...well, about 25 years ago really.
I must have been about 10, certainly not a teenager yet. My Dad was making a mix-tape for the car, lifting songs from a set of 'Best of the 60's' cassettes he'd borrowed off someone. It was the usual fodder, upbeat tunes about love, holding hands, getting married and settling down. Lots of 'do-wah-diddies' and 'shang-a-langing'. No song longer than three minutes, and absolutely no mention of sex. Don't get me wrong, that's not a criticism, thanks to the tapes my Dad played in the car on long journies I've become quite an expert on the music of the 60's. If you ask me now to name my favourite bands, after Pink Floyd, you'll find The Animals, The Hollies, The Doors and The Kinks nestled in my top ten.
..but this mix-tape threw up a surprise. After a Herman's Hermits track, a song came on I hadn't heard before. The opening few bars were a solitary electric guitar sound, followed by a thumping drum beat. Then the lyrics came along, no hint of romance, love, kissing on the back row etc. "I see a red door and I want it painted black. No colours anymore I want them to turn black."
I had to ask my Dad what it was. "The Rolling Stones" he replied. It was a new side to my Dad I hadn't seen before. Except for a few of the lighter pop ditties of the era, his musical taste was usually Klaus Wunderlich on his Hammond Keyboard playing the hits of Abba, or Eddie Calvert blowing his trumpet. On special occasions we got brass bands, or The Best of Fairground Organs. This Rolling Stones track was an inspiration. I hadn't heard anything like it before. If you'd asked me back then to name another Stones hit, I might have known 'Satisfaction', maybe even 'Jumping Jack Flash' (if the film of the same name was already out by then) but not this. I seem to remember having a conversation with him, and I assumed he would have prefered The Beatles over The Stones (I'd obviously heard about the rivalry the press put between the two groups). But it seems I'd underestimated him.
That could well have been the trigger for me to investigate other bands from around that time. Something certainly caused me to get into the alternative side of the decade. Early Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Doors etc. Whatever it was, whenever I hear 'Paint it Black' it reminds me of the first time I heard it, travelling in the family car, on a mix-tape made by my Dad.
The second memory the song triggers is far more recent.
You'll find a blog entry on August 16th relating m trip to Nrowich to meet my friend Ant. A great couple of days in Norwich and Great Yarmouth. There is one little tale I didn't tell you about though, so here it is.
After our round of mini golf we ventured into a few arcades. I played the '2p waterfall' type machines, picking up a few keyrings as prizes, and Ant played on a couple of arcade games. One of these was a big version of Guitar Hero
For those of you over 40, or who have lived in a cave for the past decade, Guitar Hero is a series of games for home consoles. You usually play it with a plastic imitation guitar in your hand which
has four buttons on the neck. You follow the patterns on the screen and the more accurate you are, the better the song sounds and the higher your score. They are the next generation of games after the popular 'dance-mat' ones where you had to follow a rhythm on screen with your feet. Many big bands have lent their back catalogue of songs to versions of these games, making them very popular indeed...in one of the Great Yarmouth arcades there was a giant version of this. Ant popped in his pound coin, selected to play as 'Slash' from Guns 'n' Roses (that's the name of a person Mum) and then scrolled down the list of available songs. You can already guess which one he chose.
He did very well too, the look of concentration on his face was priceless. There is an extra part to this story though...
..as his song was coming to an end, another person had stood behind him. He was flanked by two girls, and he was stretching and flexing his fingers. You could instantly tell he was waiting for a turn, and thought himself to be the king of Guitar Hero. He watched Ant finish 'Paint it Black' and took a pace forward, ready to take over. What he didn't know was one pound gets you two turns, and Ant simply chose another song from the onscreen list and started again (completely unaware of the person behind him.)
The anger in the man's face was priceless. The expression 'if looks could kill' has never been more appropriate. I honestly thought Ant was about to get a plastic guitar wrapped around his head. My friend had done nothing wrong, but it was clear that this machine 'belonged' to the stranger and he took it as a personal insult that anyone else dared to use it. (I couldn't help laughing though! :D )
..two completely different memories, but both triggered by hearing the opening bars of one song.
1 comment:
I knew something was up when I saw the two girls crowd round me :P!
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