Yes, I've been cleaning records again and this time it's a cult club classic from the northwest, Ellie Warren's 'Shattered Glass' from 1980 - isn't that just the most 80s cover you've seen? Apparently it was re-done in the late '80s by Stock,Aitken and Waterman but I don't remember that, just the early version that we used to dance to at The Turnkey in Wigan and Henry Africa's in Standish, which sadly didn't break through to be a national hit.
Ah, the memories - girls with shoulder pads, big hair and blazers with fake yachting club badges (hang on, hasn't that all just come back into vogue?) and boys with moustaches (those who could grow them), jumpers tucked in their trousers and permed mullets. Ugh, not one of our finest sartorial moments, but at least it wasn't the 70s!
I wouldn't be surprised if I'm at the back of the photo of Henry's on here... oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...
A couple of years' back I threatened to inflict my musical taste on you as I gradually worked my way through my vinyl collection giving the discs a clean with a new gadget I'd treated myself to.
Well, this isn't an indication that I've got up to 'W' (yes, my vinyl collection IS in alphabetical order... how else would one find anything?) but, as I was listening to Mark Knopfler's 'Skydiver' on the way into work this morning, the lyrics reminded me a little of Joe Walsh's 'Life's Been Good'.
I was only 11 when this came out and I heard it on the radio in the hairdresser's one Saturday morning, but didn't know who it was by or what it was called - although the line 'I go to parties sometimes until four, it's hard to leave when you can't find the door...' stayed with me (as an aspiration?). Well, it was another 20 years before I found out what it was and finally bought the LP it came from 'But, seriously folks...'.
As well as the brilliant guitar work, it's a brilliant evocation of the 1970s rock star lifestyle and when he says 'Lucky I'm sane after all I've been through', I'm amazed that any of them are actually alive after what they did during that decade - if the documentaries we watch on BBC4 of a Friday night are to be believed.
Anyway, enjoy, and I may inflict some more of the Eagles' solo efforts on you in time to come, I think I've got Don Henley's 'Boys of summer' on single somewhere and I may have Glenn Frey's 'The Heat is on' on a compilation LP. Sadly, I can't put any Eagles up here because I've only ever had them on CD so it breaks my self-imposed vinyl rule - but still, one of the best bands on the planet, discuss... Ooo, no, I'm wrong, I've just remembered that I've got 'Take it Easy' on a compilation LP too, you lucky people. For a band that epitomised the 1970s, the solo releases of Henley and Frey seemed to do the same for the 1980s - just try listening to the 'The Heat is on' without conjuring up an image of bronzed men in pastel shirts topped off by white Matinique jackets with the sleeves pushed back to the elbow. In fact didn't Frey actually appear in an episode of Miami Vice?
Have I ever mentioned that I don't like lieder? I think I was over-exposed to ‘Vilja’ as a child and someone standing up to sing with a piano accompaniment now has me leaping for the off button before they've got the first note out (OK, Kit and the Widow excepted). I was genuinely heartbroken when Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died as I knew it would launch a year-long lieder-fest on Radio 3. But, whether sung in English or German, they're still dire Victorian parlour songs.
I'm a placid soul (no giggling at the back!) and there are few things that have me leaping for the radio with a mallet, but the sentence that begins, "...and now on Radio 3 it's Private Passi..." rarely manages to make it to a full stop and similarly with the Navy Lark on Radio 4 Extra and the Swingle Singers anywhere.
However, with the growth of nostalgia my other bête noir occasionally pops up and brings with it a spasm of radio-smashing rage verging almost on the murderous. Yes, it is the existential horror that was the theme tune to Sing Something Simple. And I'm not alone, a whole generation of adults around my age confess to being deeply scarred by the experience of being forced to listen to it as a child - there's probably a support group out there somewhere. One blogger said, "...the most depressing radio show was, undoubtably, “Sing Something Simple“, which used to come on…Radio 2: if you’ve never heard it, consider yourself lucky. It involved a choir singing depressing songs...accompanied by Jack Emblow’s accordion. Someone said: “hearing ‘Sing Something Simple’ was the first time I realised that – one day – I would die”." Another reviewer said, "Christ it was depressing - but in a comforting way. Like shingles, or Crohn's disease."
