Keep it vinyl – McSherry’s Musings

Music for me has always been a respite, an oasis from the maddening world.

‘If music be the food of love, play on’, is the opening of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’… and this brings me back to our English Literature Class of ‘74.

It was a time when vinyl was all all the rage. We followed the Top 30 – The Charts – with as much fervour as Match of the Day. Record shops were booming with a regular traipse of teenage girls in bell bottoms and platforms, and lads in skinners, Dr Martens and crombies, purchasing singles (45s) and LPs (331/3s).

We avidly watched ‘Top of The Pops’ on Thursday nights from 7-7.30pm, enjoying one-hit wonders such as Black Betty, Brother Louie, Son of my Father, and the regulars, who no sooner exited the Top 30, than they had another hit making its way up the charts, Showwaddywaddy, ABBA, Rod Stewart…

The record player was there as far back as I recall, and on Sunday afternoons, my Dad put on the vinyl, most memorably Johnny Cash in San Quentin, The Clancy Brothers, The James Last Orchestra and indeed ‘Up went Nelson!’ by The Go Lucky Four (a group of Belfast school teachers!) commemorating the blowing up of Nelson’s Column in 1966… ‘Up went Nelson in old Dublin, all along O’Connell Street the stones and rubble flew asup went Nelson and the pillar too!’

The first record I added to the box was ‘Portrait of Donny’ in 1972, a Christmas surprise. It was indeed quite a surprise to have teen heart-throb Donny Osmond smiling out at me on Christmas morning. Yikes!

I told no-one, until now that is! After that, I took control of my life as the Táin LP by Horslips, complete with a chained fist on the cover, was the second in my collection. And so it grew and grew, as the ‘70s rolled on…Singles for 85p and LPs £2.99, as I recall.

It was also around 1974 on a lunchtime break from the ‘cademy, when I ‘borrowed’ a little transistor radio from Woolworths on Scotch Street.

I loved that transistor, which fitted neatly in my inside blazer pocket, to be later stashed under my mattress.

Under the covers on Tuesday and Sunday nights, I’d listen to the Top 30 on Radio Luxembourg before dozing off to sleep… bliss!

The lyrics of songs become embedded in the mind: ‘I know a girl from a lonely street…’ (‘Sunday Girl’ by Blondie); ‘Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landside, No escape from reality’ (‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen); ‘The soldier blues were trapped on a hillside, the battle raging all around’ (‘Billy Don’t Be A Hero’ by Paper Lace).

I recall a classmate in third year saying local boys in Dungannon were whistling the Paper Lace classic while walking past British soldiers on the street; a hit that ended in tragedy for Billy who didn’t heed his wife’s advice not be a hero! It was quite an art to whistle that tune!

Recently, following the death of Meat Loaf, a friend of similar vintage told me he knew all the lyrics to every song on the Bat out of Hell (1977) album.

“Don’t we all?” I thought, even ‘Paradise by the dashboard light’, and that’s a lotta words!… ‘Okay, here we go, we got a real pressure cooker going here, two down, nobody on, no score, bottom of the ninth…’

Leaving the rose-tinted glasses off for a minute, they weren’t all classics; indeed some were comical, while others outright bizarre.

There was Chuck Berry’s ‘Ding-aling’ with silver bells hanging on a string, Ernie the Fastest Milkman in the West’s duel with Two Ton Ted from Teddington who drove the bakers van, and the gush ‘Grandad’ sang by old codger Clive Dunne.. ‘Grandad, grandad you’re lovely, that’s what we all think of you’ Jees!

Remarkably, the aforementioned trio went to Number 1 in the hit parade.

I am reliably informed the Top 30 is not on the radar of teenagers these days; rather they are drawn to Spotify and selecting their own genre of music. To this aul lad it seems akin to many other facets of contemporary life, a withdrawal from community experience to the individual bubble.

My daughter thumps the music out of her room – and imagine my surprise when a few weeks ago she played a few of her favourite tunes as we drove to Omagh. They included, ‘The Gambler’ (Kenny Rogers – 1978), ‘A Land Down Under’ (Men at Work – 1981), ‘Africa’ (1982 – Toto).

A bigger surprise met us both when I rummaged through the record box last week and there were the Men at Work and Toto singles that hadn’t been played for years.

Perhaps it was a golden era after all, when we selected 45s on the jukeboxes in McGlinchys café in Coalisland, Toals in Carrickmore, and Easter weekends in Bundoran. The sight of the vinyl dropping before the needle came across was a thing of beauty.

Since those heady days, being the eldest of eight, new albums and singles were added to the box, and some disappeared when I went off on my travels in the early ‘80s.

l Does anyone want to swap a Dancehall Sweethearts LP (Horslips, 1974) for Make it Big (Wham, 1984)?!