The first singles you ever loved

It was just a little box of second-hand singles, but I reckon that’s where it all began, the moment that music took on a lifelong meaning.  I can’t even recall quite how they came into our possession - something to do with my teenage sister; she’d either bought them for a few pence, been given them or swapped them, I think.  But I do remember that there was much excitement about their addition to the family’s music collection.

I would’ve been about 8 or 9 I think.  My personal record collection at that point comprised a 7” EP of children’s songs on yellow vinyl (‘How Much Is That Doggy In The Window’ being my fave track), some Pinky & Perky, something from the Nutcracker Suite, and a concerto by Handel, or was it Mozart, on 45 in a shiny picture sleeve.  I wasn’t able to discern between Pinky & Perky and Mozart - but how free you are at that age, totally lacking any self-consciousness about genre; as far as I was concerned each had their own merits.

Downstairs in the very modern Danish style G Plan cabinet where the hi-fi, books and my mum's pottery were housed there were a few other records, but nothing that was of much interest to me: some jazz, opera and classical, one or two Reader’s Digest freebie flexi-discs, Glen Miller I think.   So this box of singles made quite a statement; they were pop records.

Childhood memories are funny – the things that can seem quite unremarkable to an adult can be so vibrantly sensual to a child and imbued with the most vivid associations and feelings.  Those old singles do just that to me.  I can clearly remember the ones I really liked, their B-sides too.  They were about more than just the tunes, they were about the weight and the shine of the vinyl, the touch of the creased paper sleeves, and about the room and the rugs and the cats and the curtains.   Their labels are indelibly imprinted in my psyche too - the colours, the logos, the type style.  My mind drifts now to the way this is so perfectly expressed in the words to 'Over The Border' by St Etienne: 

 “…. green and yellow harvests, pink pies, silver bells…”   

We know what they mean!

In this particular box the pies/Pyes were blue, and a faithful terrier listening to an old wind-up  gramophone was silver on black.

Within this small collection was one of my favourite songs of all-time – one of my bestest, most favouritest songs ever ever in fact - so it deserves a post of its own some day but I can’t write about the rest without mentioning it here.  I was totally hooked on this song and still am.  I could play it over and over and never tire of it (and I did, probably driving my parents and sister mad). I wonder what it is that makes it so special and enduring, and what was it about it that appealed to me so much, even as a child?

The Kinks: Days
(eternal perfection)

But the others in the box all had their own unique appeal, here's what they were:

I loved the catchy soulfulness of ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’ by the Foundations and was intrigued, and slightly unnerved by its contrasting B Side, ‘New Direction’ - a strangely doomy, jazzy/psychy number.

The Foundations: New Direction

'Do Wah Diddy Diddy' by Manfred Mann had obvious singalong appeal to a child of my age.  ‘What You Gonna Do?’ on the B-side was far less commercial – a classic example of raw ‘60s R’n’B.

Manfred Mann: What You Gonna Do?

'I’ll Be There' by the  Jackson Five - well,  a little later I had some pictures of the Jackson Five on my wall (next to the Osmonds), of course I liked it!

'Love Child' by Diana Ross & The Supremes - a song I still hear in my head with pops and crackles.  What a fine example of classy soul, not that I would have understood that word then.  

There were a couple of singles I was less keen on, one of them was '(If Paradise Is) Half As Nice' by  Amen Corner – I didn’t like the voice, I still don't.

And then there was also 'I Can’t Let Maggie Go' by the Honeybus – famous for its use in the Nimble advert and anyone as old as me will remember the girl in the balloon who "flew like a bird in the sky".  However, I much preferred the fabulous B side, ‘Tender Are The Ashes’ and I still really love this song with its uptempo groovy Northern Soul vibe.

The Honeybus: Tender Are The Ashes

Finally there was a record that always sounded a bit more grown-up to me.  I think it was because of the harmonica combined with the fact that it was an instrumental - it was 'Groovin’ With Mr Bloe' by Mr Bloe.  You know it, of course you do!

I don’t know what happened to them in the end - they weren't mine! -  but I continued to dig them out and play them in the interim years and even after I started buying my own brand new singles.  By the time Abba, then Buzzcocks, etc. each arrived on the scene for me, records from the previous 10 years seemed bloody ancient.  But there was something about this small selection that made them immune to my teenage prejudice against the past and all things out-of-date. The feelings, those first far-reaching feelings, endured.  I think it must simply be because that’s where my love of music all began.

How about you?

Pinky & Perky
(and a very scary duck)

The first party you ever had...?

