28 August 1988: I Tried to Impress You but You Threw It Back in My Face

1. Yazz & The Plastic Population: The Only Way Is Up
2. Brother Beyond: The Harder I Try
3. Kylie Minogue: The Loco-Motion
4. Breathe: Hands to Heaven
5. Julio Iglesias featuring Stevie Wonder: My Love
6. Bomb the Bass: Megablast / Don't Make Me Wait
7. Womack & Womack: Teardrops
8. BVSMP: I Need You
9. Phil Collins: Groovy Kind of Love
10. Fairground Attraction: Find My Love
11. Tanita Tikaram: Good Tradition
12. a-ha: Touchy!
13. Kim Wilde: You Came
14. Yello: The Race
15. Jane Wiedlin: Rush Hour
16. Robbie Robertson: Somewhere Down the Crazy River
17. Status Quo: Running All Over the World
18. Level 42: Heaven in My Hands
19. Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine: Anything for You
20. Metallica: Harvester of Sorrow
21. Big Country: King of Emotion
22. Chris Rea: On the Beach ['88 remix]
23. Iron Maiden: The Evil That Men Do
24. Guns 'N Roses: Sweet Child O' Mine
25. Spagna: Every Girl and Boy
26. UB40: Where Did I Go Wrong?
27. S'Express: Superfly Guy
28. The Hollies: He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother
29. Donny Osmond: Soldier of Love
30. Mory Kante: Yeke Yeke
31. The Four Tops: Reach Out I'll Be There ['88 remix]
32. Bill Medley: He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother
33. Marc Almond: Tears Run Rings
34. The Proclaimers: I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)
35. Europe: Superstitious
36. Natalie Cole: Jump Start
37. The Funky Worm: Hustle! (To the Music...)
38. All About Eve: Martha's Harbour
39. The Primitives: Way Behind Me
40. The Commodores: Easy

~~~~~

In England just a week and already a familiarity was setting in - and so, too, was an interest in music and TV. Based purely on the ravings of a distant cousin, my sister bought the Bros album Push from the giant Tower Records store on Piccadilly Circus. Now the first exposure to a pop act as (temporarily) big as Bros was significant enough but in the greater scheme of things the more important event was setting foot inside a record shop which would completely astonish me: a place I would never not go inside if I happened to be in the area, a place I could spend hours upon hours browsing, a place I still associate certain purchases with. There would be others in the future - Parrot Records in Basildon, Sam The Record Man, A & B Sound and Hot Wax in Calgary, CD Warehouse in Bangkok, Purple Music and Hot Tracks in Seoul - but this was where it all began and it was the record shop unto which all others would be judged.

In his recent tribute to the extraordinary music scene of 1971, Never a Dull Moment, David Hepworth describes his experiences rummaging through record shops in his penniless student days and what an invaluable learning experience it was; unable to purchase all but a small fraction of the records he was interested in, he made do with studying the sleeves, learning about the musicians and producers, soaking it all in. For me, however, it was all about consumption: buying what I could afford to buy and aspiring to when I was broke. Being a full-scale music consumer didn't begin for a few months yet but the Tower Records on Piccadilly already loomed as impressively as any cathedral we were to visit. (Appropriate, then, that that very week we would visit Canterbury Cathedral, the first of many glorified churches we'd take it)

But at this point I did not have the pocket money to buy a cassette so I had to make do with the one my sister invested in. Since we shared a bedroom it was inevitable that Push would become as familiar to me as it would to her. Listening to it now, I'm not surprised that it has aged pitifully nor that the tunes are so thin - that goes without saying; what is surprising is how little of this album has come back to me and how few memories it manages to spark - beyond, that is, the act of listening to it on the very modest tape player my sister and I had in our shared bedroom. Having just set up a blog devoted to music and memories colliding, I find this a tad depressing: if the first bit of new music I listened to fails to conjure up much, how can I expect a whole year's worth of tunes to bring out the nostalgia? 

Fortunately, this week the chart begins to show a turnover: holdovers from before we arrived were either beginning to slip down or disappear completely from the listings. Your BVSMP's and Funky Worms were slowly being eased out of the picture by the likes of Level 42 and The Proclaimers, which begins to form the basis of my earliest music memories of this year. Similarly, my hazy recollections of our first week begin to take on some more clarity during week 2: the overly generous spread of gastronomical oddies that my grandma's cousin laid out for us for lunch (the kind of meal that Thomas Mann or John Cheever would term a "luncheon"), the white cheedar cheese, odd-looking bacon and very unsexy cereal aisle at the Basildon SavaCentre,  the English Channel's rough winds and waves at Dover. (Having said that, I haven't the faintest idea why we went to Brentwood on the 29 of August or quite what we did while we were there: a memory that isn't so much hazy as completely non-existent) Finally, on the last day of August, we went to Billericay to get school uniforms.

Shopping for uniforms and supplies should have given me that sense of foreboding that the first day of school was right around the corner but I don't recall too much dread at that point. It probably helped that we were constantly taking day trips, thereby keeping everyday life to the sidelines as much as possible. Then there was the absurdity of it: having watched the old Diary of Adrian Mole TV series, I was well aware that British kids were forced to wear a suit and tie to school; what I still ignorant of was the accompanying PE uniforms: a white indoor kit, a red outdoor and black Speedoes for swimming. Returning home, I hung up my new blazer, chucked my vast PE kit under my bed and quickly forgot all about starting school. An episode of Neighbours was about to start, something I was already quite familiar with.

~~~~~

young Paul's favourite: Rush Hour

older Paul's retro pick: Megablast / Don't Make Me Wait