Playlist

As a forgetful person and wannabe writer, I have always kept notebooks in one form or another.  I generally have a number of them on the go, ranging from cheap, pocket notebooks that don't spoil the line of my immaculate tailoring, to more substantial hardbound items.  As these fill up at different rates, the wear and tear on them, and the chronological span of their contents, can vary widely.

Recently, I came across some thin little spiral-bound notebooks I had kept in coat pockets in the late 1970s / early 1980s, and which now look like archaeological finds.  Their pages are virtually welded together at the edges, and much stained.  Once opened, however, they are perfectly legible, and offer some surprising insights into my 25-year-old self.

Apart from concluding that I am considerably less interesting now than I was then, but much happier (those were the proverbial Interesting Times), I noticed that I had been in the habit of noting down tracks, mainly heard on the radio, that had got my attention.  I'd forgotten about that.

That post-Punk era was a car-crash of styles, musically, and these notebooks reflect that.  To give you a flavour of the times, these are some of the tracks I had noted down, 1979-81.  I've omitted albums and band and performer names without tracks.  It's a curious mix of the fab, the forgotten, the forgettable, the frightening, and the funky.

Prince Far I, No More War
Ricky Grant, All For One
Throbbing Gristle, United
The Jam, Eton Rifles
The Delta Five, Mind Your Own Business
Smack, Edward Fox
Glaxo Babies, Stay Awake
The Fall, Totally Wired
Tom Waits, Jersey Girl
Stray Cats, Runaway Boys
The Mechanics, Talking to the Wall
Talking Heads, Once in a  Lifetime
Barry Andrews, Win A Night Out With A Famous Paranoid
The Bush Tetras, Too Many Creeps
The Cure, Forever
Linda Ronstadt & J.D. Souther, Hearts Against the Wind
The Spizzles, Risk
Chaka Khan, Heed the Warning
Orchestral Manouevres, Joan of Arc
Steve Winwood, There is a River
Any Trouble, Girls Are Always Right
Marianne Faithfull, Ballad of Lucy Jordan
Tom Waits, The Piano Has Been Drinking

The thing is, of those 23 songs, I can now only really call to mind six.  A session with Spotify and Wikipedia did shed a little light, but  I forget, I forget...  It's a lesson in how useful notebooks are, but also in how much we become strangers to ourselves as the years go by.

I mean, Orchestral Manouevres?? Really...