Pop thinking – Page 5 – For the fainthearted . . .

Laughing to change the world

Both of us arrived early to prepare for the day ahead, and wasted much of the time discussing music. Or perhaps it was not a waste of time, perhaps music is much more serious than any lesson on a school syllabus.

Why Syd Barrett’s name cropped up, I do not remember, but I tapped the keyboard to find my favourite music video of all time.

On a patch of open ground in Belgium, beneath a flyover, four men mimed a song; then pretended to play cricket, using drumsticks for stumps …

Don’t invite the queen of clubs

The nightclubs in Dublin are to reopen tomorrow evening, although the government has not explained how social distancing will operate in the dance floor. Perhaps only Irish dancing will be allowed?

The words of The Queen of Clubs by KC and the Sunshine Band surfaced in the consciousness.

In every nightclub across the nation, sheee-eee-eees the queen of clubs.

The lyrics always created a feeling that being an outsider was permanent. It was a song that told a teenager susceptible to almost any suggestion that there was an “in crowd” …

The subliminal effect of Betcha, by golly, wow

Hardly using the car anymore, there is little possibility of listening to the CD player. I wonder what I shall do with my stack of Compact Discs, most of which were bought when I was driving thirty thousand miles a year and which became familiar friends on many journeys.

There are some unlikely discs among the collection, music by artists probably unknown to people twenty or even ten years younger.

Among the eclectic selection is a collection of hits by The Stylistics. In the 1970s, admitting a familiarity with the …

Benign punk

Looking down from the top deck of the Number 151 Bus, it seemed odd that a shop selling miscellaneous knick-knacks had “The Clash, 1977” on the door. It seems unlikely the name of an English punk band would have met with wide approval in the Dublin of 1977.

Perhaps punks were harshly judged, though. Never being a punk, never being an anything, I remember a sense of grievance at the perception of those who liked punk music.

I remember being eighteen. I had never been arrested, I had never received …

Not talking to girls

Standing outside at breaktime, I became aware that a circle of boys had formed. They wanted to know what I thought about the Champions League results on Wednesday, whether I was going to the Saint Patrick’s Athletic match that evening, and whether I had a ticket for the match against Shamrock Rovers match this coming Friday (the answers to the latter two questions were “yes” and “yes.”

Such conversations are important, they establish a rapport between teacher and students. Such a rapport provides a foundation for appropriate behaviour in the …

Everybody watched Top of the Pops

It doesn’t seem like fifteen years ago, but it was on this night in 2006 that BBC Television’s Top of the Pops was broadcast for the final time. The programme had been broadcast weekly for forty-two years.

Top of the Pops was unrivalled in its popularity, it drew fifteen million viewers at its peak. In schooldays, at seven o’clock on a Thursday evening, there could be nothing allowed to interrupt the viewing of the programme. Every boy rushed into the television room and there were howls of disapproval towards anyone …