Probably everyone is familiar with the format of Desert Island Discs even if they have never listened to it. The subject gets to choose 8 recordings and uses them to talk about their life.
So I thought it would be an interesting idea for this blog, touching as it does on music I enjoy, and what it means to me, and trying to get a sense of my own biography in there somewhere. Sounds rather ambitious, but lets see how it goes!
1. My first record is 'The Gas man Cometh' by Flanders and Swann
Back in the 1960s when I was a child the options for listening to music at home were the radio or record player. We didn't listen to much music on the radio, so it was mainly just records really! My parents' record collection was not large or particularly diverse, mostly gospel songs and classical music, but they had a few records by this wonderful duo. This song is funny, tells a story, and is something that reminds me of cosy childhood days huddled around the record player.
2. To represent my teenage years, while still at school its got to be Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks.
Everyone seems to love or hate this song - yes its rather sentimental, but I loved it at 14, and yes I still love it, because it reminds me of what it was like to be 14! It was the first single I ever bought, and I bought it after only hearing it two or three times! It just happened to be No 1 at the time when I first started watching 'Top of the Pops' so for that reason alone it seemed special to me. Before then (in the days long before video recorders), I was never able to watch TOTP unless I was at a friends house, as my father had his quartet practise in our lounge each week (and there was only one TV in the house) on the night it was on ... can't quite remember if it was Dad's schedule or TOTP schedule that changed! Yes I was naïve, sentimental, idealistic back then (- even now as a 60 year old I still have more than a usual dose of all those qualities!) and this song just got to me. Its only now, writing about it after all these years, and watching that YouTube video, that the thought first occurred to me that there might possibly have been a suicide theme in there - that would have been scandalous for me to consider that at the time!
3. So I went off to Leeds to be a student and get some independence. Gradually I began to find my own path in life rather than blithely following my family's ways. During my third year in Leeds I found myself with a sort of social life for the first time (apart from that through church activities). Which even included the odd party! At one of these parties I first became aware of this song (Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) ... I was going to say first 'heard' it, but I must surely have heard it before as this was about 1980 and the song had been around since 1973! But it was possibly the first time I had heard it played on a decent stereo. Which made a massive difference. Anyway, from that moment to the present day I have been a big fan of Elton John. Even saw him live a couple years ago. There are not many (if any) other popular artists for whom I would be sufficiently interested in hearing them, that I would be prepared to pay the crazy prices!
4. I got my degree, came back to Suffolk, got married, basically became an adult! In those pre children days we used to go to the cinema from time to time. And one one of those occasions we went to see 'The Mission'. To say I was blown away was an understatement ... and not by the story or the acting, good as it was (especially Jeremy Irons!) But that music!! The score, by Ennio Morricone seemed to resonate with me deep within - I think it was the first time in my life that I became conscious of how deeply and completely music could affect me. The track called 'River' is amazing, so exuberant, Gabriel's Oboe is so haunting, the main theme ('On earth as it is in heaven') is so beautiful, (and combines the two tunes already mentioned) and the other tracks are awesome too....but my all time favourite was one actually performed as a sung item by the cast members in the film - in the context of worship - this is Ava Maria Guarani:
I find it naively beautiful, gutsy and raw, and very very impressive musically
5. From here onwards its harder to treat the songs chronologically as far as my life is concerned, as they are not so closely associated with one particular time in my life, or if they are, I cannot exactly remember which came first!! The next one I honestly cannot recall when I started to like it or identify with it, but I know that throughout my adult life, if I ever find myself somewhere where dancing is appropriate or expected, this is one of the few songs guaranteed to get me up on the dance floor. I enjoy a lot of Phil Collins's songs, but for sheer danceability this one is up there at the top for me!
6. I have always enjoyed musicals. In the early 90s we (as a family) started to listen to a lot of soundtracks from musicals (and subsequently started to go and see them on stage also), particularly the musicals of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg. There are only three (that I am aware of) ... of these I have seen one production of Martin Guerre, two of Miss Saigon, and too many to count of Les Miserables. That last one became rather iconic for me, a bit of an obsession to be totally honest. Anything Les Mis related I wanted to get my hands on. When I was interviewed for my job with Suffolk Libraries, back in 2004, there was a group exercise where candidates had to speak about something they were passionate about - so I spoke about Les Mis...., and got the job!! Choosing one song for this page was hard, but I have gone for one of the less well known ones - something really sad (why do I like sad songs so much?)
7. Continuing with the musicals theme, this is a song from a musical that I encountered from a completely different angle (although I did eventually, many years later, get to see a local production of the show it comes from: 'Sweet Charity') This is another one that appeals to me mainly because of all the harmonies and countermelodies going on within it. Can't recall exactly when and where I first heard it, but it would have been the bowdlerised version performed by an amateur choir somewhere. I have been involved in choirs for most of my life ... initially at school, from time to time in various churches, then from 1990s onwards in various community choral groups. I was in a ladies choir called the Coop Singers and we were taking part in the Suffolk Music Festival one year in the nineties, when another group (a mixed choir of young people) performed this song. One of our ladies said to our conductor 'Can we sing this one?' and the reply was that she was unaware of a SSA version for ladies voices. Well I took this as a challenge ... I had already started to dabble with music software on my new computer (in fact that was the main reason I had bought my first computer, in 1996, to do musical projects!) so I decided to try to arrange the song for our choir. Didn't have the internet at home in those days to source the music (as I would do nowadays), so I bought a compilation book of songs from musicals with this in it (melody and piano only) and wrote my first full blown choral arrangement .... which we actually performed subsequently at the Suffolk Music Festival ourselves thus bringing it back full circle to where the idea originated! Two points of interest about my arrangement - I was totally relying on my memory for how the harmonies and counterpoint usually worked, not having access to a recording when I wrote it, so I managed to miss some of the obvious harmonies, which caused me to kick myself later when I saw/heard other versions. And the lyrics - as I mentioned earlier, there is a bowdlerised version of the words which is usually sung by choirs (it's often performed by children) .... but not having access to other versions when I wrote mine, I was unaware of this, and used the original musical words (including 'Rhythm in your bedroom'!) So although I know this song mainly as a choral piece, I can't find a choral video of it with the words I am most familiar with, so here's the version from the original 'Sweet Charity'
8. The final one I have saved to the end not because it is particularly recent (although it became more meaningful for me last year through my involvement with this parody version .... look out for my name in the credits!!) but because it kind of sums up this little exercise. I have always like Abba ever since they won Eurovision in the 70s, and my present partner is a huge fan, so we listen to lots of Abba nowadays. 'Thank you for the music' is a very heartfelt sentiment for me ... I honestly cannot imagine what my life would be like, or indeed what I would be like, without music! So I leave you with Abba to play us out...