Anyway, I won't subject you to any of those, instead you have Fascinating Aida's take on lieder but it's much funnier than the real thing.
Just after Christmas 2012 I bought myself a new toy. Nothing very exciting. Just a gizmo for cleaning vinyl records. I'd tried listening to a few of my old LPs whilst my esteemed other half was training with the International Drinking Squad in Manchester a while back but, strange to say, for some reason they didn't play too well due to the accumulation of over 30 years of alcohol splodges, fingerprints and stains that I'd rather not know the origin of... Suffice it to say that it's much safer for your music collection to take downloaded tracks on a memory card to a teenage party than to cart your precious records (or CDs for that matter) there.
I also read a post by someone who had just agreed to let his daughter have her first teenage party and, in the carnage that ensued, he'd ended up sitting up in casualty 'til the early hours whilst one of the kids had his stomach pumped. Ah, that brought back memories - not that any of us ever ended up in hospital and we always made it up for church on a Sunday morning. But we certainly weren't drinking soda water, several houses were trashed by gatecrashers and many of us spent the night in the loo (or if it was already occupied, down at the bottom of the garden) doing more informal stomach emptying before we learnt our limits. There were many po-faced responses to that post of the 'kids of today type', (to be honest, I was amazed that they still did alcohol and not drugs!) but I just remembered what we'd got up to at that age (over 30 years' ago now) and smiled and thanked God that I will never have teenage children - because I know what we did at that age and I'd be a gibbering wreck every time they left the house until they came home safely.
So, this has given me the opportunity to inflict on you, dear reader, excerpts from my record collection as I clean and listen to them - in some cases I think it really is almost 30 years since they've been near a turntable. That will give you something to look forward to over the coming months, won't it? ;0) It has also given me the chance to wallow in nostalgia for my night-clubbing teenage years.
I hope you won't be disappointed, but you won't be getting any Northern Soul classics here as Wigan Casino had closed long before I was allowed out into town on a Friday night. Although, as children, we did used to see the queues to get in as we left the cinema (on the other side of the road). My tastes were firmly mid-80s indie (she says, whilst surreptitiously pushing that Duran Duran album behind Meat is Murder and hoping that no-one noticed...).
The first record to hit the decks after cleaning was Blue Rondo à la Turk's Chewing the Fat (1981), which I bought especially for 'Klactoveesedstein' which was played constantly at our nightclub of choice, The Turnkey. The jazz aficionados amongst you will recognise several levels of homage here. "Blue Rondo à la Turk" is one of Dave Brubeck's tracks on Time Out whilst 'Klactoveedsedstene' was a Charlie Parker composition. Blue Rondo split in the early '80s with band members going on to form the much more successful, but worse, Matt Bianco (rest assured that there are none of their records in my collection!).
My nightclubbing started before I joined the 6th form, so from the tender age of about 16 we were getting into over-18 and over-21 clubs on a weekly basis. I moved schools to do my A Levels; to one in the centre of Wigan which all my friends from church attended, so I knew lots of people there already and seemed to settle in quite quickly. Friday nights were spent in town, every Saturday there was a party at someone's house and Sunday evening was spent at the Cherry Gardens pub which was a 5 min walk away from all my friends' houses.
Our Friday nights in Wigan started in the bar of a hotel near the parish church - my memory fails but it was possibly the Grand on Dorning Street - at about 8.30ish. Did every teenager's Friday night out in the '80s include visiting a drag act? No? Well, you missed out. Once all the troops had assembled we headed for Angels just round the corner to get a couple of drinks in and a good spot by the stage before the drag act started. There were several acts that used to come to Angels but the best one was Legs Up Lucy who, I believe, is still performing. I can't remember what age you had to be to get in but I was nowhere near it when, after at least 18 months of our group being a fixture to the right of the stage, some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to tell the DJ it was my birthday. So I fetched up on stage with the drag act (sadly not Lucy that evening) whilst the DJ introduced me and asked how old I was. Sutto voce and off-mic I replied, "Not old enough to be coming in here!" which he translated into, "And she's 18 today!!!". We spent every Friday night for 2 years standing at the table at the side of the stage looking up at the drag acts, performing in often very skimpy dresses or swimming costumes which left absolutely nothing to the imagination, and I still don't know where they put it. I seem to recall that my favourite red hat got nicked from the cloakroom one week, c'est la vie...
