Always associate The La's "There She Goes" with "The Eggs", one of the most terrifying fair ground rides I have ever been on. I survived, but the song still sends a chill through my bones. Also, Oasis's "Do You Know What I Mean" reminds me of the time I stepped off the train at Scarborough Station, after the once daily grind of a commute to Leeds; I met up with someone I never thought I would see again. It was one of those life changing moments.Sadly and eventually, it all went pear shaped, withered and died like a steam train slowly losing steam. Not the Gallagher's finest moment by any means, but the song still holds a special place in my heart, I was listening to it on tape on, a Sony Walkman (still sound better than todays I-Pods) on the train before she appeared smiling at me as the train doors slid open.
Finally, on the subject of Fairgrounds, how come all DJS in all nightclubs in all of Britain, and all local radio DJS, sound like Fairground Operator DJs......"Scream if you wanna go faster etc........"

My examples would be realising that Sandy Denny's "Who knows where the time goes?" expressed everything I could ever want to say to my ex, while she was standing next to me and someone on stage played a cover of that song; and being at the Outsider Festival in Scotland last year and seeing Edie Reader join Justin Currie on stage and them both blag their way through Del Amitri's "Nothing Ever Happens" and realising that even when you've written a big hit you can nearly forget how to play it, certainly forget how great it is and then have someone else sing along and smack you, and the assembled throng, around the head with the sheer enormity of how great an assuming little song can be. (Fortunately I was with my current love on that occasion, so no maudlin required.)

The waltzers are one of the best places to hear music. The fair use to come once a year to our village and one of my clearest memories of music is listening to "Just can't get enough" by depeche mode; being flung round in a darkened, seemingly endless waltzer, the whole thing lit only by strobes (another first).

The sheer visceral nature of being flung round, jolted and bumped mixed with being out at night, the smells of junk food and diesel went to make Dave Gahan and the boys sound really compelling.

This was all obviously helped by it being the first time I was in close proximatey to girls, who were screaming and gripping our hands it was all a very heady mix.

i think it was elvis costello who said that he knew he'd arrived when he heard "olivers army" at a fair ground.

only the potency of cheap pop music can cut through the smell of many-times fried saturated fats, candy floss & cheap perfume. but when it does it sounds fantastic.

i was at a fair a couple of weeks ago - umbrella by rihanna sounded great as did cos i luv you by slade and, i was pleased to her the afore-mentioned olivers army

of my childhood and the music plays a big part in that. Telstar, The Wanderer and My little runaround (not sure if that's the title but it's in my head at the fairground I am thinking of as i write).

Music does still surprise when we least expect it - I remember sitting in a wine bar with some friends quite a few years ago and Accidents will happen came on. Not the familiar album version but the solo piano version - I hadn't heard it before - it blew me away.

The old half time song was a great way to hear music, but like at fairgrounds only the real big pop songs survived the half time tannoy.

I first heard "going underground" by the jam at blundell park with all my fellow 14 yr old mates and we went mad to it. A couple of years earlier i remember that song about lowry (matchstick/stalk men?)was played and the whole crowd, all 4,000 of us!, joined in singing along. They played it several times on the trot and it sounded utterly & bizarrely brilliant.

Nothing was more thrilling than whizzing up through the air to sound of Darts or The Specials, and whenever I hear Gimme Some by Brendon or Have I The Right by the Dead End Kids, I always think of Eastleigh fair and how exciting it was.

That said, I've not been on a waltzer since 1979 after being violently spun around by the David Essex-alike who collected the money. I remember throwing up to Money by the Flying Lizards and I've not felt the same about that song since.

We used to go down and watch them build these, to us, wonderous machines and know that night the whiff of danger would be in the air. It was a medium size town but the youth from the outlying villages would come in risking a kicking from the local lads to experience the excitement.
Standing round the edge of the waltzers was the main thing to do eyeing up the girls and listening to the music at deafening levels from huge speakers balancing on a couple of old chairs.
The vast majority of the guys that worked on the waltzers were Teds, both father and son, and we looked on enviously as they stood on the moving platform at an angle of about 30 degrees effortlessly chatting up the girls in the cars and terrifying them by spinning them endlessly.
But it was the music more than anything else. Yes we got the Beatles, Stones,, kinks etc but as they were Teds rock and roll was promenant. It was there we heard Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Little Richard etc. It was a revelation, worth the danger of going home knowing the local gangs would be waiting to give some unsuspecting sod a caning. If you were really lucky you pulled after spending all your pocket money/wage spinning round with a girl clinging to you. If you were really hard you kicked back the safety bar as it spun. Health and safety would have had kittens then!!

I still have a great fondness for early nineties tinny house and techno as it sounded brilliant as you overdosed on raw burgers, tennant's super and cheap whizz while enjoying all the 'fun' of the fair. There's few better feelings than careering giddly around the dodgems while 'Charley' by The Prodigy or 'Insanity' by Oceanic blasts out at deafening volume.

DH: The people in pic must neche (?) southerners as at our Fair it was a matter of pride not to have the safety bar down, this added to the risky air of the whole thing.

A couple of years ago a mate and I, with a few drinks inside us, decided to relive old times by going on one of the faster rides at Hampstead fair. As the drizzle fell, we lurched around violently to poor quality house music while some youths threw stones at us.
You just can't go back.

(Not Savalas): given the sheer propensity of music as a mood enhancer for advertising or for drama, from time to time I am blown away by songs unheard until that moment. Yes, much dreck and dross is used, often entirely innapropriately or entirely by rote/cliche, but sometimes I am drawn to google the name of the programme/film/advertised product and "music" to try and find out what it was. Infuriatingly often I remain none the wiser.

I was walking around town and passed a shoe shop (stay with me) and I heard a milisecond of a song or however long it takes to walk past a doorway.
Don't know what it was but I stopped in my tracks and had to go inside and browse the shoe racks until the song had finished.
I left the shoe shop buzzing. I had to find out who the band were.
And I did and there began a love affair with (and this is where the anticlimax is) The Blow Monkeys! The song was "Digging Your Scene" which I still love to this day.