Popular Musicology Part 1

The Pop World

My father listened a strict diet of The Big O as in Roy Orbison the 1960s crooner whom he had met and knew personally from dining with him in an Indian Restaurant in Blandford Street in the late 1960s. We listened to and sang along with his songs all the way around the Western half of Europe with a camper van and tent. This was who my father was to me.

And his favourite song from his final Album Mystery Girl was Windsurfer.

He also liked Simon and Garfunkel we knew practically every hit off by heart.

Myself I liked to listened to Montego Bay the one hit wonder by Amazulu and Britain’s answer to the Jackson Five, 5 Star.

The end of the 80s and start of the 90s

This is the music I was into then. Belinda Carlisle and the first Acid House hit Rozilla’s Everybody’s Free from 1991. I always think of Heaven is a Place on Earth as such a beautiful peace offering to Russia in 1987 our economy was on fire and they were struggling and we just wanted to do it with them!

Everybody’s free was considered a second summer of love number. I remember my classmate’s brother going to a gig in Cambridge that was entitled The Future of Electronic Music, he was a very naturally talented Jazzer and Classical Musician and he was quite miffed when it turned out to be a rave but that’s normal now!

This was a lovely number coming out of Dresden Schlachthof night club at the same time. They just wanted to rip our clothes off and shag us the Ossis then. I remember meeting my first Ossi at the Freizeit und Erholungszentrum in East Berlin in 1992 with my German exchange partner. We were about 14 and playing an early version of Doom on a fascinating East German intranet against one another and then she wanted to play with me innocently all of a sudden and wouldn’t leave me alone. Such a beautiful clever little girl and I was her Wessi. Henning my friend had to prize her away from me she was so persistent. I love that trait in a women now the Ossiherz and passion. So beautiful!

I loved this for sheer originality; this lovely bit of early London Garage by SL2 On a Ragga Tip 1991. I preferred that to the Prodigy. Indeed it was so popular this number it was remixed in 1997 on TOTP also.

My favourite Ballard from 91 was Beverly Craven’s Promise Me

My favourite pop / rock number from that era was a one hit wonder by Let Loose Crazy for you. That was when I was first falling in love and my father died.

On the school bus the Nirvana fans always screamed at me for putting on my cousins very successful progressive band Spiritualised they had a couple of top 40 hits in the early nineties including this Angel Sigh. How many times did I hear Smells Like Teen Spirit on the way home to Colchester from Ipswich school before my Kickabout on Abbey Field.

I always liked Shine a Light from their first great album Laser Guided Melodies. Jonny Mattock got quite famous in the early 90s touring all over the world and playing reading and Glastonbury main stages. He’s also done session work for Massive Attack and The Pet Shop Boys. He was their first drummer from Northampton they were formed in Rugby in the East Midlands. They were very influential on people like Coldplay and Radiohead in my opinion.

Hard Rock, Metalling and Gaming in 92

I had a friend in 92 called RMT who was an aspiring coder and musician and we did a lot together as best friends. He lived on the sT John’s estate in Colchester UK and ended up working in Silicon Valley and playing violin a very clever man. He and I used to hang out adn play on the BBC micro playing an early space trading game called Elite and listening to a diet of Metallica, Skid Row, and Bon Jovi. This song was my favourite when I was 12 or 13. Alex and I used to do the school speech day coding exhibitions and get the morning off to code. I made some choose your own text adventure games in BASIC and he could programme in Machine Code and showed me bit.

And Justice for All…Eye of the Beholder

Oh and Up the Irons as well!

My favourite Irons number is Hallowed by Thy Name closely followed by The Trooper and Prowler which is just so funny.

The whole of their fist album is pure but Prowler is just so funny. Paul D’annio was expelled from my school in about 1980. I think the line I’ve Just Got to Find My Way just sounds like something my former Headmaster we have in common John Blatchly (RIP) would put in his school report. He Put Food for Thought in one of mine. It just sounds so like him trying to get him back on the rails and make him into a Cambridge boy, and he doesn’t care.

The Sixth Form Balls

Whigfield Saturday Night was the perfect number for a first kiss sadly I never got one at that stage, boy did I make up for it later.

Another two from the first term of the sixth form at school that meant one thing for us lads, women for the first time. We were a single sex school but they gave us 10 sixth form girls for us to ‘practise on’ as my Godfather the school priest said before ‘we really got going at university’.

This is what they did at our school chaplain’s comment! Wonderfully sweet bit of R+B.

My first CD player and Album

My first CD player I bought with the money granny left me a Marrantz CD 63 and Technics A600 Mk Amp I preferred that to the ARCAM 8 they recommended. I’ve still got it. Great reliability you can even use it as a hardware EQ. I got little MS5 Mordaunt Short Speakers (passive) to go with them.

My First Albums

My first CD album I purchased in 1994 was The Cranberries No Need to Argue with one of the most famous ever songs Zombie. It was about peace in Northern Ireland.

Then it was Ace of Base Happy Nation

Several great numbers on here.

Incidentally I’ve just read the subtitles and noticed the real lyrics for the first time I thought it opened thus:

I’ve got a new life you’d hardly recognise me I’m so fat;

how could a person like me jump on you!

I’ve just seen it’s not that it’s something more palatable. This has such a hard bass for todays taste but I like the beef!

Then there is the traditional frog chorus Voulez-Vous Danser!

This is cute too! See you in Musicology part II.