Then it was on to the Bee's Knees. Some pubs are just dire during the day, they really only work as busy evening pubs, and the Bee's Knees was one such. 'Cos it was close to school we'd occasionally go in for a sandwich at lunchtime, but it wasn't a pleasant experience. The big spaces around the bar and the small 'snug' rooms at the back that worked so well on a Friday night turned it into a dark, gloomy wasteland during the day - walking across the deserted wastes made all the more difficult by the fact that your feet stuck to the carpet. But come Friday night it was buzzing (bee, geddit? Oh, suit yourselves...) and you could have done with a lot more space around the bar and loads more 'snugs' at the back. Its USP was that it sold Merrydown cider by the 75cl bottle for 75p (it may even have been 50p when we first started going out). So our group would split into twos and threes who would club together to buy bottles to share and retire to one of the back rooms. Usually only one bottle because we were just waiting for other friends to arrive before moving on to either the Officers' Club or The Underground. I seem to recall the manager receiving an award from the cider maker for achieving the most sales in the country; glad to have contributed my bit to his success!
The Officers' Club was the new kid on the block and was perfectly in tune with the mid-'80s. It tried to emulate a colonial club with rattan furniture and cream décor. It was a bit more up-market than we were used to, with a no trainers policy and men had to wear a tie. We hadn't realised this because our lads always looked smart (it was the '80s remember, all suits and ties) but one night RB went out with the jacket but no tie and we got stopped. Luckily, the strap of my handbag was detachable so we dragged him round the corner and made him tie the strap into a bootlace tie (him protesting that it was so obvious and we'd be bound to get stopped again). We weren't and the evening progressed as normal.
The main destination of the evening was The Turnkey. It had been a restaurant, of the same name, which I'd visited as a child but by the time we were doing the rounds it was a nightclub. There was another club on the same street, 'Charlies'?, which was over 21's and seemed to be full of old pervs trying to pick up younger girls and had crap music so we generally avoided it.
Despite the '80s pop that was the mainstay of most clubs, Sister Sledge and Hazell Dean spring to mind, there seemed to be a more alternative and eclectic mix on the turntables at the Turnkey - so as well as poppy hits I also remember Red Lipstique's 'Drac's Back', Ellie Warren's 'Shattered Glass', Iggy and, God help us, The Sweet's 'Wig Wam Bam'. You might be getting some of those as I work my way through the record collection with the cleaning fluid.
So, that was Friday nights during my 6th form years and the records would be taken to parties on Saturday nights. And I'd stagger into church on Sundays and try not to fall asleep during the sermon. By the time I was 19 we'd been doing the nightclubs for 3 years and it was all a little stale. I've rarely been in a nightclub since - all that shouting over the music, and the music itself, ugh! I pretty soon decided that I'd rather be in a pub/house talking nonsense to my friends with decent music in the background.
So, apologies for this boring middle aged ramble down memory lane, oh and apologies for the lack of embarrassing photos of a 16 year old me - I did look for them but, of course, I was always behind my camera so my albums are stuffed with pictures of my friends and I'm not sure they'd like their permed backed mullets displayed to the world! (Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)
* And, of course, those of you with excellent musical taste will have instantly recognised this as the title of one of the tracks from David Sylvian's first solo album, Brilliant Trees, released in 1984.
At the start of December we still had a full set of Grannies, which seems quite unusual for people in their 40s. Their ages ranged from almost 90 to almost 102. But just before Christmas Jon's maternal Gran died and in early April my maternal Nanna also passed away - strange to think that our Mothers are now both orphans! By any standards Nanna had a 'good death' and, at a month short of her 102nd birthday and with all her faculties and in general good health (apart from her knees), she's certainly had 'a good innings'. On Thursday she was a bit sulky 'cos her special friend, Agnes, had gone into hospital for a few days whilst her diabetes was stabilized. On Friday she decided to stay in bed and receive her visitors and staff in regal state in her room - chatting to the Matron when she popped in, asking after her family and saying 'Have a good weekend and I'll see you on Monday'. On Saturday and Sunday she slept almost constantly and on Sunday evening the weekend Matron said that she didn't think Nanna would last the night. She didn't and died at 12.10 Monday morning. Strangely, Agnes also died within 24 hours.
