Gigs, music and memories

Just got home from a wonderful evening in the Manchester Apollo, watching Belle and Sebastian performing live with the London Contemporary Orchestra. Spellbinding stuff. B&S have long been one of my favourite bands. They're uncomplicated and I imagine, to many, unadventurous. But at the end of the day, they make a lovely noise.

This will likely be my last gig for quite some time. My wife - who I must say did brilliantly to last the whole gig without too much complaint - is 32 weeks pregnant with our first child. Suffice to say, things are going to change around here in the new year! Tonight then, felt to some extent like the 'end of an era'. Soon the days will be gone when we can decide on a whim to go to this or that gig or event, without having to arrange childcare or worry about messing up 'the routine'. Don't get me wrong, I can't wait for the baby to arrive! It's undoubtedly the 2nd most exciting earthly thing to ever happen to me (after getting married). But I'm fully aware that life is going to change forever, and I think I shall look back at this gig as something of a 'last hurrah' for this particular chapter of our life together. When I hear 'Fox In The Snow' in future, I think it will transport me back to this evening, a memory of a former way of life, shortly before a new adventure started.

Music has an incredible ability to do that. It's amazing how a certain track or album can transport you to a specific moment or period in your life. It might be a song that helped you through a hard time, or an album that provided a soundtrack to a great summer. Whatever it is, when you hear that music, you can almost palpably feel what you felt at the time you were listening to it originally. You can smell the smells, taste the tastes - all because you can hear the sounds. And these musical moments can mean totally different things to different people. I love that!

To illustrate my point, here are a few examples which are specific to me. Please feel free to add your own examples in the comments section below!

1.
The music: Radiohead - OK Computer (Album, 1997)
The memory: This takes me back to my first ever trip abroad - to Paris on a school trip in 1997. I had great mates in school - many of them I'm still in touch with - but not many were into the music I was into at that time. They all thought Radiohead were 'depressing' and 'boring'. They simply did not appreciate that the Oxford band had just released on of the greatest albums of all time. I don't want to give off the impression that I was some sort of anti-social music loving loner in school, who'd rather listen to melancholic indie than enjoy the excitement of Paris with my mates. But my distinct memory of this trip is that every time we were on the coach going from place to place, I'd be gazing out of the window, listening in awe to this album. At times, it would even send shivers down my spine.
Without a doubt, my favourite track was 'Let Down', and it helps my memory that this song didn't have a video to accompany it. When I hear it, I see images of Paris, as if seen from a coach window. I also can almost feel Frankie Wibberly volleying the back of my chair, as he did for the duration of the trip. The git.

2.
The music: Echo and the Bunnymen - 'Nothing Lasts Forever' (Single, 1997)
The memory: Glastonbury 2003. It's the Friday morning of my 2nd Glastonbury, and things have not started well. I've woken up to find that all my cash for the festival - nearly £100 - has been pinched from my wallet overnight. I'm distraught - to the extent that I ring home and have my mum in tears as she can tell how upset I am. I'd been looking forward to this for so long.
Me and my mate head over to the Pyramid Stage for our first gig of the day, but my foul mood is about to get worse. He gets a call from another friend who's just arrived on site, needing to be met and taken to our camp site. So I'm left in a field with 20,000 strangers. Angry, bitter and a feeling a long, long way from home. Oh - and then it starts raining too.
Anyway, on to the stage strolls Ian McCulloch and Echo and the Bunnymen. Now, it's important to note that Ian McCulloch is a self-absorbed, arrogant and idiotic human being. And he's a kopite. But he can write a tune, and somehow the set he and his band delivered that morning was exactly what I needed to hear. I was hundreds of miles from home and having a miserable time - fretting about money and how I was going to afford the rest of the festival. But here was a fellow scouser, telling me to just loosen up. Forget it! It's only money. 'Nothing ever lasts forever'.  By the end of the gig, I was beaming, and I had a fantastic festival. Whenever I hear this song now, I think back to that moment in a wet, lonely field, when a scouse pillock rescued my weekend and lifted my spirits. The clip below is the Bunnymen performing that song at Glastonbury - but from 1997.


3.
The music: Queen - 'The Works' (Album, 1984)
The memory: Whenever I hear a song from this album, I am transported to the middle of the back seat of our family car, wedged between my older brother and sister, and listening to my dad belting out 'It's a Hard Life' and 'Radio GaGa' thumping his fists on the steering wheel. I think it was a holiday to a farm in Devon that I associate this album with particularly.


The interesting thing about this ability of music to inspire memory is that it's not just songs you love and cherish that do it. Queen and Echo and the Bunnymen are by no means favourite bands of mine. I was kind of brought up on Queen, but I don't own any of their stuff and have no particular affection for their music itself. It's just the memories that that I associate with the tunes that give me some semblance of affection for them.

There are countless examples I could pick of songs that attach to memory. These were just a few to illustrate. Music is powerful stuff. Enjoy it!