Lately, I have been on a musical nostalgia trip and am trying to find a few lost gems from my youth.
The early seventies is where it started and while I was still at junior school. Finding something from this era that is non-radio played, and has not been stolen for some cheesy commercial is a difficult proposition.
I was only just in double age figures when the music bug hit me hard and would ritually listen to the Top 40 at 12.45 pm on Tuesdays.
It's been almost 2 years since I wrote a music post, the reason being that I exhausted my memory content. While it's a bad idea to avoid the search for new decent music, there's so little of it about I can't be bothered.
Likewise finding old seventies obscure tunes that might trigger memories is also not easy. Whereas some of them may be played to death on the radio and other commercial outlets, others are doomed to obscurity.
Alone Again (Naturally) – Gilbert O'Sullivan (Back to Front – 1972)
1972 is before I started my music obsession but I remember this annoying nasally voice from my youth, as well as his bobble-headed afro-hair image.
I was not a fan and although his voice was distinct and unique like all the best vocalists, this bloke was no better than David Cassidy or Donny Osmond in my mind.
He was someone for teenage girls to swoon over and spread on their bedroom walls.
I still can't make myself listen to the sickly 'Clair' though I can't dispute it is lyrically very strong.
Alone Again (Naturally) was a huge hit in America, much more so that in my native England, and I had no idea at the time, its tone was so dark.
It tells of suicidal thoughts, being jilted at the altar, and the death of his parents. This is very heavy stuff for one so young and lyrically powerful.
Talk about a depressing tune. I find myself listening to this song often, and will need to stop lest I find myself climbing a tower to jump off the top, as the lyrics describe.
Sweet Illusion – Junior Campbell (Single Only -1973)
While scouring old 'Top of the Pops' shows on YouTube and grimacing every time I see Jimmy Saville pop-up, I happened upon this obscure song that immediately registered in my head.
Like the previous song, I was hardly a fan of this Scottish bloke with a strange name. Is everyone called Campbell from Scotland; he's not the first I have encountered.
For a week or so the song embedded itself in my brain and I had a most annoying ear-worm. I knew then I had hit on something that had resonated with me.
I checked out the other songs from 'Junior Cambell' and found his biggest hit was 'Hallelujah Freedom'. Why was that very much mediocre track so popular whereas ‘Sweet Illusion’ failed to crack the top 10?
You won't hear 'Sweet Illusion' played on the radio, it's too seventies sounding, obscure, and sports the finest elephant trumpeting sound since Farley "Jackmaster" Funk's, 'Love Can't Turn Around'.
Foolish Beat – Debbie Gibson (Out of the Blue -1988)
I rediscovered this old gem around 2016. How it happened I can’t recall, but do remember thinking, ‘how many years since I heard that?’.
Why has this once massive, ex-number one all but had disappeared from the airwaves?
I have to hold big respect for Miss Gibson, writing this amazing heart-breaker at such a young age. If you the type of person that music gets into your psyche and creates an emotional response then you are on my track. Commiserations if you don't have this 'ability', you are missing out.
I should dig into my dusty collection of CD-Singles that are banged up in a cupboard somewhere. I am quite sure this is lying there at the bottom, lost and forgotten about.
If you remember my old music posts you might be thinking, ‘this is all a little ordinary and mainstream for him’.
Quite true I would retort, but I am not all about eclectic, weird shit that nobody has ever heard of. In my youth, before my brain got warped along the way, the mainstream was my thing.
…but if you think I am getting sloppy, and romantic I will add a fourth track so you know that I am still quite in touch with albeit older music, but still, 'that weird shit they used to play in HMV'.
So many bands tried to emulate ‘Siouxsie and the Banshees’, and I am quite OK with that, especially if I can hear their trademark guitar sound in some format or other.
My search goes on for those nostalgic obscure seventies tunes that drag up memories, and may possibly uncover old memory fragments.