As a child I loved listening to stories about my grandparents' and great grandparents' (yes, I can remember 4 of my great grandparents too!) lives and the passing of both of these two women, whom I adored, made me think of the stories that died with them and with the people who've gone before.
Nanna's father was still alive and living with her when I was born and Nanna used to mind me whilst my parents were at work. Apparently, 'Big Grandad' and I got on very well and I can still remember the large (he really was huge, especially to a small child) dark presence with a watch-chain constantly in his waistcoat. He died in his late 90s in 1971, in the same hospital that was treating me for the TB he'd given me and which killed him. We have photos of him as a young man playing football and family legend has it that he played for Newcastle and had a trial for Swindon Town, but decided to stay in Wigan. His father worked for the local aristocracy (yes, there was such a thing in Wigan...) also who had land in Scotland and there he picked up annecdotes about Robbie Burns - my Grandad learned them off his father-in-law and use to tell me them, but he's dead and I can't remember them.
Other stories concerned family tragedies: Big Grandad's beloved younger sister, alone in the house after school, reached up to the mantle shelf for something that she'd been told not to touch and her dress caught fire. Big Grandad was walking home across the field behind the house as she came running out with her dress ablaze. Nanna's own sister ('the favourite and very spoilt' according to Nanna - well, I said I adored her, I didn't say she was objective!) ran off with a GI during the war, leaving behind a husband and 3 young children, never to be heard of again. Nanna's mother literally 'dropped dead' after an evening at the cinema when she was a child and, with two young children to bring up, Big Grandad remarried. Nanna didn't talk much of her stepmother, but I got the impression that there was no love lost there. Nanna was apprenticed to a seamstress in her early teens and said she had to listen to her friends playing out after school whilst she stayed in and sewed.
Nanna married Grandad and he brought his own stories: learning to knit socks at school to send out to the soldiers during the First World War; some foods being only intermittently available during WW1 and his mother, hearing that a new delivery had arrived at the shop, sent him out in his school lunch break to get a couple of pounds of whatever it was. But, of course, all the old ladies had got there first and they always pushed this 8 year old boy to the back of the queue and he'd be scolded by his Mother when he went home empty handed; the strike he led at school - I bet he got thrashed for that! Nanna telling me that, when she agreed to go out with him, she found out that he'd got a girl waiting on every street corner!
Having children didn't come easily and after a series of miscarriages they had John, a little boy who lived only for an hour. So when my Mum was born she was baptisted immediately as she looking a bit doubtful too.
Jon's Gran was 96 when she died before Christmas. From her home in a tiny Wiltshire village she'd gone into service at the age of 14 to London - a nursery maid whose first charge was a little baby boy who went on to become a famous organist. Her stories: how, as a child, the gypsies had left a dog with her family to be cared for whilst they were away but she and her sister fell in love with the dog so, when the travellers returned, they hid it and said it had run away soon after they'd left; the telegraph pole she single-handedly 'liberated' for firewood during the war - well, it was just lying there...; the coalman who said he'd give her the fuel free if she'd carry it herself from the truck to her house on her back in the same way he did - he lost; her love of strong curries that was picked up from one of their tennants who was an army officer; oh, yes, and that incident at the butcher's during the war...
Researching your family history can give you some idea of the lives your ancestors led, but the stories are gone - Big Grandad's sister's death certificate may may give the bald facts, but the story will be lost to the future researcher who chances on it. I've been priviledged to know some wonderful people, all with unique stories that I wish I'd listened harder to and that I wish someone had recorded. There's more, there's so much more, and I feel like I want to sit and write everything down before I forget.
Anyway, here's to two women it's been an honour to know and the stories that go with them.