As part of my ongoing series of Firsts let me take you back to the Summer of ‘77.  I can assure you this has nothing to do with the J-word which is currently dominating the holiday weekend here in the UK.  The only J-word connected to the Summer of ’77 event I’m about to describe is the name of my first boyfriend.

I say ‘boyfriend’, but it was really a naïvely uncomfortable and fragmented relationship (I use the word ‘relationship’ loosely) and I didn’t realise at the time that there were about nine other girls in my town who simultaneously believed he was their boyfriend.  That was the kind of boy he was.  Anyway, don’t worry, there are no ‘firsts’ to do with him directly that I’m about to reveal here.  However, his presence that Summer was significant when I decided to celebrate my fourteenth birthday with my first proper party.

It really should have been fine.  My parents insisted on being in the house but said they’d stay upstairs, out of sight.  We were allowed to have a few cans of shandy, which felt terribly daring but, with all the Coke we’d be washing them down with, seemed unlikely to get any of us swaying and slurring our words.

Plates of Cheesy Wotsits and KP WigWams were arranged on the table and a collection of singles stacked up by the stereogram. The turntable had one of those auto-changer things where you could pile them up and they’d drop down one by one – perfect – and I was very excited about the varied selection of 45s that my friends and I had pooled together for the big night.

We rolled up the rugs so that the parquet flooring was exposed, ready for the easy mopping-up of inevitable spillages and some non-slip dancing.  By 7pm my female friends had arrived, smelling sweetly of Charlie perfume, made-up in powder blue eye-shadow and lip-gloss.  Then the much-anticipated male contingent turned up: my boyfriend J, who I was keen to impress, and a small group of his mates whom I’d asked him to invite.  My pal Helen was quite interested in tall, curly-haired Nigel, and their shyly exchanged glances across the mustard-painted living room gave promise of an exciting liaison later on.  “When are you going to play some slow ones?” she asked as I rifled through the singles, placing the Alessi Brothers ‘Oh Lori’and Stevie Wonder’s ‘Sir Duke’onto the long spindle.   She looked longingly at my sister’s copy of ‘I Don’t Want To Talk About It’ by Rod Stewart.

It was a beautiful, warm July evening, and it could all have gone so well, only I hadn’t banked on J telling a whole load of other people that there would be free drink, food, music and girls that night at Holloway Close.  I must have been busy topping up the bowl of salt and vinegar Twists when somebody let them in.  One big, older lad already seemed to have a bit of a sway and a slur and an air of arrogance about him.  His name was Rob.  But J said he was OK.  And anything that J said was OK must be OK.  He was my boyfriend, after all.

By dusk the party was in full swing but things had already started to go awry.  Helen had disappeared and was found upstairs crying because Nigel had declined her approaches. This tragic rejection resulted in her downing two cans of shandy, then falling against the edge of the toilet and laddering her Pretty Polly tights, before fleeing into the bathroom to sob inconsolably.  It was so bad she couldn’t even be persuaded to come down and dance to the bouncing beat of Joe Tex’s ‘Ain’t Gonna Bump No More With No Big Fat Woman’.  (I later discovered, of course, that no party is complete without a girl ending up in tears before 10pm.)

I’d rather hoped to get some serious kissing practice in with J but he was barely talking to me.  Every time I looked for him he was in the midst of the uninvited boys, including Rob, who were gathering in the dining room acting rather furtively.  I consoled myself with DJ-ing duties and found to my excitement that one of the lads had at least brought along some good records.  On went the Jam ‘In The City’ album; I’d never heard it before. ‘Art School’…’I’ve Changed My Address’… it was all sounding good. 

But then the shouting started. 

“FUCK OFF!”

 “WANKERS!” 

“THIS PARTY IS FUCKING SHIT!”

I looked out the window and there was Rob now in the back garden, flailing his arms and kicking the wooden edges of the guinea-pig run. There was something in his right hand – a bottle.  A whisky bottle.  It was nearly empty.

The guinea pigs started to squeak, anxiously.  The neighbour’s head appeared from over the other side of the fence – I think he might even have shaken a fist. Rob continued to shout and swear and swig from the bottle.  “YOU’RE ALL FUCKING ARSEHOLES! PISS OFF!”  My friends and I edged nervously towards the back door as the Jam’s ‘Time For Truth’ started to play, Paul Weller’s voice drifting across the lawn…

…’you’re just another red balloon with a lot of hot gas

Why don’t you fuck off?

