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11/30/2009

The soundtrack of my life

The Guardian asked Peter what his all-time fave songs are and here is the answer:

The first single I bought …

Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers: That's What I Like (1989)
Growing up in an army barracks I remember hearing a lot of army-related songs, mostly about Hitler's genitalia or lack of, the QM's stores and one perennial favourite, that went something along the lines of "left, right, left, right, left" , which I could hear belting out from the parade square even as I put on the turntable my first ever single purchase – Jive Bunny and The Master Mixers, 'Thats What I Like'. Hell seeing days. For me this song was the soundtrack of your second to last enclaves of upwardly mobile underclass muttering disciplined, salute-signalled obedience to the very last enclaves of bona fide [t]officer class 'Ooray 'Enries.

The song that made me smile…

Derek B: Get Down (1987)
It was the 80s, I was eight and I can clearly remember the pool of blood from where one 'army brat summer activity' javelin instructor had carelessly thrust his spike through a pal of mine's head. This song cheered me up and I sat agog for many an hour, listening repetitively to the premiere UK hit pop artistes, Derek B and Easy Q. They spoke of a far-off place called east London. The furthest east I'd been was Tottenham Court Road. They spoke of"sticking sawn-offs up the noses of guards" and more intriguingly to my once innocent ears, some female acquaintance who had "two big things like basket balls and down below was like Niagara Falls". The bloody tape recorder ate my tape, but not before a vision was born.

My awakening to lyrics…

Chas and Dave: Christmas Jamboree Bag (1981)
To the bemusement and amusement of my schoolfriends and probably my family, the 12-year-old junkie rocker in training was an obsessive listener to the Christmas Jamboree Bag. These treasures were the north London duo's mass medleys of music-hall songs, a lot of which had never even been recorded before. They were lyrical, often melancholy, littered with single entendres and always melodic. Even as my eyes were being drawn to the volumes of war poetry in a downstairs closet, I was mesmerised by Harry Was a Champion, A Big Fat Fly Flew by Fat Flo's Flat, and 'Down the Road There was a Bloomin' Riot'. One later partly popped up as a crucial verse in a popular Libertines song: "the other night I goes to a ball and they calls me Cinderella/ and upon my coat I wears a button hole and they calls me a tidy fella/ next to me comes old Mother Brown, pulling up her railway socks/ says to me come and have another dance, cos its ain't quite twelve o'clock/ so off we go, round and round, but there's gonna be some trouble I know/ cos I got no buttons on me trousers/ and me pins ain't none too strong/ hurry up Mrs Brown I can feel it coming down, and it won't take none too long".

My life changing song…

The Smiths: I Started Something I Couldn't Finish (1987)
Somewhere between the pillows and the skies, amidst the stark satanic thrills of adolescent whimsy, there's a second-hand record shop. Lets say it's in Nuneaton. Let's imagine a wonky-fringed 15-year-old striding purposefully towards it with his paper round money in his hand. The week before he'd seen a strange apparition, a call to arms even: some right bramah had paraded out of the same shop, wearing a T-shirt saying 'Shoplifters of the world unite'. Later that day I sat in a room bedecked with QPR memorabilia and stolen library books, a chewed-up Derek B tape and a periscope from an Iraqi tank the old man had brought back from the Gulf... and my life changed for ever. I Started Something I Couldn't Finish cranked into life and something divine occurred to me. Within six months I had officially taken up residence inside Smiths songs 'Well I Wonder', 'Jeanne', 'Real Around the Fountain', 'Nowhere Fast'. I think 'The boy with the thorn in his side' made me want to pick up the guitar. 'This Charming Man' quickly made me put it down again and then 'Rubber Ring' left me in two minds.

My introduction to dance…

The Stone Roses: Fools Gold (1989)
Moving on... It's summer 1997, I'm dossing at my Nan's flat in London NW2 working at Willesden Green cemetery. By now I'm in possession of Benny, a crappy old Spanish guitar that is causing serious rifts in the domestic politics of Nanna Doll's gaff. My cousin Lee Cassidy had a flat in an opposite block. I sat gobsmacked in his kitchen before work one morning as he told me that he'd never listened to guitar music just dance, rave, jungle etc. "Hang on though Pete, hold tight...." and Fools Gold blasted out across the room. Bloody Hell, what the fuck is this? I looked at my cousin and then at my feet. Oh, this must be dancing.

A discovery by 'chance'…

The Skatalites: Marcus Garvey (1965)
One Saturday in the summer of 1997 it was my day off and I wasn't going to sit around at Nanna's being told to shut that bloody row up. I go up west with my little guitar, I play Meet me on the Corner by Lindisfarne. I get moved on. What can you do? You go home with your latest 'purchases', one of which is a Walkman that some careless lad left on a pub bench. You come out of Kilburn tube, because the barriers are being mended, take the 16 up Shoot-up Hill, and you fancy a walk, so you cut through Gladstone Park. There's an old rusting metal railway bridge and daubed upon it for as long as I can remember are the words Dollis Hill Mods with Mods crossed out and replaced with the word Skins and then Skins crossed out again and replaced with the word Mods. You have a look at the Walkman. Quite flash. You put the Walkman on, asteroids destroy Neasden and all the bells in all the churches in London clang like no one's business. I bounce home, trying to walk like a black kid as the Skatalites blow my tiny mind. '007' by Desmond Decker 'Rudy a message to you' by Dandy Livingstone... I felt like Saint Peter just as I passed the junction of Dollis Hill Lane and Damascus Close.

A source of hope…

Billie Holiday: Good Morning Heartache (1946)
Peabody Cottages, Bruce Grove, sometime in 2001. The rain was playing havoc with my attempts to finish my novel. What with the fact that my bedroom roof had just caved in. Aside from that, my girlfriend had ended another vicious row by running down Tottenham High Road in her negligé. The car that I'd bought off a young dole-scrounging, would-be superstar Johnny Borrell didn't fancy the trip (what with it being two hundred and seventy-five quids worth of absolute shite). The phone rang, my Jobseekers Allowance key worker was calling to remind me I needed to come in today as they had concluded their investigations into my false claims and I was to be issued with a demand to repay two years worth of benefit fraud. The phone rang again. It was BT. They were cutting the line. I stubbed my toe on the sideboard and stumbled down the stairs, cracking my head on the record player and spinning it into life. 'Good Morning Heartache' sang Billy Holiday at slightly the wrong speed. I made two promises to myself. I'm gonna have that chord progression one day. And I'm never buying a used car off Johnny Borrell again.

When in Wormwood Scrubs…

The Beatles: Free as a Bird (1977/1995)
There is a corner of some skanky Victorian gaol cell that is forever Billy Bilo's and it was there thatI squashed my ear up against the crack in a cell door and listened to 'Free as a Bird' coming out of the Screw's transistor radio from the landing below. "Turn it up Guv" I begged. He turned it down. "Whats that Doherty?" "Can you turn the radio up please Guv". "Listen to him, will ya, he thinks he's at the Camden Palace, this is Scrubs mate". "It's called Koko's now you fat northern cunt" I muttered under my breath. "No," came a voice from the next cell. "It's definitely Scrubs."
In fairness, the prison guard in question did turn the radio back up, but the song was ending, being followed on the Capital Gold playlist by 'Cool for Cats' by Squeeze. Well, you can't lose them all can you?

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