Since I parted company with music in
school when I got to third year I did not appreciate how the subject had changed
until I helped my music teaching wife type out some worksheets. All styles of
music were covered. Blues, rock and roll, jazz, reggae, folk and classical were
discussed and their roots examined. Kathleen explained that appreciation
started by looking at the pupil's own preferred type of music.
I was reminded of the way my English
teachers helped to guide me from pulp science fiction to Brave New World and
Nineteen Eighty-Four. Doubtless many of today's music teachers could have done
the same for music. They would have to have begun with the chart music of the
early seventies: Slade, T. Rex, Sweet, Status Quo and Roxy Music. These bands
played the sort of fast, catchy numbers that I graduated to after eleven years
of liking Junior Choice stalwarts such as My Brother (Terry Scott) and My
Boomerang Won't Come Back (Charlie Drake). A friend beautifully described his
move from children's favourites to pop music as "beginning to realise that
Orinocco Womble was not the world's greatest living guitarist."
The first record I remember getting
excited about was Alice Cooper's School's Out. This had cruelly been released
to coincide with the beginning of the English school holidays, and hence the
end of the Scottish ones. It played me in to secondary school and marked the
beginning of adolescence. No more Lego, Action Men or Corgi Batmobiles (with
rocket launchers and chain slashers). They were for primary kids. For
Christmas, I wanted my own cassette recorder to make bootleg tapes of the
heroes of glam rock.
A cassette recorder cost slightly more
than my parents would normally have spent on a present for me. My mother tells
me I made several noble speeches expressing understanding that they might not
be able to get me one. In the end I think they would have taken out a second
mortgage rather than suffer my attempts to bravely suppress aching
disappointment.
My brother and I went to bed early
on Christmas morning. We lay in our parallel twin beds speculating on what we
were about to receive. Between us was my father’s alarm clock. Had its function
been to wake us up it would have been totally superfluous. Rather, it was to
ensure that we remained in bed until at least seven o’ clock. My Dad had taken
us to the Watchnight service at church. I relished the experience of doing an adult “stay up
late” thing. I enjoyed it all the more for not having to wear the
starchily-uncomfortable pink paisley pattern shirt with matching broad ribbed
tie that was apparently the minimum standard of dress that God would allow in
His house during non-festive visiting hours. Now the glad rags were draped over
a chair, to be worn instead in the morning. The clock advanced grudgingly as I
worked out the records I would bootleg off the Christmas edition of Top of The
Pops if I got what I wanted. Elton John’s Crocodile Rock would be one. The
lyrics seemed contain the lines “..ah whannabann on Fridee
niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh / When Sooseh wohah dressooo
tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh......” but I remembered dancing to it with a pretty
classmate at the first year party.
I did get what I wanted. The
cassette recorder was chocolate brown and grey, badged with the name of a now
long-forgotten importer. It had three white keys, one each for fast forward,
rewind and play, and a red record button. A cassette had been inserted in it
ready to roll. With some trepidation that it might self destruct like Jim’s in
Mission Impossible, I switched it on. A
voice instantly recognisable as my father’s, wishing me a happy Christmas, came
from the speaker. My Mum, a Goon Show fan, chipped in with a Bluebottle
impersonation. Later over the holiday period I would record both the Last Goon
Show of All and my Uncle George (undoubtedly the most musically talented member
of the family, as evidenced by his sending up of sectarian songs by playing
them on the bicycle pump) accompanying the Ying Tong Song on his false teeth
but these Milliganesque delights were sideshows to Radio Big G.
The eponymous radio station consisted of top
twenty hits recorded through a microphone. Of somewhat low fidelity, these
songs were enhanced by my DJ-style introductions. Unfortunately, my voice had
the “sch” impediment of the pre-pubescent, so I came over as a sort of falsetto
Sean Connery with more slevvers. “That wasch Ballroom Blitsch by the Schweet,
who have knocked Little Jimmy Oschmond off the top schpot.” To my shame, I not
only binned these tapes many years ago, but pulled apart the casings first,
lest some garbage-raker was tempted to find out what was on them. Save us from
po-faced self-consciousness.
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