And you think you’ve got it worked out

And you think you’ve got it made

And you’re trying to play the hero

But you never walk home in the dark

I think it’s time for truth…’

 And then my Mum appeared.  She walked out into the garden and stood right in front of this drunk, swaggering sixteen-year-old boy, her hands on her hips. Time for truth indeed.

I later found out that far more dodgy things go on at parties of course, but at the tender age of fourteen this one couldn’t have been much more cringe-worthy.  A boy who I didn’t even know was swearing at my Mum who had discovered that he’d found the family whisky hidden away in the dining room and had drunk most of it.  Under the beady eye of the neighbour and my embarrassed schoolfriends, she kicked Rob out and closed the party down.  Lights went on, music went off.  And then J chucked me.  I think I might have cried.  Just a little.

The only good thing to come out of it was that J forgot to take his copy of ‘Anarchy In The UK’ with him.  I kept it for several weeks before reluctantly handing it back, having taped both sides and decided that I’d never liked him that much anyway.

In case you’re wondering, the guinea-pigs were fine.  I never had another party, though. Oh and I’ve just realised that my mum was the same age then as I am now.  Perhaps that’s an even cringier thought.

With thanks to the person who inspired this post. You know who you are!

The first pet you ever had...?

(And no, I don’t mean in the 'petting' sense.  I’m not going into those kinds of ‘firsts’ on this blog.  At least not yet...)

I know it’s not very rock’n’roll compared to my previous ‘firsts’ posts (first album, first gig, first T-shirt) but it’s just one of those subjects that I’m sure a lot of people can relate to.  I think everyone I know had a pet when they were a child.  And, strangely enough, it seems like certain ‘types’ of pets go in and out of fashion - and may even be linked to certain eras.  So perhaps there are more resonances to albums, gigs and T-shirts than I first thought? 

Tortoises, for instance.  Tortoises were very popular pets here in the seventies; unfortunately for them they were being shipped to the UK from more exotic climes in huge numbers, cruelly packed in appalling conditions – a great percentage never made the journey.  But the lucky few that survived were quickly despatched to pet shops around the country and bought by enthusiastic children, many of whom had been watching Blue Peter (the TV programme no doubt responsible for impulse purchases of border collies, tabby cats, parrots and, indeed, these slow-moving, land-dwelling reptiles).  Many of these cold-blooded characters must have been relocated to small British gardens where they somehow coped with our often chilly, damp weather. Many would have had their names (or owners’ names) painted on their shells and occasionally may even have had chains or ropes drilled into them (nobody questioned whether or not this process would have caused them any stress or pain).  So I was not unusual in being the proud owner of a tortoise in the seventies.  Timmy somehow managed to survive a few winter hibernations in a cardboard box in the garage (and his name was never painted on, nor his shell ever drilled into).   He enjoyed a diet of dandelion leaves and bananas and had a remarkably runny nose out of which he could blow the most impressive little bubbles of snot.  I could relate to him rather well at the age of nine.

But Timmy was not my very first personal pet.  My first was a goldfish.  During a trip to the local fair my sister and I each won a goldfish sealed into a tiny polythene bag of water.  I’d probably despair at the number of these ‘prizes’ that were flushed down toilets soon after being won on the coconut shy – but I’m happy to report that ours were relocated into a rather splendid tank with rocks and shells and all sorts of Neptunian items in it to make them feel a bit at home.  

As is the way with naming pets, you have to think of something which begins with the same letter as the creature itself.  Yes, we later did it with Timmy the Tortoise (and subsequently Toby and Twinkle).  But ‘G’ for Goldfish is not a particularly inspiring letter.  And our goldfish were definitely girls.  Eventually my sister decided on ‘Geraldine’.  Aged about six at the time, I was inspired by her lead.  But what other girls’ names sound like Geraldine?  Somehow I missed the point, and started looking for names with that soft ‘G’ sound, same as Geraldine.  Ah – got it.  G… G…. Guuuu...?  I proudly named my goldfish ‘Judith’.  (Oh well.  But you can understand my thinking…)

From inauspicious beginnings in a plastic bag at a small-town-England fair with its rock’n’roll soundtrack and dodgy dodgems, Judith and Geraldine went on to live surprisingly long (and hopefully happy) lives in their comfortable tank chez nous.  In summer they got a holiday in the little pond in the garden, where they got to mingle with tadpoles and the occasional newt.  The rest of the year they were safe and warm on a ledge in the bathroom where we watched them, and from which they had a fish-eye lens view of a human family as we took our baths and used the loo.    I think we got the better deal of the two.

The first T-shirt you ever wore...?

