Quite A Crowd

I love music and I love it loud, within reason. I once had a neighbour that shared my passion for blaring music but I just couldn’t agree with his taste. He kept me awake at night in the worst way and it was terrible, both the song selection and the volume. It wouldn’t have been such a pain if it had been a genre I could get on board with - some gypsy punk, lo fi, hell even some prog rock.. Sadly, I was forced to only listen to the incessant throbbing and thumping and womp womping of what I believe to be called “dubstep”.
Anyway, I digress... loud music, good music, I love it.
This hasn’t always been the case, my first association with music is primarily, fear.
The strumming guitars open Should I Stay Or Should I Go by The Clash and my Mother turns from the record player and looks at me. I remember her platinum blonde hair, kept short and styled - a look I can retrospectively compare to Annie Lennox - hair that she has since tried and failed to grow long in an attempt to look more “Mumsy”. Hair that I have seen lathered in peroxide, left to develop under plastic caps whilst I sat watching... waiting... talking to her in an American accent, on the toilet seats of bathrooms that we have since left behind..
“This is one of my favourites”, she says. I stare back at her with an expression that surely says “Yeah, so?” I am 4 or 5, at the very most. This is my earliest memory.
* * * * *
In the first house that we lived in, just my Mother and I, there was a space in the corner of the living room devoted to music, forever cluttered, full of items kept, hoarded, “Just in case.” Ancient issues of MOJO and Q magazine stacked up to my chin, encyclopaedias of stuff that I was sure meant something to somebody.
I sit cross-legged on the floor, reading reviews of records I hadn’t heard and examining pictures of people that I didn’t particularly like the look of (Shane MacGowan and Bobby Gillespie, specifically) and I often wondered why she didn’t just throw them out.
“You never know.”
Four framed pictures of each of The Beatles hung above the huge hi-fi system and I would sit at her feet, sifting through the piles of records, cassettes and CD’s while she made her song selections, unaware of how important these moments would prove to be when it came to my autonomous engagement with music.
She cranks the volume and begins to sing along with Joe Strummer...
I look up at her, horrified.
When the chorus arrives and the tempo picks up I, with the logic of an infant, decide that my singing Mother has gone insane. Strummer’s voice absolutely terrifies me, and my Mother’s reaction to the song baffles me because I’ve never seen her like this before.
I pick myself up off the floor and quickly escape to the safety of her bedroom where I hide behind the door and in the dark for the remainder of the song. Strummer’s wailing at around 2 minutes into the song assures me that music is horrible and for the next few years of my life the opening of that song instigates the same response. I get scared. I run. I hide behind a door. I wait for it to be over.
Since then I’ve actually grown quite fond of music. I chose to adopt, embrace and build upon the exceptional taste of my Mother and I can only thank her for persisting through my musical rebellion during the late-Nineties, a brief foray into Euro-Pop.
* * * * *
And through this one story I am presented with a former self and all at once I begin to see how I am the way I am and how my Mother’s early influence has affected my decisions since and all the places I have ever been and all the people I have ever met and there has always been music and songs and stories. And I remember crying to “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye” and “These Days” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and dancing to “Parklife” and “This Charming Man” and “You Can Call Me Al” and I know that wherever I go and whoever I meet, there will always be music.
And songs.
And stories...