Category: Memories / Nostalgia

Tick Tock Tuesday #39 (7 July 2020)

I thought I’d create a new challenge. It is a challenge primarily for me, because I’m new to this platform, and because you don’t really know me yet, nor I you. As my name suggests, I am recovering from a stroke, and I like to push myself in all kinds of little ways… including getting to know the Wonderful World of WordPress. Although this is something I will be doing, I invite you, if this idea takes your fancy, to play along with me and share with me some of your own selections.

My plan is: each Tuesday, until I run dry, I shall post some piece of art with which I have some connection – which has helped to mould me, which makes me tick. Okay, a piece of art is a bit vague – it might be a piece of music, a movie, a book, a painting, or ???? – so my phrasiology is deliberate. It might be anything – I will play this post by ear, so I’m not sure what I’ll think of each week. And, I’ll keep posting on the theme weekly until I run out of ideas.

My rules? Well, I’m not big on rules! My choice will be something with which I feel a connection. That’ll be the important thing, just having some kind of fleeting affection for something probably won’t be enough, unless I’m using my choice as an example of something bigger.

It will be one choice per week – I’m aware that long posts can be quite onerous to read, and I’m in no hurry to complete this so if I have two ideas, I’ll probably hold the second until the next week.

In that same vein, I’ve created this block as a Reusable Block, which I intend repeating for every post on this theme. The block ends with a full-width separator, so if you want to skip ahead each week it doesn’t really matter.

I probably won’t post any lyrics, or any kind of analysis – if you like my choice, the information will be out there for you. But I will try to briefly explain why I feel a connection to my choice, just to try and enhance readers’ understanding of what makes me tick.

I will tag my posts TTT and I will go looking for other posts with that tag. If you’d like to join in, please do the same, or comment, or pingback to this post, and feel free to reproduce my graphic. Lastly, I look forward to reading about what makes you tick.

With just a couple of these posts to go, I want to recap on one of my early inspirations, and still one of my top artists.

The thing about Bob Marley is that you feel like his music is seducing you. You get hooked by the pleasant music, but then you then get an understanding of what he’s actually singing about, and you realise they’re about some pretty deep things.

Much of Bob’s work, his backing band was the Wailers. We all know that. But before there was Bob out front, he was just a one-third member of the trio The Wailers. Comprising Bob, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Livingston. As time went by, Peter and Bunny left Bob to travel the world, but certainly in the early days, Bob was one of a threesome.

Of the others, Peter died violently in Kingston, Jamaica just a few years after Bob’s death (1987), but Bunny is still going, well into his seventies now. He recorded music as Bunny Wailer and has released several albums over the years.

In fact, the first few albums that Bob released, they were reaeased as just The Wailers.

So I wanted to go back today to that three-piece, and back to one of those pleasant songs with a very serious meaning. If you are a big tree, we are a small axe, and we’re coming to cut you down.

TickTock Tuesday (30 June 2020) – Aswad

I thought I’d create a new challenge. It is a challenge primarily for me, because I’m new to this platform, and because you don’t really know me yet, nor I you. As my name suggests, I am recovering from a stroke, and I like to push myself in all kinds of little ways… including getting to know the Wonderful World of WordPress. Although this is something I will be doing, I invite you, if this idea takes your fancy, to play along with me and share with me some of your own selections.

My plan is: each Tuesday, until I run dry, I shall post some piece of art with which I have some connection – which has helped to mould me, which makes me tick. Okay, a piece of art is a bit vague – it might be a piece of music, a movie, a book, a painting, or ???? – so my phrasiology is deliberate. It might be anything – I will play this post by ear, so I’m not sure what I’ll think of each week. And, I’ll keep posting on the theme weekly until I run out of ideas.

My rules? Well, I’m not big on rules! My choice will be something with which I feel a connection. That’ll be the important thing, just having some kind of fleeting affection for something probably won’t be enough, unless I’m using my choice as an example of something bigger.

It will be one choice per week – I’m aware that long posts can be quite onerous to read, and I’m in no hurry to complete this so if I have two ideas, I’ll probably hold the second until the next week.

In that same vein, I’ve created this block as a Reusable Block, which I intend repeating for every post on this theme. The block ends with a full-width separator, so if you want to skip ahead each week it doesn’t really matter.

