So anyway, yesterday's Live8 did have one probably unintended reaction on my part...
Made me incredibly nostalgic.
Eight years old and on the schoolbus, Freddie Mercury's death had absolutely no relevance for me at all. I remember one of my friends, a Dutch/African girl called Fleur, being intensely cut up about it but I freely admit I had little to no interest. I mean this was a girl who also loved New Kids on the Block, so my opinion of her musical taste was a little low and I hadn't really hard any of it to make up my own mind. My Dad loved classic rock n roll from the late 50's through mid 60's and my mum loved the Beatles. They both disliked the other's musical preferance. They did however agree on classical music and that was pretty much all that got played around the house when I was younger. Mum'd stick on the Beatles every now and then because I liked them but it was all on vynil and we weren't allowed to touch the records or the record player. Non-classical music around our house was somewhat of a novelty in all truth; it came from the TV from time to time but by the point when I was old enough to really notice it beyond background noise, I had a deeply low opinion of much of it. I remember Yazz with The Only Way Is Up and I remember Take That and East 17, and I have hideous memories of Salt n Peppa, Kylie Minogue and especially Jason Donavon, and because I wasn't born until '83 by the time I was really interested in anything it was the 90s and the rise of the boyband.
Never did like boy-bands. Still don't.
My first personally-formed opinion on music came when I was 13. I'd changed schools and was on a class trip to Sheffield to see 'Annie' at the Crucible. My friend Jo was cool. She had a leather jacket and an attitude problem and loved Red Dwarf a LOT. She had a walkman, and her friend Anna had Queen' Greatest Hits 1 on tape. The entire way there and the entire way back, we listened to Bohemian Rhapsody on loop, sharing the headphones and headbanging like Wayne and Garth. The rest of the class thought we were completely nuts cause they were taking polls on who was cuter, Gary Barlow or that blond one from E-17 and answering "They're both gross" was never gonna' be a good reply.
By the next day I could not move my neck, and I finally knew what whiplash felt like.
Finally realising that there was more to music than sonatas, the Beatles, and Saturday Night at the Duck Pond, Queen became my first real musical love.
Greatest Hits 1 was the first CD I ever bought, and hits II was the second. It formed the basis of pretty much everything else that I listened to and considered good from then onwards.
OK, so my taste expanded to fill a much bigger space, but you never forget the door that got you in there in the first place.
Would have loved to see them live, I really would have, but by the time I joined the party, they'd already packed up and gone home.
I was still just a baby when LiveAid happened. I've only ever seen it on TV repeats, but their performance that day still has a resonance that, I personally, missed from yesterday's concert. Not to disparage anything or anyone that took part, but when you have so many people who were involved the first time around still playing it 20 years later, when I said it needed a Freddie, I really still wish it could have had one.
(...though I think a dancing cadaver before 9pm might have been a little much for the TV censors...)
A little indirectly in truth, but Live8 got me reminiscing and I've been listening to Hits II all afternoon. CDs in general I'll often listen to avidly for a while and then literally never listen to again, but somehow I
always wind
up coming
back to the
beginning...
*sighs*
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