Groove Column: On music and memory (April 2008)

In the UK there is a radio show called ‘Guilty Pleasures’, devoted to playing the tracks the you secretly like but are too embarrassed to admit to liking. It’s a way of ironising a love of pop that some people seem to want to renounce as they get older, for hipsters to tacitly admit that the music which burrows its way into one’s head - the greatest word in German is orvorm - which soundtracks the triumphs and disasters of our existence (and gives us more unalloyed joy in the process) is more often Barry White or Fleetwood Mac than it is Sonic Youth or Arthur Russell.

Me, I’m all too happy to admit that the works of Britney Spears or Michael Jackson have given me more pure pleasure than Panda Bear or Minilogue ever will. Like many of us, I have measured out my life in dubious pop records. The first single I ever bought was not 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' or 'I Feel Love'. It was Ray Parker Junior’s theme from 'Ghostbusters'. I learned to play the piano with the help of Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits songbook (I can be persuaded to give you my version 'Just The Way You Are' if you ply me with enough booze). The biggest reaction to any record I can remember as a DJ was when I dropped Rod Stewart’s 'Do You Think I’m Sexy' at a wedding on a beach in Spain. Magic.

Pop music - usually at its cheesiest and least cool - is one of the most powerful means by which we form and cement memory.  Why is it that I can quote very little of any of the books I studied at University, but I can finish the lyric of Vanilla Ice’s 'Rollin' In My 5.0' - a record I  do not own - without even thinking twice?  More potent than Proust’s madeleine it can take you back, instantly, to any number of moments from your past. Play me Bryan Adams 'Run To You' and I am a small child on holiday, driving around Wales with my Mum and Dad, all of us singing our lungs out and as happy as I think I will ever get. Play me Status Quo’s frankly appalling 'Sweet Caroline' and I am at a school disco vying with my friend Dean for the attentions of the cutest girl in my class.

Two weeks ago, I was at the funeral of my Grandma. As the eulogies were spoken, on a loop in my head were the old film comedians Laurel and Hardy singing 'The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia', which was one of the few records my grandparents owned and one which had my sister and I and them laughing like drains every time we played it. At the reception afterwards my dad asked me if there was anything I wanted to take from the house to remember her by. I smiled and shook my head. Laurel and Hardy will do me just fine.

(published April 2008)

Comments

[The Divine Carole]

You're also a great writer… Thanks for the music…

[Jon Pleased]

Thank God for Dj's like you Ewan, who admit to liking pop music. Unfortuantely there aren't many around which makes for a dull, chin-stroking environment more often than not.
Bring on the Trevor Horn and Shep Pettibone revival i say ;-)