i came across a new blog yesterday. A few of the posts were music-themed, and kinda reminded me of my own youth. So I’ve spent periods these last 24 hours listening to some old music of mine, to get back into the feeling.
I bought my first Walkman while I was at university. I can remember I was upset about something, but can’t remember what. So I hit my overdraft a bit harder and bought my very first truly portable cassette player, plus an album. It was Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Welcome to the Pleasuredome.
I was also lucky because one of my best friends at university came originally from London, and had contacts in the London Nightclub scene. In particular he had one friend who worked in a Soul Club and used to send cassettes over every now and again. Cassettes which I gladly copied! The songs on them were quite rare, if only because most soul music was American and music wasn’t global yet. Do you remember 12″ records? So we used to hear not just rare tacks, but rare mixes of rare tracks.
I had a look on YouTube and found one such track on there.
The singer was somebody called Gwen Guthrie. She sang as an artist in her own right, but also as a backing singer for the likes of Aretha, Madonna and Stevie Wonder.When I looked her up, I expected to find somebody maybe ten or fifteen years older than me, who’d made pots of money, sailed off into the sunset, and who we never heard of again. Instead I read that we lost her in 1999 to cancer, aged just 48.
Mister Bump 
I’m sad to read that about Gwen Guthrie – I love her song “Ain’t Nothin’ Going on but the Rent”. Fantastic voice 👏
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Actually I read about a few artists yesterday and they came to sticky ends too. we think of our three score and ten as a right these days but still, a lot of people don’t get there.
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And you must be the same age as me 😆
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I believe I am! 👍😁
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Back down memory lane…
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It was coming across your posts that set the ball rolling for me! I was listening to Zapp last night too. A lot of things I haven’t listened to for ages, but I have the album for this somewhere. Back in the day this stuff was really hard to get hold of in the UK. Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on was a big chart hit here but aside from that…. You like reggae?
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Glad I could inspire you. I’ll be heading to Paris this year for the French Open. Maybe I’ll check out the music there. Yes I like reggae.
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I was gonna say check out Tonton David, but he’s more 90s. I guess he *did* retire, a rich man! You’ll find him on YouTube, though. I always fancied going to the French, but we settled for watching it on tv while on holiday in France instead! Paris is someplace special – I used to fly over there maybe one weekend a month, just to soak up the atmosphere.
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It’s the only GS I’ve not gone to so I figured I’d go this year.
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We thought about going but when I looked it was a expensive as Wimbledon – over a thousand. So we never got there, then I had the stroke and sport is not so important now. I used to like my cycling.
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Don’t be so fancy. I did Wimbledon too and my ticket was like 75 US dollars. And that was center courts.
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wow
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