Pop thinking – Page 6 – For the fainthearted . . .

Vincent’s death

Don McClean’s songs were always beyond the comprehension of a schoolboy. American Pie, with its references no-one seemed quite to understand was hard enough, but Vincent seemed even harder. It had no-one dancing in the gym and no jokers stealing crowns, but the story it told seemed inexplicable. How could the life of someone as brilliant as Vincent van Gogh go the way it did? How could it come to a tragic end when there seemed everything in the world for which to live?

The pictures of Vincent’s paintings …

Dancing to the music

A Led Zeppelin fan, he had little time for music by other bands. Anything he disliked was dismissed as “pop music” or as “pretentious rubbish.”

The latter description was chiefly reserved for a rock group called Yes, of which Rick Wakeman was a leading member, and Genesis, the band of Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel. Such musicians would have been impervious to such comments, particularly from an impecunious sixth form college student whose regarded his views as normative.

Only years later did the thought occur that his vocabulary …

Meanings in sound

Michael Rosen’s Word of Mouth programme on BBC Radio 4 was a discussion on the creation of language with David J. Peterson, the creator of two languages for the television series The Game of Thrones.

Damon, a friend in schooldays, could not have coped with the idea of someone creating a complete language, Damon could not even cope with the language of pop songs.

It was Tina Charles’ song, I love to love that seemed to be the step too far for Damon. We only shared a room for …

Tunes for moments

Sailing on a Brittany Ferries vessel from Plymouth, thirty-five years ago, on a July morning in 1986, anticipation mixed with apprehension. A Renault 5 was not the most capacious of cars, even with just two people there was little spare space once a tent and assorted camping equipment had been loaded.

It was a first French holiday, a first time driving on the right, a first time being immersed in communities where no English was spoken; the possibilities of disaster seemed numerous.

The passengers included a large group of French …

The most helpful of songs

Radio 4 are trailing their Soul Music programme to be broadcast on Wednesday, the music is familiar, the Irish air The Parting Glass. It recalls Saint Patrick’s Day in 1999, a television programme recalling Paddy Clancy who died the previous winter. Musicians linking arms around the grave and joining in the words of the haunting ballad.

The song asks the most existential of questions. If one’s life ended in the next five minutes, what damage would have been left unrepaired? What memories would remain in people’s minds long after …

Les McKeown made us smile

It was 1981 and there had been a school reunion a couple of weeks previously. A few dozen of us had travelled down to Devon to attend a lunch and to tell stories that would have been boring to anyone who had not been at school with us.

In the spirit of the occasion, some of us had travelled by train and had been met by a bus from the school. It seems odd, four decades later, that anyone would have attended a reunion at a school they had only …