I don’t know about you but I find I just can’t wear band-name T-shirts any more.  I can wear other logos, art and random images across my chest when I’m in the right mood, but band names - no.   The funny thing is that I don’t wear them now for exactly the same reason that I did wear them once: because the name you’re displaying immediately puts you into a very specific box.

The first T-shirt of that ilk that I ever had was one I loved wearing ‘til it was almost threadbare.  I even remember getting it - I had just turned 15 and I’d gone to London on the train (with my mum!) with the sole purpose of coming home with something special for my birthday.  The Clash T-shirt that I found in a little shop in Carnaby Street fitted the bill - as well as me - perfectly. It was special – and, yes, it put me into a very specific box. 

It was a tone-reduced black and white photo of the band standing in a street looking seriously cool, all zippy jackets and skinny trousers, with The Clash above (same typeface as on the first album) in a screen printed rainbow of neon colours.  I can remember looking through the rack, and even though there were several of the same main design, the colours were all very slightly different, so I could pick my favourite.  I wore that T-shirt frequently (if only I could have worn it to school…)  and thought it went very well with both leopard-print and paint-splattered trousers or those early straight-legged jeans which I wore over black monkey boots.

So that was my first…. I wish I had a photo with me in (or out of) it, and maybe someone else does somewhere, but sadly I don’t.   No doubt if I had kept it I could sell it on ebay now as a vintage item for an extortionate sum, but instead it went the way of all my subsequent band-name T-shirts, i.e. to one of three places – the charity shop, the rubbish bin, or the cupboard under the sink to fulfil a new role as a cleaning rag…

I have hardly any decent photographic records of other T-shirts either but there have certainly been a few since that one bought in 1978.   Here we have the rather mixed bunch of Crass, Bauhaus and the Dread Broadcasting Corporation (so not strictly a band  but it shouted to the world that you liked a bit of dub…)

Later I sometimes designed my own one-offs too, using Dylon and a fine paintbrush, or the basic screen-printing kit bought from a craft shop.   But whether bought or studiously painted, they all meant something important for a while.  They told the world who you were into - really into.  I mean, back then, wearing a Ramones T-shirt meant you were into the Ramones. You know what I’m saying…

The first gig you ever went to...?

As with the first album you ever bought, the first gig you ever went to is something of a rite of passage.   Perhaps you were, as I was, under-age and with tender ear-drums.  Getting through the doors past the bouncer, in spite of being nearly four years under eighteen (and him being the size of a house), wasn’t a problem (perhaps because I was a girl…?)  Even the process of buying a pint of cider at the bar was painless.  Coping with the volume was something that got easier as the night wore on.  But concealing my excitement at seeing a band I really admired up there on the stage, in all their real, raw glory, playing songs I had only previously heard in session on John Peel’s radio show, was impossible.  For my first, proper gig was (cue drum-roll)…. Siouxsie & the Banshees at a little club called Triad in  Bishop’s Stortford, January 1978.

I say ‘proper’ here because, to be honest, I had sort of seen a few live musical performances prior to this.  The very first ‘grown-up’ one was a few months before when my friends and I stumbled into a 'Rock Club' night and caught a few numbers being played by some local bunch of long-hairs about whom every detail except that escapes me.  The hall was sparsely populated and most of the punters were sitting on the floor, so it wasn’t exactly what you’d call wild.  And as we were being picked up at 9.30pm by my friend’s over-anxious dad (we had school next day) the evening was a bit of a dead loss.  So I’m not going to count that, particularly as I haven’t a clue who the group was.  However my overwhelming delight and incredulity when I heard that Siouxsie and co. were coming to our small, provincial home is something I can’t forget.

I grew up in that quiet Hertfordshire market town, and had been to Triad many times before as a kid – it started out as an Arts Centre and my mum got very involved in it, so I got taken along to see arty puppet shows, strange plays, an evening with Richard Nixon (the ‘70s newsreader) and even an Indian sitar performance which I like to think might have been Ravi Shankar but which I suspect was very probably not…  Then in the late ‘70s it became more of a rock music venue.  It must have had a pretty on-the-ball team doing the bookings because in the space of just a couple of years not only the Banshees but also Motorhead and Adam & the Ants played there (yeah I was lucky enough to see the early Ants too -  pre-mainstream fame, pre-white nose stripe and pre-two drummers…)  Later it became a regular haunt for local punks and was where I spent every Tuesday and Saturday night, taking in bands as diverse as the Newtown Neurotics (local heroes of the time), Wayne County and the Electric Chairs, Crass (who hailed from just up the road), and the Passions.

