Another Girl, Another Planet - Part 1

[rhythmaning]

One of the colleagues who got me interested in starting a blog has a post on his own blog (http://weblog.brunton.org.uk/), The Soundtrack to Your Life. This resonated with me. Another colleague managed to get me talking about former romances last week, and I think these things are inextricably linked: music can conjure up such rich emotions, located in a specific time and place. (What is also interesting are the people and places which don't have any soundtrack associated with them - these are the longer relationships, the longer stays - maybe because there are so many different tunes that no one bit of music fits.)

But I was surprised: instead of a list of former girlfriends associated with songs from my youth, most songs evoke memories of places or events, not the faces I expected.

I believe it is often the words in pop songs that determine the mood: the words tell you what to think and how to feel. Improvised music (read "jazz") and non-vocal classical evoke feelings through the notes, not the words; they are freer, and not so easily tied to people or place. (I don't really like voval jazz: there are too many poor jazz singers; and even someone like Ella can remove the the feeling from the words - just listen to her version of "Love for Sale", a happy-go-lucky snappy song; and then listen to the words. One exception to this must be Billie - a voice to draw tears.)

The list is long, too, so I will split it over three posts.

So here are some of the sounds which make up the soundtrack to my life.

• Another Girl, Another Planet (the Only Ones): the perfect post-punk power pop song (and a contender, with so many others, for the best song ever recorded...), this one evokes a specific night, a late night gig a ULU in perhaps September 1978 - the Only Ones in concert; and a wonderful gig it was. I'll get killed but I don't care about it. (The next day, I went down with pleurisy and was ill for several weeks.)

 

• Cecilia (Simon & Garfunkel) and Walking on the Moon (the Police): 1978 and 19'79: in the afternoon with Cecilia, up in her bedroom; and walking back from her place from Muswell Hill to Hampstead, past Highgate Woods in the early summer mornings. 'Nuff said.

 

• Armed Forces (Elvis Costello and the Attractions): sitting around in a schoolmate's house, playing this, wondering what to do in 1978.

 

• America (Simon & Garfunkel): I don't have any S&G, and frankly don't like that kind of music much - but it can be evocative: watching the cars on the New Jersey turnpike, the beautiful Manhattan skyline across the river, trying to hitch-hike coast-to-coast across the States in July and August 1980 with Gerry.

 

• Similarly, I'm So Bored of the USA (the Clash) evokes a couple of days spent waiting for rides in Ohio; for one whole day, the only lift we got was in a police car, and that was five miles in the wrong direction. And the Clash - well, I have a lot of the Clash...

 

• And of course Route 66 (pick your own version - I was into the Count Bishops at the time), which was basically the route we took across the south west: Alburqurque; Flagstff, Arizona; over to LA, arriving to co-incide with the increasing body count of the Hollywood Strangler and an increase in paranoia. (I didn't like LA.)

(Oh my.  I was writing this yesterday, using an LJ client; and despite my clicking save every few minutes, the last version I can find has half of what I wrote missing.  Which means I’ll have to write it again.  But it will be different – could be better, could be worse.  Jeez!)

Comments

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

School: anything from Godspell, anything from RHPS, anything from Dirty Dancing, Mozart's concerto for flute and harp, anything from Raise Your Fist And Yell by Alice Cooper, Love Changes Everything (Michael Ball), anything from whatever the Tracy Chapman album was called (probably Tracy Chapman).

College: I Don't Want To Lose You (Tina Turner), Temptation (Heaven 17?), Like A Prayer or Justify My Love (Madonna), Saltwater (Julian Lennon), the 1812 overture, anything from the Rolling Stones Flashpoint tour

First job / first A: Dancing Queen, which followed me everywhere between July 1992 and August 1993, then went away again. Also I'm On Fire (Springsteen), sexiest song EVER.

M.Sc.: Saturday Night (Whigfield), theme tune from Inspector Morse

Since then, it's mainly people:

D: Liebestod from Tristan
K: Nessun Dorma, or Think Twice (Celine Dion)
A second time around: Feel (Robbie Williams)
R: Anything by Michael Nyman, Janacek's sinfonietta and Glagolitic Mass, Istanbul not Constantinople (TMBG)
J: Any of the soundtrack from season 1 of Ally McBeal
C: Thine is the Glory (Handel) or anything by S.S. Wesley.
P: Mahler 5
K: Ave verum corpus (Mozart)
J: Rachmaninov's second piano concerto

The intersection of K's musical taste and mine is a null set, so we don't have any 'our songs'.

These aren't the only songs I listened to, but they're the ones that instantly catapult me back to that time.

Never said I was a class act.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

If you don't share at least some musical tastes, don't you and K argue the whole time about what to listen too?

Perhaps this explains the obsession with iPods!

It was agreat relief when J liked jazz - though not all our music is shared. (I have better taste than her. And vice versa...)

Not sure that I agree about I'm On Fire being the sexiest song ever. I'll have to think about that... (Though Bruce's line from a track on The River - I can't remember the song's name - struck one college kid as being particularly cool: Got a wife and kids in Baltimore Jack, I went out for a walk and I never went back...

Clearly, I am a changed character now.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

This really interested me, since I tend to associate songs with people, not places or times. We do have a lot of overlap, though, not least Lloyd Cole and the Only Ones.

I was lucky enough to have a friend who introduced me to a lot of interesting music (American Phil) as well as another who introduced me to a lot of writers.

Phil got me into Warren Zevon, for which I've never properly thanked him, and is a cousin to Steve Earle, another favourite of mine. I've started shopping for the odd (and in some cases very odd) songs he'd drop onto compilations - just picked up two of them, Burn and Rob by Paleface and Elvis is Everywhere by Mojo Nixon, this week.

Lloyd definitely resonates with University, partly because he was hanging about there at the time, as do Simple Minds (the Sparkle in the Rain tour at the Barrowlands) and Eddie Reader (another great live act, with Fairground Attraction at the Pavillion, and her first ever solo gig at The Tron). The Barras is my favourite venue, and favourite concerts almost too many to mention: Steve Earle, Deacon Blue, Del Amitri, Crowded House, elvis Costello... there's just something about the atmosphere that can boost a band into the stratosphere, and take the crowd with them - hell, even Coldplay came across as endearing...

The Silencers "Blues for Buddah", and The Blue Nile's "Hats" cover off Ardnamurchan and Glasgow's West End for me, Crowded house my road trip across the States, funnily enough, and that's about it for place associations..

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I love the idea of the Silencers and Ardnamurchan!

I only discovered barrowlands in the 90s, when I saw Costello there (a couple of times) and PJ Harvey. It is a great venue.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

There's a little hill just where the road splits between Ardnamurchan Point and the tiny beach at Portuiak, where you can sit and watch the sun go down over Eigg, Muck, Rhum and Skye while listening to The Silencers... ah, doesn't get better.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I have just bought the Blue Nile's "Peace at Last"; several years ago someone at work was raving about one of their albums, but I just didn't get it - I taped over the recording they made for me.

I only bought this because Amazon thought I might like it, and I value my colleague's musical taste sufficiently to give it a try again! (It was cheap on Amazon...)

I was very impressed this time - maybe my mood when I played it at the weekend was just right.

Or maybe I needed a few more years to mature!

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

"Peace at Last" , and their latest album are both very good in spots, but it's their first two, and "Hats" in particular that get me. Very spooky, spacious music.