Featured Essay: The Day I Became a Music Aficionado

by Alison M Thompson

I’ve been a big music fan all my life. I love going to gigs, I’ve been to Glastonbury Festival a few times, I’m a regular attendee at a more local festival, and while I was an indie rock chick, now in my fifties my tastes are more eclectic. But it wasn’t always that way.

Back in the seventies, my parents weren’t into what my dad described, with a sneer, as “popular music” and the soundtrack to my childhood was speech radio, classics, opera and jazz. My dad was also a George Formby fan, and he’d occasionally entertain us with renditions of Leaning on a Lamp Post on his banjolele.

Cut to January 1981. I’d just turned ten and was getting into music – in that I’d acquired a portable radiogram (complete with automatic record changer!) at a jumble sale. The radio didn’t work very well, so I listened to my mum’s 45s. It was a paltry collection. We’d been burgled a few years earlier, and the small vinyl collection from her youth had been ransacked. I was left with what the thieves rejected: instrumentals by The Shadows (minus Cliff Richard), Danny Williams crooning Moon River, Adam Faith’s How About That (my personal favourite) and, surprisingly, Elvis Presley’s Wooden Heart. My little brother and I alternated between stacking discs on the extended spindle and singing along, and putting a Matchbox car on a record, cranking the speed up to 78 and seeing how far it flew across the room. Okay, when I say I was getting into music, I wasn’t exactly an aficionado…

All that changed one Saturday morning during an episode of BBC TV’s Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. My dad was a sound technician for the BBC, a boom operator, and his crew often worked on the show.  My brother and I were avid fans and we watched every week. Dad had taken in a small woolly doll of mine, Jack, and he was often spotted sitting on the front of Noel Edmonds’ desk, wearing a homemade ‘Crew 17’ badge. Fame at last! We lived in hope of catching a glimpse of my dad, operating his boom.

This particular morning, after a film about guide dogs and some calls from children wanting to swap Etch-a-Sketches for Action Men, and a cartoon (probably not the exact schedule that week, but you get my drift), there was a live musical performance by a silly chap in a silly hat, singing a silly song in a silly accent. It was hilarious, especially because as he sang, he pointed to the words chalked on a big blackboard and everyone in the studio sang along. I was captivated! This was music, really good music – no more Elvis for me! I resolved there and then to save up my pocket money and make this song the very first addition to my own record collection.

Two weeks later, my mum took me to the local branch of Our Price Records. Wearing my favourite green corduroy trousers, Clarks shoes and anorak, I hovered outside nervously, watching as people in fashionable togs disappeared into the dimly lit store. In the window was a handwritten list of that week’s top twenty singles and there at the very top, the number one record that week, was the record I intended to buy. See! Despite the anorak and sensible shoes, I was one of the cool kids! I had my finger on the pulse of the British music scene - and I was only ten years old! Maybe I was a music aficionado, after all.

Eventually, I plucked up the nerve to venture into the shop. Amidst the smoky fog, middle-aged men in double denim decorated with skulls and flames leaned menacingly against the racks of records. A Black man with a huge afro and headphones was tapping his foot as he hummed along to a silent song, and peacock-haired youths in ripped T-shirts and studs swore aggressively at each other as they flicked through the albums.

In I crept, sweaty pound note in hand, desperate to buy the best song I’d ever heard, which I would treasure forever and play on my radiogram over and over again. It took me three attempts to find the courage to tell the leather-clad man behind the counter what I wanted. Despite his scornful sneer, I left the shop smiling, my most prized possession clutched securely in a red and white carrier bag. I felt so proud of myself. I was a music fan, and I wanted everyone to know I’d just bought my first ever record - and it was a banger!

The singer? Joe Dolce. The record? Shaddap You Face.

Of course, at that tender age I didn’t know the error of my ways. Back at home, I wrote the lyrics on a chalk board and pointed at them with a wooden spoon while I pretended my teddies were singing along. It was only years later that I realised that yes, I was one of those people who kept the mighty Ultravox off the number one spot.

I still haven’t quite forgiven myself. 

Alison M Thompson is a music fan, editor, proofreader and writer from the UK.

https://www.theprooffairy.com/alison-m-thompson-author/