force fed us The White Heather Club. Now the very sight of tartan brings me out in a rash...
Ditto...
White Heather Club/Jimmy Logan/Alisdair Gillies etc etc bloody etc.
Then me wee aunty brought home a single..."Tower Of Strength" by one of the Frankies (Vaughan I think it was). No idea why she bought it, as we had no record player. Intrigued I took it my neighbours, who had some sorta medieval rig, and I was blown away.
This made me realise that there was more to songs than hills/glens/lochs/wifies called Maggie and byres owned by someone called Geordie. The Billy Cotton Show then became essential listening/viewing. Then Luxembourg, then The Beatles..
Did get to know Andy Stewart shortly before he died...was a nice man!
Your mother should know
My parents have always had a very respectable liking for classical music. However, there were/are a few rogue records in their collection.
My Mum would run for the hills if Dad threatened to dig out his album of cowboy songs, "At Western Campfires, with the Sons of the Purple Sage".
And every Christmas the Spinners' Christmas album, "Sing Out, Shout With Joy" would get a hearing.
I don't think these records particularly shaped my musical taste, but last week I converted the Spinners' record to mp3 and sang along heartily to "Mrs Hooligan's Christmas Cake".
Here are the Spinners, from Liverpool rather than Detroit, doing their bit for the national blood supply:
First live gig I went to...
...Spinners at Colston Hall - I must have been about 6. My parents played a lot of Spinners, Cliff Richard, though dad would occassionaly break out Planxty and Horslips. Oh, and the electrical Stylings of Tomita, too.
My sister and I would have the top 40 recorded for us each week, and a mono cassette player would be placed equidistantly between our bedroom doors.
Spinners
Mine too. With my parents. Don't remember anything about it.
Share my memories...
Four guys. Yellow Smocks...used revolutionary "all blue lights" for the number "Deep Blue Sea" (at least that was the chorus). A mentally challenged individual had to be escorted from the hall as he was yelling too much. Probably did Wimoweh.
Sunday evenings in the car
...driving back from relatives somewhere, with 'Sing Something Simple' on the radio and the thought of school in the morning. Memories don't get any tougher than this!!!
Abba's Greatest Hits
The one where they're sat on a park bench on the cover.
I was about 7 or 8 when my mum bought this album for me. In reality she bought it for herself but I felt obliged to smile and look happy when she played it whereas all I really wanted was something by The Skids or The Police.
I also remember that there was a regular tussle between my dad's inclinations for a bit of Rolling Stones or Focus and my mum's urge for Bread or The Carpenters. The one we all agreed upon was David Gate's album First which to this day is still for me the definitive MOR record.
My earliest...
...musical memory
No visuals just remember this song .. I must have been 2 years old as my mother bought the single in 1971...everytime I hear it is a strange feeling...till Carey ruined it with her warbling.