Siouxsie & the Banshees were seminal, though.  Siouxsie was dressed just as I’d seen her in music mag pics (striped t-shirt and thigh-length boots, black hair short and glossy and  characteristic eye make-up) and performed to an enthusiastic audience.   I bet if somebody was to do a TV drama on early punk they'd show the crowd at an early 1978 Banshees gig in band-name t-shirts, boutique bondage and spiky crazy-coloured hair but it really wasn’t like that then.  There were loads of blokes with longish hair wearing great-coats, and those of us who had just started to adopt a very embryonic punk look were deemed outrageous simply for wearing straight trousers and baggy shirts, etc.   The look was so shocking, apparently, that the local paper sent a photographer along to take some shots of the kids enjoying themselves, including me and my friends. 

We pulled faces for the charming camera man and posed as defiantly as (really rather sweet) fourteen-year-old girls at their first gig could. 

"Don't tell my mum I've drunk a pint of cider"



It all seemed like good, harmless fun.  Funny, then, how the event made front page news in the next issue with a very questionable editorial which suggested that “…these disgusting punks should have been aborted at birth..”   Such was the mood in the media at the time (and it’s really quite hard to believe that anyone should make such a fuss, but it was a common occurrence in the newspapers then.)  My experience, however, was of a truly great night – very much as real, raw and glorious as I had hoped.  I’d got past the burly bouncers, drunk a little too much and passed my initiation into the world of proper, live music with nothing worse than perhaps slightly ringing ear-drums the next morning, seeing a band I had admired from afar.  The excitement lived on for a long while and it’s been fun to revisit it here.  (Thank you, Siouxsie!) 

Maybe it’ll bring back some memories for you too?

Siouxsie & the Banshees a few months beforehand - see what I mean about the crowd?

The first album you ever bought...?

Or: 'How I lost my long playing virginity to a Clash 12 inch...'

It was thirty-four years ago today... Well, in fact it was thirty-four years and eleven days ago today: rewind to April 8th 1977 and the Clash’s eponymous first album arrived in our record shop racks.  A perfect platter.  Even the sleeve alone is iconic.

I’ve liked, been, drawn, worn, said and done lots of things in my life that are truly embarrassing - but buying my first album isn’t one of them!  I bought ‘The Clash’, and I’m proud!  I was still at school and had to save my pocket money for months before I could pool together the £2.99 (or thereabouts) required to enter the new and rather adult world of LP ownership.  Up to then I’d bought a few 7” singles (which could definitely be included in the ‘embarrassing things’ list - well, I was barely in my teens) but there was something about purchasing an album that was in a totally different league.  It meant you were serious. You liked a band enough to want to hear perhaps ten or more songs by them in succession, numbers that wouldn’t get played on the radio, tracks that you might not even like on the first listen, but you were prepared to make that commitment.  I went into the local record shop, Startime, and asked to listen to ‘The Clash’ on the headphones.  Within the first few seconds, as ‘Janie Jones’ burst into life and blasted into my ears, I knew I had to have it.  (Share that memory with me here.)  As my friends and I walked home from town, I took it out of the carrier bag and tucked it under my arm so that everybody could see what I had just done.  You know what it’s like when you’re young and daft and actually believe that the man/woman in the street might be impressed or (preferably) outraged by the music you're into, a bit like winding your car windows down at traffic lights and turning up the volume on your CD player so the world can share your sonic choices…  It was like a rite of passage.

At that time here in the UK punk was emerging from the underground and making controversial headlines, and when I started getting interested in it my parents may have been worrying that their shy little daughter might go off the rails.  “Don’t worry, mum, I just like the music, I don’t want to look like that…”  But secretly I was harbouring the desire to; and, not long after, I bought a red studded dog collar from the pet shop.  I didn’t realise I had the same neck measurements as a bull mastiff but there you go.  I hid it in a drawer and when I went out I used to wait ‘til I was around the corner from home to put it on.   As is the way in life, one thing often leads to another and by the following year I was customising clothes, had my long hair cut short and was open about my obsession with this new music and its many dimensions.  One day at school I was obviously showing my boredom with Pythagoras’ Theorem and was stirred from my daydreams of meeting Paul Simonon by my maths teacher shouting, “Would the punk rocker please pay attention?” It was the best compliment the old bat could have paid me.  But it all started with the Clash.

Since those early days I’ve been into so many songs, so many groups, so many albums, but there is something about this band, and their debut in particular, that stands that difficult test of time, and, oh, I love them for it.