Juvenilia or Junk? Random Stuff from Those Boxes at the Back of the Wardrobe

‘Cleaning out my closet’ as Eminem once mellifluously rapped. I bet he didn’t have to contend with 24-year-old mixtapes, Minidisc players, photos of self and others looking obscenely young, and alarming cassettes of the Now That’s What I Call Music 7 variety. Oh no, I bet it was all Uzis and Harley Davidson lighters with Eminem…

I don’t ♥ moving

Fourteen miniature sombreros that say ‘Viva Mexico’. Quite why and how these have existed in the back of my wardrobe for almost eight years is beyond me, but there you have it.

And now I’m trying to finalise my move to London by sorting out what is essential, what can be recycled, what can be given to charity and what can be trashed.

• My cd collection has been reduced by about 40%.
• Books will be axed by about 75%.
• Clothes halved.

These categories are straightforward enough, but what of the other things that one uncovers? The artefacts of my pre-digital life?

• The envelope stuffed with boarding passes, receipts, stubs and other paraphernalia from old holidays?
• The rather cheap and nasty incomplete set of kitchen knives I had completely forgotten?
• Old Valentine’s, birthday and Christmas cards, wedding invites, letters from people who once figured more prominently in my life?
• My first iPod? MiniDisc player? Cassettes of those songs taped from the radio? Floppy discs?

Sorting and sifting through all this stuff does bring one back through the years and one can’t help but marvel at how quickly things change and we move on. Some friendships have distilled and improved, and new people have arrived on the scene. Some that were once a huge part of one’s life have moved on while others have been, ahem, ’set free’.

But the music shall last. That has remained a constant in my life since about 1978!

Right, scorched earth policy, I say.

The fucking sombreros are toast.

Holy Crap! Now That’s What I Call Music – The First One!

You may be a sharp dresser, you may be a fantastic dancer, you may be a lively conversationalist, but what happens at the end of the evening when the time comes to show how you feel? Unless you can kiss with confidence all your fancy dressing, dancing and talking won’t get you a second date.

Jesus Christ. They have gone and re-released the first Now from 1983. 1.9.8.3.

How many of you have this on vinyl? Of course it was either vinyl or cassette back then, and the idea of 30 – 30 – tracks by the original artists and not edited was a rather novel thing at the time. And I really really loved Will Powers’ Kissing With Confidence.

I seem to recall this coming out in January, but I didn’t get it immediately. Why not?

a) I was 9

b) Stuff like Genesis and Simple Minds didn’t really appeal.

c) I may not have had £6.99 (about €435 in today’s money).

d) I was edging more towards cassettes at that point and was very scared to make the wrong format decision.

 

In fact, I went on to buy all the Nows up to about 46. Vinyl up to about 20 with a few cassettes too (Now 4 was the first one on tape for me).

Anyway, this all reminds me why I never subscribed to the ‘vinyl is superior to CD’ argument. They popped, scratched and generally sounded pretty rough by the time they got to the last track. I remember Culture Club’s Victims sounding particularly rough on this album. CD’s rocked. And hey, mp3 is pretty fine too; let’s not be too nostalgic; I’d rather have a few thousand tracks in my pocket than a tea-chest full of vinyl in the parents’ attic.

The tracklist:

Disc: 1
1. Phil Collins – You Can’t Hurry Love
2. Duran Duran – Is There Something I Should Know
3. UB40 – Red Red Wine
4. Limahl – Only For Love
5. Heaven 17 – Temptation
6. K.C. & The Sunshine Band – Give It Up
7. Malcolm McClaren – Double Dutch
8. Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse Of The Heart
9. Culture Club – Karma Chameleon
10. Men Without Hats – The Safety Dance
11. Kajagoogoo – Too Shy
12. Mike Oldfield – Moonlight Shadow
13. Men At Work – Down Under
14. Rock Steady Crew – Hey You (Rock Steady Crew)
15. Rod Stewart – Baby Jane
16. Paul Young – Wherever I Lay My Hat
Disc: 2
1. New Edition – Candy Girl
2. Kajagoogoo – Big Apple
3. Tina Turner – Let’s Stay Together
4. Human League – Fascination
5. Howard Jones – New Song
6. UB40 – Please Don’t Make Me Cry
7. Peabo Bryson & Roberta Flack – Tonight I Celebrate My Love
8. Tracey Ullman – They Don’t Know
9. Will Powers – Kissing With Confidence
10. Genesis – That’s All
11. The Cure – The Love Cats
12. Simple Minds – Waterfront
13. Madness – The Sun And The Rain
14. Culture Club – Victims

 

You can practise the Romance Chant Method at Amazon. All together now: Hableme el unico del mundo. Digame: como te hace ese sonido. Tan glorioso. Que aun hoba con anticipation de el. Me ha reducio a un bestia. Grunedo. Entusiomandose y paliptando.

Practice this chant in the morning as you rise, in the evening as you retire and just before a date.

My first pencil case…

… or, at least the first one I remember, was an ABBA one. It was from 1978 (thank you ebay) which would have made me five. Yikes. It is still around somewhere in the parents’ house, covered in scrawls and with a broken zipper. 

Next ABBA memory is of having pneumonia and my aunt Agnes (who I always thought looked like Agnetha) taking me an ABBA magazine in hospital. Late seventies, I guess.

Next memory involves watching Top Of The Pops in order to see ABBA and being eventually rewarded with their performanace of Super Trouper. That was 1980- I was 7 and not quite ready to immerse myself in pop (that happened two years later and kinda hasn’t stopped).

So, what have we learned? Abba was my first musical love? This fag was way ahead of her time, ladies.

The whole Abba revival business rather left me cold and I didn’t think much of them between 1981 and whenever the silly Erasure business happened. 

However, as one looks back over the music that has gone through these ears since I were a tot (you can really tell I have no more study obligations, can’t you?), some Abba stuff is just pretty amazing. I lean towards the later, divorce-laden miserable HappySad stuff, so I really need to get my Ultimate Abba playlist up here (like my Emmylou Harris one).

As for the Mamma Mia movie? I think the final paragraph of the review in the Guardian puts it best:

Some songs are easier to incorporate than others. Waterloo is saved for the closing credits, perhaps because screenwriter Catherine Johnson didn’t grasp its metaphorical quality, and that she would not in fact need a vast Napoleonic army to troop across the island. But there is one very famous Abba number which is entirely omitted. That is a crying shame. I have an idea for the way in which it could yet be included, should an extra scene be needed for the DVD. There’s a six-year-old boy on the island called Fernando, and caring Meryl Streep suspects that poor little Fernando could be hearing-impaired. She sits the little lad down, takes out a set of drums and bangs them close to his ears; with tears pouring down her cheeks, she sings to him a single, heart-rending question …

Miaow!