#12 Reminiscence
In this week's blog, a lazy scrapbook of Stuff What Reminds Me Of Other Stuff What Happened...
Snap! - 'The Power'
When I was on holiday at Pontins (no less) aged about 5, there was a games room on the resort. To a five-year-old boy, this games room was a pretty scary place: the flashing lights and sound effects from all the slot machines, arcade games and air hockey tables were pretty unnerving! Plus, all the machines were about twice my size. I remember thinking that the games room was the equivalent of the ball-pool for grown-ups. But the other thing that will always stay with me is the almost constant repetition of Snap! that was piped into the place. Those crazy 1990s...
Red Hot Chili Peppers - 'By The Way'
This song is responsible for my unadulterated hatred towards the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's not directly their fault - OK, really it's nothing to do with them. This song became the anthem for my GCSE Drama group whilst we were putting in ridiculously long hours after school to rehearse. At every break, people would break into "Standing in line to see the show tonight..." and from then on, this song has always brought back memories of what was possibly the worst academic decision of my life. Sadly, RHCP songs are all pretty good and pretty addictive. They get in your head and stay there. Hence my bitter-sweet relationship with their music.
Annie Lennox - 'No More "I Love You"s'
For the simple reason that this song was playing in the hotel when we arrived, this song will always remind me (and everyone else who was there!) of Alton Towers. We spent a weekend there after our GCSEs. Because GCSE exams finish roughly 4 years before everyone else breaks up for the Summer holidays (and because hotel guests get an extra half-hour in the park before it opens) we pretty much had the place to ourselves! All together now: "Shoobie-doobie-doop-doop-doop... Ahh-ahh"
Badly Drawn Boy - 'Once Around The Block'
I always loved this song, but since seeing the video - filmed in and around Dartford - it'll always now remind me of home. Oh, how I look forward to seeing the video sometime in the future and telling people nearby "I know that road" in a desperate attempt to look remote knowledgeable/cool. On second thoughts...
Damien Rice - 'Accidental Babies'
This is another absolute stunner of a song, unreleased and very rarely heard live. It'll forever remind me of my day out in Paris, the most fantastic holiday of my life. There must be a great power set against this song ever reaching mass popularity across the globe, probably because it stands to annihilate every soppy, half-baked, two-bit, wet-flannel dirge of a love story that makes it on to television or the silver screen where "love" is portrayed as some shallow, easy, uncomplicated 'event' that can be sealed with the boy turning up on the girl's rain-soaked doorstep with a crappy poem or a tasteless, petrol-station coffee (but an incredibly clichéd joke about it); without saying another word she takes him back into her arms and her life (see, it's all a metaphor) despite everything that's happened for the last 90 minutes/12 weeks/4 years. And then what would they fill the multiplexes with?
Deep & meaningful lyric of the week:
"Boy bands, and another one, and another one, and another one"
(Busted)
