25 Songs – 25 Days #6 A song that reminds you of your best friend

 

Souixsie and the Banshees – Spellbound

I met my best friend when I was fifteen, and we are still ridiculously close now!! We don’t see each other every day, but we have always been there for each other through all the most traumatic moments of our lives, and always will be!! I can honestly say that I love her, without her my life would have been a pale shadow of itself. We have had the most fabulous, mad adventures together, and pulled each other up from the dark!!

She was Souixsie Sue when we were teenagers!! Getting ready for a saturday night was an epic event. We had our routine. Heinz tomato soup, followed by fillet steak in a roll, washed down with a glass of Lambrusco red!! Three hours spent on make-up and hair, and a different outfit every week! Her mother owned a bar in the small scottish town where we lived, where we both did a couple of evening shifts during the week, and were a source of amusement to the regulars, who had never encountered such outrageous butterflies. We were required to parade through the bar on a saturday night, prior to heading for Edinburgh, so that they could see “what the Lassies are wearing tonight!!” Her make-up was always painstakingly copied from her posters of Souixsie on her bedroom wall. I leaned more towards Bananarama and Adam Ant!!

There was one other extra special bezzie who joined us. His name was Iain Cuthbertson, he worked as a hairdresser with me, and he was beautiful, outrageous, and bravely gay!! I say bravely, because his family were one of the most feared in town, and his homosexuality did not sit easy with their reputation. But he was true to his heart, and eventually they took him back into the fold. Sadly, we lost him ten years ago, but I shall always remember him. One of the directors at our salon once asked him why he chose to socialise with me, and not with the, quite frankly, far more beautiful girls I worked with? His answer?

“Well, it’s quite simple! She’s so plain, everyone looks at me!!” 

Miaow!!!

For your delectation, the three of us from 1980!!

25 Days – 25 Songs #5 A Song That Is Often Stuck In Your Head

Don’t Marry Her by The Beautiful South

I absolutely love The Beautiful South!! Their songs are so very English, with wonderfully clever, and quite often rude, lyrics, all wound into a beautiful melody. This particular track is permanently stuck in my head, and I find myself singing it several times a day, without realising I am doing so, until someone says “Again?!!” 

25 Days – 25 Songs #4 – A Song That Calms You Down

 

I am a little bit strange, as you may have already gathered. Soothing music doesn’t work for me when I need to calm down, I need loud!! Very loud!! Preferably with a deep bass line and lots of guitars! So that I can sing at the top of my voice, and dance wildly around the room, and vent my pent-up frustration that way!!

So I Don’t Care by Fall Out Boy fits the bill perfectly. And I love the line, “the best of us can find happiness in misery!” If you are passing my house and hear it being played, run away!! I am not in the best of moods!! You have been warned!!

25 Days – 25 Songs #3 – Song That Reminds You of Your Mother/Father

 

South Pacific

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Herman’s Hermits

I’ve cheated a bit today, because I have three songs. Hope you will forgive me, but it wasn’t easy finding a song to define either one of  my parents. These choices though are from very strong memories I have of them from my childhood.

For my Fragrant Mother, I have chosen Happy Talk from the film South Pacific. She took me with her to watch this at The Gaiety Theatre cinema in Bristol, when I was about five years old. I remember it so clearly because she armed me with tissues, and then promptly stole them all back off me as she sobbed her way through the film, much to my embarrassment!! But we used Happy Talk as our survival song for years afterwards, whenever things weren’t too pleasant. I can still do all the actions!! I have never cried on my daughter in a cinema!!

For my Father, Bobbing Along from Bedknobs and Broomsticks. We weren’t close, and he very rarely spent any time alone with me as a child, but on two occasions I remember him taking my sister and I to the cinema. The first time we watched The Poseidon Adventure, which traumatised both of us, (we were very young!), and the second time was to see Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I managed to walk into a traffic meter just as we arrived, and so he made me sit with a coin pressed on the bump for the entire film. I also remember we went to a pancake house afterwards.

My parents used tp throw the most amazing parties in the early years of their marriage. My mother has always been a fabulous hostess, and her dinner parties were legendary. My father was a lecturer at Bristol University, and so the house was always full of students. The party I remember most clearly was a Hallowe’en fancy dress. The living room was decorated with all things witchy. and had a net pinned up into the ceiling, filled with pumpkins and spiders. i remember my sister and I hiding at the top of the stairs, watching people arrive, until we were spotted, and sent back to bed. I could only have been four at the time, because my middle sister hadn’t arrived yet!! I also remember one very drunken guest stumbling into our room during the evening, and peeing in the corner, much to my horror!!

I chose Something Tells Me.. by Herman’s Hermits, because it always transports me back to that time!!

 

 

 

 

25 Days – 25 Songs #2 – A song that reminds me of my most recent ex

Lou Reed – Perfect Day

My ex-husband and I may not have had the most perfect of marriages, but there were a few things that we did agree on, and this track was one of them. I fell in love with the Transformer album in the very early eighties, my ex, who was twelve years older than me,  had loved it from the moment it was released. We didn’t have a big wedding, quite the opposite. But we did have this played as our song. And despite everything, we both still love it!!

 

Playing Around with Playlists

I absolutely love music!! I can’t imagine a world without it!! It dictates my mood, defusing anger, raising my spirits, giving me get up and go when I thought it had all but got up and gone. But I am often really curious as to what other people are listening to as they stride past me in the street, plugged into their ipods. I like to imagine that it is something totally at odds with their appearance! The sweet little old lady listening to the Sex Pistols perhaps? Or the big burly biker relaxing to a bit of opera? My favourites vary wildly from week to week, but as part of Day 19, trying a new type of post, I thought I would share my current top ten. What is your playlist like? Which track gives you the boost you need? Does your choice in music surprise other people? Which one makes you dance like nobody’s watching?

Cake – Love You Madly

 Fall Out Boy – I Don’t Care

 Panic! At The Disco – Nearly Witches [Ever Since We Met…]

 Jack White – I’m Shakin’

 Kasabian – Fast Fuse

 Maroon 5 – Harder To Breathe

 Kasabian – Underdog

 Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out

 Kings Of Leon – Sex On Fire

 4 Non Blondes – What’s Up?