25/04/2011

Reminisce Part 2


The overall theme of these columns has been the interplay between place, song and listener in acting as a trigger for memories or impressions. The ability of music to do this is well known, a Proustian effect by which hearing even a snatch of a song can bring recognition of the past in a present moment. It can easily be tested. Search out a song you haven’t heard for many years, perhaps since childhood: close your eyes and listen to it and see what it recalls. I can’t hear the opening bars of Wings’ Listen to What The Man Says without thinking of going to Athens for the first time: it must have been playing on a radio en route somewhere. For those with a certain way of thinking, it can also be quite a useful tool in fixing dates in your mind. Which summer did we go on a family holiday near St Michaels Mount in Cornwall? Wet Wet Wet were singing Love Is All Around for weeks on end, so it must have been 1994.

Songs, of course, aren’t usually written with this mind – they are, more likely, intended for the moment. The track here, however, Reminisce Pt 2 by Dexys Midnight Runners, takes a step back by being a song not primarily about a place but about memories –in this case, of a teenage love affair – recalled by songs of the time. This came from their 1985 album, Don’t Stand Me Down, produced in their phase of looking like Ivy League students or accountants that had succeeded the raggedy gypsy image of the Come On Eileen period. In it, Kevin Rowland remembers, largely in spoken form, a teenage romance , with Jimmy Ruffin’s I’ll Say Forever My Love providing the musical backdrop: this being the song that he and his girlfriend, as they walked home from evenings in Oxford Street and Edgware Road in London, had adopted as ‘their song’. The effect could have been overly - sentimental and twee but somehow comes over as genuine, rather sweet and evocative of a particular place and time - and also a reminder  that the musical landscape of that time wasn’t all flower power or street fighting man. It was also the Kinks and a Soho transvestite, soul and Peter Paul and Mary re-appearing from the early sixties to have their biggest UK hit with a John Denver song.

There is, however, something troubling about this reminiscence – the date the song recalls and the tunes it is remembered by don’t match up. The words place the romance in the summer of 1969. However, the two songs in the running for the couple’s special tune, Lola by the Kinks and I’ll Say Forever My Love by Jimmy Ruffin, came from the summer of 1970, a summer musically over-shadowed by Mungo Jerry’s very non-PC In the Summertime (‘have a drink, have a drive...do a ton or a ton and twenty five’). Likewise, the two songs played on the radio and by which Kevin Rowland remembers that summer - Wedding Bell Blues and Leaving On a Jet Plane – weren’t summer songs at all by the time they reached the UK. Wedding Bell Blues was an early Laura Nyro song, performed by her at the Monterey Festival in 1967, but the USA and UK hit was by the Fifth Dimension, reaching the UK charts in January 1970. Similarly, Peter, Paul and Mary’s version of Leaving On A Jet Plane was on the radio in the winter of 1969 and in the charts in early 1970.

In a real sense, this doesn’t matter and could be poetic licence. This is a song, not a historical record, and there may be good reasons for the switch in year and telescoping songs over a period of time into one summer. There could be also something of the same syndrome you sometimes see when people are asked to name the first record they ever bought, with a temptation for achieving credibility to triumph over reality. Hence, the answer is more likely to be “I saved up for ages to buy an import of BB King playing Blind Lemon Jefferson” rather than the more prosaic “I went with my mum to Woolies and got Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah) by Gary Glitter”. Perhaps, in the same way, a lost love is more appropriately remembered by I’ll Say Forever My Love rather than, say, by Middle of the Road and Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep.

Perhaps, too, it merely shows that memory is fallible though, in truth, both Leaving On A Jet Plane and Wedding Bell Blues do sound like summer songs. It is human for the mind to recast the past. It didn’t always snow at Christmas ; the first gig you went to wasn’t really the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club; and it wasn’t always a golden summer on Cromer beach. It only becomes dangerous if you go searching for a rewritten past and expect to find it in the present. This is an odd song. It doesn’t make me think about a place –Oxford Street or Edgware Road - because it is not my reminiscence. It does make me think about the past though, and realise that the distance between now and this song is greater than between the song and the young love it describes. In the interplay of past and present it has itself become a marker along the way.

38 comments:

  1. I absolutely went with my Mom and got "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)" by Gary Glitter.
    :)

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  2. Thanks for enlightening me about this band Geoff - I thought it was a one hit wonder and nothing more til now!

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  3. I saw this band live a couple of times - they are truly GREAT live.......

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  4. There is a version of the single that comes out with a six-panel fold-out poster of Kevin Rowland.... which I have:)

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  5. I'm not sure what I think about the whole technique of turning a record into a jigsaw puzzle of influences.... It's all a bit bombastic maybe.

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  6. This song and the whole album (and this column) are such a profound exploration of the artifice of memory!