I probably won’t post any lyrics, or any kind of analysis – if you like my choice, the information will be out there for you. But I will try to briefly explain why I feel a connection to my choice, just to try and enhance readers’ understanding of what makes me tick.

I will tag my posts TTT and I will go looking for other posts with that tag. If you’d like to join in, please do the same, or comment, or pingback to this post, and feel free to reproduce my graphic. Lastly, I look forward to reading about what makes you tick.

I mentioned last week how this series of posts will shortly be coming to an end. I plan just a few more after this.

I did want to take the opportunity to recap a couple of artists, though. One thing I have learned during this series is to be very careful how I use the word “favourite”, but both reggae music and the band Aswad are right up there. When I feel the music, I feel like I’ve come home.

So I thought I’d present one of Aswad’s today, hot on the heels of my Song Lyric Sunday post, which was also by Aswad. This one has always been one of my favourites (that word again!), since forever, even among Aswad’s other tracks. I’m less comfortable nowadays with terms in the lyrics like little woman, but I suppose that was the parlance of the time – this is one of their earlier tracks, from 1983, and is real, old-school roots reggae.

Of course, none of this music ever charted, but I love it.

Tick Tock Tuesday (23 June 2020) – Simon and Garfunkel

I thought I’d create a new challenge. It is a challenge primarily for me, because I’m new to this platform, and because you don’t really know me yet, nor I you. As my name suggests, I am recovering from a stroke, and I like to push myself in all kinds of little ways… including getting to know the Wonderful World of WordPress. Although this is something I will be doing, I invite you, if this idea takes your fancy, to play along with me and share with me some of your own selections.

My plan is: each Tuesday, until I run dry, I shall post some piece of art with which I have some connection – which has helped to mould me, which makes me tick. Okay, a piece of art is a bit vague – it might be a piece of music, a movie, a book, a painting, or ???? – so my phrasiology is deliberate. It might be anything – I will play this post by ear, so I’m not sure what I’ll think of each week. And, I’ll keep posting on the theme weekly until I run out of ideas.

My rules? Well, I’m not big on rules! My choice will be something with which I feel a connection. That’ll be the important thing, just having some kind of fleeting affection for something probably won’t be enough, unless I’m using my choice as an example of something bigger.

It will be one choice per week – I’m aware that long posts can be quite onerous to read, and I’m in no hurry to complete this so if I have two ideas, I’ll probably hold the second until the next week.

In that same vein, I’ve created this block as a Reusable Block, which I intend repeating for every post on this theme. The block ends with a full-width separator, so if you want to skip ahead each week it doesn’t really matter.

I probably won’t post any lyrics, or any kind of analysis – if you like my choice, the information will be out there for you. But I will try to briefly explain why I feel a connection to my choice, just to try and enhance readers’ understanding of what makes me tick.

I will tag my posts TTT and I will go looking for other posts with that tag. If you’d like to join in, please do the same, or comment, or pingback to this post, and feel free to reproduce my graphic. Lastly, I look forward to reading about what makes you tick.

At this point, I have to say that I am now pretty much out of inspirational ideas – I think I can come up with just four more, to take me through to late July. After that, I’m not sure.

However one pair who had a big influence on my early teenage years was Simon and Garfunkel. I still enjoy them now, and I have already posted in this series on Paul Simon. But today wanted to talk about the duo. I know from the number of times they have featured on Song Lyric Sunday, how well others of you rate them, too.

I am too young to remember the first time around. I listened to them at least fifteen years after the songs were first released, but no matter – I still listened to them so much, I could sing along, taking their LPs out of the library. And as an adult, with buying power, I ended up collecting it all on CD.

So today I just wanted to pay tribute to Simon and Garfunkel.

My First Love

I turned on the TV the other night and found what I thought was a good idea. Most TV is absolute rubbish, especially at the moment, so I was pleasantly surprised. One of the nostalgia channels had decided to re-air a soccer tournament from 20-odd years ago.

I know, I know…we can look up the result, but I didn’t mind one bit watching the game again. It is good because so much of televised soccer these days involves gambling, but in this case, everything is already known.

I don’t really watch it. It’s on in the background. I look up when the commentator gets excited about something. Most sport, especially my beloved cycling, I lost interest in after the stroke, but soccer is another thing, if my interest hasn’t exactly been rekindled, it is at least tolerable.

