On a lighter note.

Hi Gragon, something lighter definitely required. 

As a child I remember singing along to a Tommy Steel song Little Red Bull, I bought a little glass one with my pocket money one year and on holiday, a customs officer while searching through our bags dropped something that tickled like glass, apparently for years my parents were telling friends that I was a very good customs deterrent as it was a miniature whisky that had actually broken but he hurried us off when I started crying and sobbed that better not me my glass bull to him. 

I remember with my pocket money the first record I wanted to buy was Sugar by the Archie’s, it was sold out everywhere so I never did get it. I vividly remember training round Woolworth and WH Smith’s to try and get it.

The song Mr Blue Sky is still one of my favourite songs, it brings back memories of it blaring from the Boys dorms while us Girls at teacher training college were having what I considered a very boring practical lecture on Cricket. 

My two young girls used to watch a TV programme called Wizadora, and sing the refrain Wizadora we adore her, when visiting a petting farm with two shire horses called Harry and Genie, they sang the names of the horses to the Wizadora song over and over again.

You can’t ask a lady their age but you can tell sometimes by the music they love. 

Edit P.S I’ve just realised it was White Bull, I must have been thinking of something that gives you wings !! 

Oh you’ve set off some memories for me, Gragon. 

When I was very small we had a couple of LPs that my little sister and I played endlessly. One was Vivien Leigh reads Beatrix Potter. I still know all the words to “we’re a happy family, yes a happy family and we live at the foot of the old oak tree”. The other was Jimmie Rodgers English Country Garden. We also had Swan Lake. I’ll never forget the day the coffee table collapsed underneath me as I danced the dying swan atop it. 

My big sister was a hippy and came home one day with A Whiter Shade of Pale by Procul Harem. I would have been about 10. We lay on her bedroom floor in the dark, incense burning, and listened in awe. 

Then there was the summer of Grease. I was 14 and my best friend and I were both in love with John Travolta. I bought my little sister the double album for Christmas - but I bought early in September. By Christmas she had grown out of it big time but I didn’t have any more money to buy her another present. Most Embarrassing Gift Ever. 

By that time we’d discovered Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. Only a few pressings of Ian Dury’s album New Boots and Panties carried that track and they were more expensive in the Record and Tape Exchange in Notting Hill Gate. I spent a sneaky hour going through the copies and (the shame of admitting it) swapping the sleeves so I paid less for the more expensive disc. I got to tell Ian Dury that story in person when  I did a job for UNICEF years later that involved spending a week travelling round Zambia with him on a polio vaccination drive. He laughed. 

The other song that springs to mind is She’s got a secret smile by Semisonic. It played the entire summer of 1999 when I was working in Kosovo but my lover was in Belgrade. I had been given a radio by a grateful local radio company (I used to go on air and read out names of the missing who’d been located by the Red Cross. The radio station boss loved my voice) and it was on full time in my office at the ICRC in downtown Pristina. I thought wistfully of my lover every time it played. 

That’s enough of my reminiscing. I’ve enjoyed it. Thanks for the prompt 

xx

Hi Gragon,

Your post actually made my heart ache for the  good times of my youth.

Our family got out first fancy record player with plastic lid, speakers and everything :) My dad let my sister and me choose our first record.  Mine was I See a Star by Mouth & MacNeal, my sister’s was Coo Ca Choi by Alvin Stardust and my dad chose Mouldy Old Dough by Lieutenant Pigeon.  What a combination! But what fond memories.

Then there was all the singing harmonies with my sister (sadly no longer with us) to the Everly Brothers Cathy’s Clown and Devoted to you.  Although those hits had been around for a while I’m sure the sixties songs made a bit of a come back in the late seventies, early eighties.

Great thread!

Hello Gragon

Well my first musical obsession was (can't believe I am admitting this) Charles & Eddie 'Would I lie to you?'

I was nine when it was released and it's the first song I kept putting on either repeat (or rewinding the cassette tape so I could listen to it again and again) whilst dancing on my bed along to it. 

I still really like it to this day 

Hi , remember that song well, although not where I was at the time. This last week I’ve been listening to radio on the TV, 70s, 80s and 90s music. Dancing on a bed doesn’t seem to change down the generations, my sister bounced on mine and broke it, my daughter danced of hers and snapped a Support, I’m now wondering if you have a further confession!!

I’m a keen quizzer and that song quite often comes up in quiz questions. 

KTatHome

Hi KT 

All I can say is that it wasn’t my sister who was my companion when I broke the bed 

First record I ever bought was Sugar, Sugar, KTatHome 

Our first record player was about a week old, and I had a serious crush on a boy on the school bus. I played that record endlessly!

Oh , where’s that tut tut button when I want it LOL.

I reckon you’re just jealous KTatHome