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  7. I never quite followed why Rowland would dress up in opulent Brooks Brothers attire while promoting an album that seethed with an almost pathological hatred for the British upper class ("Don’t Stand Me Down").

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  8. I agree about it feeling complicated to embrace the jigsaw puzzle approach to songwriting. Especially when you remember that this band got in trouble for copying too closely - a song called “One of Those Things” led to a copyright case against them for its closeness to the 1978 hit “Werewolves of London".......

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  9. I love spoken word music like this. Here's an additional list in case anyone wants to further explore this artform........

    1. MC Honky – 3 Turntables & 2 Microphones / 2. James Yorkston – Woozy With Cider / 3. James Brown – King Heroin / 4. Big Hard Excellent Fish – Imperfect List 2 / 5. Talking Heads – Seen & Not Seen / 6. The White Stripes – Hand Springs / 7. The Flaming Lips – Time Travel?? Yes!! / 8. Tom Waits – Big Joe & Phantom 309 / 9. Luxembourg – Making Progress / 10. The Velvet Underground – The Gift / 11. Kenneth Bager (Feat. Julee Cruise) – Fragment Eleven (The Day After Yesterday) (A Love Story In Five Parts) Part 3 (The Story) / 12. Jegsy Dodd & The Sons Of Harry Cross – 8000 Miles Away / 13. Superqueens – Not For All The E’s In England / 14. Manic Street Preachers – Failure Bound / 15. Coldcut – Mr Nichols (Feat. Saul Williams) / 16. The Vichy Government – Oliver Cromwell In Weimar Berlin / 17. Ironweed – Down To My Grave (Audio Suspects Remix) / 18. Demetri Martin – The Wisdom Song (Feat. Demetri’s Mom

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  10. This whole album is a record-memoir of sorts, as its content for the most part concerns itself with Kevin Rowland telling stories of his life, from day to day to back in the day. Its verse/chorus style is generally Kevin and the band talking followed by a soaring chorus. It's not irritating at all, in fact I think this album is one of the great misunderstood gems, ever. You could also say it's a neat precursor to rap.........

    The other thing about Don't Stand Me Down is that behind the talking and reminiscing, there's really great musicianship, totally moving music. It's really great.

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  11. This is an interesting commentary by Rowland, revealing some of his interesting politics: http://www.garmsville.com/2009/06/1969-kevin-rowland-reminisces.html

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  12. This is also part of a whole genre of songs referencing other songs.... here is my (idiosyncratic) list..........

    Murray Lachlan Young – I’m being followed by The Rolling Stones
    M J Hibbett & The Validators – The lesson of The Smiths
    Spearmint – Scottish pop
    Half Man Half Biscuit – Irk the purists
    New Bad Things – I Suck
    Dickie Goodman – Frankenstein meets The Beatles
    Frank Zappa – Bobby Brown goes down
    Ministry – Jesus built my hot rod
    Built to Spill – You were right
    Peter Parker – Vanishing point perspective
    The Damnwells – I’ve got you
    Barenaked Ladies – Brian Wilson
    The Dandy Warhols – Cool as Kim Deal
    Prefab Sprout – Faron Young

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  13. Great list Steve! There is also Van Morrison’s Cleaning Windows.......

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  14. My contribution is The Damnwells “I’ve Got You” which namechecks a TON of songs (from “I Want You to Want Me” to “Kickstart My Heart”

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  15. I love the idea that some people remember dates/places based on music ("Which summer did we go on a family holiday near St Michaels Mount in Cornwall? Wet Wet Wet were singing Love Is All Around for weeks on end, so it must have been 1994"). I wish I was like that! It would be a great way to organize memories.

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  16. I get instantly transported by Broken Hearts by Living Colour. Whenever I hear this song, I find myself transported back in time to the spring of 1989. I’m driving my parent’s car on my way to meet friends. There is a tape deck in the car and in the tape deck is a well worn cassette of Living Colour’s Vivid, and for some reason, I hear this song playing. In fact, I cannot hear this song without instantly being transported back to this time. In many respects it was an idyllic time.

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  17. I don't understand the reference to "a Soho transvestite".... was there a specific famous transvestite?

    Great column!

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  18. Anyone know which song Geoff means when he writes about Peter Paul and Mary re-appearing from the early sixties to have their biggest UK hit with a John Denver song?

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  19. Julian - it means the Kinks' song "Lola" about a transvestite in a Soho club, from 1970.

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  20. Maggi - "Leaving On A Jet Plane"

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  21. Hahaha, this made me laugh a lot - because it's so true that people try to respond to the question about the first record they bought with lines like "I saved up for ages to buy an import of BB King playing Blind Lemon Jefferson":)

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  22. I love how your columns refer back to one another Geoff - this really should be a book eventually. I think that your ending - "It didn’t always snow at Christmas" - recalls your column on "Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)". And of course the line "it wasn’t always a golden summer on Cromer beach" is from last week's "For What Is Chatteris":)

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  23. Geoff, I would love to know more about what you mean with your final sentences: "the distance between now and this song is greater than between the song and the young love it describes. In the interplay of past and present it has itself become a marker along the way."

