Music in mind

Music has been many things. An escape, a motivation and an inspiration. An aural journey that started with early tracks from Buddy Holly to the likes of Springsteen, The Highwaymen, Blondie, Talking Heads, Eric Bogle and the classical music that sneaked in later. 

Music though, also guides me to memories in time and space, like a seven-note nostalgia Tardis. Some songs are so linked to moments that the intro is enough to dump me mentally in a time long gone which is not only remembered but remembered vividly because the music never allowed the memory to fade. 

They are not necessarily favourite tunes or songs which I would even play but whenever I hear them, I am once again, younger, hairier and more adventurous.

Here are some of those tunes and their places.

Loch Laggan. Graceland - Paul Simon.

As a cross-country ski racer and occasional triathlete in the eighties, many hours are spent racking up mileage on the bike. Once or twice a week in the summer months I pedal the sixty miles from Aviemore, through small villages to the town of Fort William, circle the roundabout and head back home. In my back pocket is a Walkman with the Graceland album running on a near continuous loop.

 As I ride the fast, flat stretch of road along Loch Laggan towards the distant dam, sunshine enhances the already gorgeous, mountains around me. The entire experience is transformed from exercise to ‘High-cardio religious experience’. 

I can’t hear the words “The Mississippi delta was shining like a national guitar” without being drawn back to that lochside and the feeling of cruising through a work of pure, natural, art.

Minnesota. Joshua Tree - U2

Hitching across the USA I alight at a rest area somewhere on the I-94. It is late evening and the place is deserted so I decide to get out my sleeping bag and sleep. I climb onto the roof of the low toilet block and survey the flatness before me as the sun sets. My background music, as it had been between rides, was U2s Joshua Tree.

I’m no great fan and this is still their only album I’d listen to end to end, mainly because it drags the memories of this journey front and centre and reminds me that it is possible to be both utterly free and completely stuck all at the same time. “Running to stand still” as well as being a lovely, sad song could pretty much have been a description of my life at this point.

Seattle. Full Moon Fever – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Two days before flying home to Scotland from SeaTac Airport I lost my passport. This happened at some point during a very drunken leaving do and I probably gave it to someone as a souvenir or swapped it for a hot dog or something equally stupid.

Next morning found me standing outside the British consulate in Seattle hoping that something could be arranged in a hurry. I was hours too early, and tired, after spending the night trying to get some sleep or walking around the streets when the cold meant I couldn’t keep sitting. 

As the city woke up, I had the headphones on and was dancing around to ‘The apartment song’ and ‘Don’t come around here no more’ in a pair of cowboy boots outside the consulate and probably looked like I was being silently electrocuted.

Something though, couldn't be arranged in a hurry and it was another six weeks before I finally flew out with my new, temporary, passport.

Aviemore. Real Gone Kid – Deacon Blue.

By day a ski instructor but four nights a week I was also a barman in the Freedom Inn Hotel in my hometown. Working nights was my partially successful masterplan to earn more money and drink less so that I would end the season more solvent and sober than was usually the case. It was a legendary ‘stick to the floor as you walk to the toilet’ place but it was always full at the weekend with a resident’s disco that ran until four am or until people stopped buying drink. Real Gone Kid was huge at the time and requested so often, that on his final night before heading back to New Zealand, the DJ stopped everything after playing it, ranted that he “effing hated this shitty song” and then broke the single in two before flinging it across the room and passing out drunk soon after. Music duties were transferred while the DJ slept it off in the cellar. Whenever I hear this I wonder what became of him.

Michigan. Nemesis – Shriekback

This track was sent to me in a mixtape by my (about to be) girlfriend from the US and it reminds me of many things around that period in my life. The excitement of flirting through the medium of magnetic tape (Spotify doesn’t even come close) and all the memories of first setting foot in America, walking around Detroit, running along the Red Cedar River in East Lansing and all the joy of being in love with a place and a person. I was monumentally bad at holding on to that feeling but it was an incredible moment all the same and the experiences of that time had a lasting effect on me. 

I wrote about this previously and the full story is here  Awake in a dream of America. - Neil Smith - Ireland - beBee

Glasgow. The Final Cut – Pink Floyd

For a while this was my accompaniment on the journey home from Strathclyde University’s Jordanhill campus to my shared apartment. In memory it is always winter, dark and damp. The background sound effects add occasional confusion and I would regularly stop when I heard a meow on the tape and look around for the non-existent cat. 

The downbeat atmosphere on the album and the psychologically observant lyrics chimed perfectly with my mood in that place and time so I probably listened to it more than was strictly healthy. 

Glasgow. The best years of our lives – Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel

If ‘The Final Cut’ was the album of my student winter then this was very much its opposite. Even the slow tracks, like Sebastian, have a lust for life about them that is absent from Roger Water’s lyrics.

I first saw the band live in Glasgow’s City Halls and loved the over-the top theatricality and showmanship of the lead singer. Excellent songs, good patter and great interplay with the audience made for the best possible start to the summer. My friend Owen, who had never heard of Steve Harley, joined me for the gig and a few beers and remarked on the way out; “Wow! He’s a mad f**ker”.

I couldn’t better Owen’s description.

There are other tunes, other places and other times but this article is long enough so I’ll leave it here. After years of not listening enough to records and not going to enough live shows I am beginning to get back into the habit and as long as I am singing along, I’ll feel alive.