    Do you mean that the song feels musically anachronistic? Or that it itself reminds you of the 1980s, when it came out, and the time between now and the 1980s feels like a long period to you? I love the idea that a song about memories of places has now become a marker of time passing itself, but I'd love to know why you think this song marks time's passage.......

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  24. I liked this column a lot Geoff and appreciated the idea that memory can be dangerous (if you seek a revised version of the past in the present). And I agreed with your comment at the end of last week's column comments, where you were explaining about how the idea that all backward glances are, well, backward, is false (with your great comment about a strand of radicalism that includes Bragg and Orwell and celebrates small communities and a simpler earlier kind of life). I agreed that this particular approach was attacked by "New Labour" and its over-focus on the idea of BC/AD, starting afresh, being new. It reminded me of the American Left, which arguably has never achieved anything sustainably socialist because it kept reinventing itself before it got anywhere. It is a good reminder that the rhetoric of progress isn't always progressive rhetoric. But I do still shudder at any idea of golden Cromer summers:)

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  25. Here is that Ruffin song for anyone who wants it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P92l73APG_U

    Thanks for the great column Geoff - just read it now, we were away for Easter!

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  26. This song feels like amazingly mature and bittersweet - I really liked it; thank you Geoff!

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  27. Especially when they shift in the background to actually singing "I'll Say Forever My Love" a little bit.

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  28. Here's the amazing Laura Nyro song mentioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8kuo-TRZU8

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  29. I love Laura Nyro...... She also wrote "Stoned Soul Picnic," "Eli's Comin'," "And When I Die," "Stoney End," "Sweet Blindness," and many more made famous by other artists.

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  30. Glad to see Laura Nyro mentioned..... Artists of the day that recorded her unique and largely morose offerings included but were not limited to Three Dog Night, Barbara Streisand, The Fifth Dimension and other notable recording artists of the day. Her bravado and unique timing were a new sound and no one who recorded her music did it justice.

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  31. Very funny line about Middle of the Road:) Here it is in all its glory for everyone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSNSTerj2Kc

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  32. Oh god, wasn't Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep number one for at least a month?

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  33. Dexys are one of the best bands Britain has ever given birth to and 'Searching For the Young Soul Rebels' is one of the greatest debuts from any band.....

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  34. Here are the best version of the lyrics that I could find......
    -------------------------------------

    ...Yeah, I thought I'd reminisce once more.

    The other day I heard a record on the radio, that sweet record, "The Wedding Bell Blues". It brought me back to the summer, I started to think about the summer of 1969. It's funny how you remember the summers by the records and two records stood out for me that year... there was "The Wedding Bell Blues" and "Leaving On A Jet Plane".

    We used to walk on those hot nights to a pub just off Oxford Street, called "The Grapes". We were both 16, they were sweet, warm nights and it's a fond memory now. We decided we should adopt a song, a song that was current. She wanted "I'll Say Forever, My Love" by Jimmy Ruffin, I wanted it to be "Lola" by The Kinks. We seemed to hear those two records everywhere we went. The two I mentioned previously were predominant songs on the radio at that time, I'd hear them in the mornings when I was having my breakfast, getting ready to go to work. Well, she won. It was never really acknowledged but "I'll Say Forever" became the song.
    I'll say forever my love.

    Some nights I'd walk her home along the Edgware Road, experiencing for the first time this warm friendship and not wanting to be anywhere else. It didn't last, and it happened that my feelings changed before her's, but I'll always remember those days.

    I'll say forever my love. I'll say forever my love.
    Woah-oh-oh-oh, woah-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh.
    I'll say forever my love. I'll say forever my love.
    You were asking me... I care, Baby. (Anyway...)

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  35. Isn't there a bit of Roberta Flack, ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ in the intro to this song too......?

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  36. They are a such a weird and great British punk/Beatles/ABBA hybrid.......

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  37. Re Nick's comment, I suppose I meant that the record strangely seems more recent to now than the summer the song was about did when the record came out, although it is a longer timespan. Also, that a song that was explicitly a reminiscence has itself become for some people something to recall the mid-80's by.

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  38. Cheers for the column, great stuff. From the beginning of 1980 until early 1986 I performed and wrote as part of Dexys Midnight Runners. I'm a web developer now. I also help out with the Bridgnorth Music and Arts Festival now, it's August 26-Sept 4 this year if you want to come: http://www.bridgnorthmusicfest.com/. We're in our 6th year.
    Cheers for the great writing!
    Kevin ("Billy") Adams

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