As a youngster up in Liverpool, I loved my soccer. Most every boy did. In fact I find it surprising, as someone who left thirty years ago, just how much it still means to people up there.

The whole of my family supported Liverpool. They were a second-rate team until the Sixties. Since then they have become a powerhouse and have even won Europe’s premier trophy, the Champions’ League, several times. My grandad had once even played for them, but way back in the Thirties. So with the family all supporting them, it was inevitable that I decided to support Liverpool’s other team, Everton. In fact, Everton were not a bad team themselves, also winning a European trophy when I watched them.

My first game, I went with my dad, a treat for my eleventh birthday, Christmas 1978. It was against Tottenham Hotspur (Spurs) and ended 1-1. I could not believe I was seeing my heroes from TV live, in the flesh! Even better was to come, as I talked my dad into taking me to see the current champions, Nottingham Forest, a few months later.

As I got old enough to go to the game on my own, I continued going to occasional games. I started earning – only a paper round – and got myselt a season ticket (a block ticket which admitted me to every game). It was a period of frustration – the manager was putting a decent roster together but they weren’t quite there yet. By the mid-Eighties, they were a decent team and started winning trophies.

1986 was the year I left Liverpool. Even soccer was not going to keep me there, although it was always a good excuse to revisit. The following year, 1987, Everton won the league again and actually I went to quite a few games, considering that I now lived 200 miles away.

By the Nineties, career took over, Everton were not so good any more (narrowly avoiding relegation one year), and my visits to see the soccer were less frequent. By the Noughties, however, they again had a young, hungry manager and had built a decent team. By this time I was taking my daughter – I don’t think she gave a hoot about soccer but she loved being among 40,000 other people. My parents were still up there, so it was a good opportunity to visit grandparents, too.

My parents both died in 2012. One of the knock-on effects was that I had to go up there regularly to begin clearing out the house. Prolonged time up there gave me the opportunity to watch soccer regularly again. I noticed a change – where I had once watched a sport, I was now watching a business. Although I enjoyed watching the games, I was never as passionate about the result.

I sold my parents’ house at the start of 2014. Occasionally, Everton have played on the south coast, and I watched them a few times on their travels, but I have never been up to see them since. The sport has become so mercenary, I’m not even sure I’d bother watching them on tv these days.

Tick Tock Tuesday (16 June 2020) – Memories of Sue

I thought I’d create a new challenge. It is a challenge primarily for me, because I’m new to this platform, and because you don’t really know me yet, nor I you. As my name suggests, I am recovering from a stroke, and I like to push myself in all kinds of little ways… including getting to know the Wonderful World of WordPress. Although this is something I will be doing, I invite you, if this idea takes your fancy, to play along with me and share with me some of your own selections.

My plan is: each Tuesday, until I run dry, I shall post some piece of art with which I have some connection – which has helped to mould me, which makes me tick. Okay, a piece of art is a bit vague – it might be a piece of music, a movie, a book, a painting, or ???? – so my phrasiology is deliberate. It might be anything – I will play this post by ear, so I’m not sure what I’ll think of each week. And, I’ll keep posting on the theme weekly until I run out of ideas.

My rules? Well, I’m not big on rules! My choice will be something with which I feel a connection. That’ll be the important thing, just having some kind of fleeting affection for something probably won’t be enough, unless I’m using my choice as an example of something bigger.

It will be one choice per week – I’m aware that long posts can be quite onerous to read, and I’m in no hurry to complete this so if I have two ideas, I’ll probably hold the second until the next week.

In that same vein, I’ve created this block as a Reusable Block, which I intend repeating for every post on this theme. The block ends with a full-width separator, so if you want to skip ahead each week it doesn’t really matter.

I probably won’t post any lyrics, or any kind of analysis – if you like my choice, the information will be out there for you. But I will try to briefly explain why I feel a connection to my choice, just to try and enhance readers’ understanding of what makes me tick.

I will tag my posts TTT and I will go looking for other posts with that tag. If you’d like to join in, please do the same, or comment, or pingback to this post, and feel free to reproduce my graphic. Lastly, I look forward to reading about what makes you tick.

A long time ago I posted about Sue, who was a girlfriend when I was still a teen. It is now more than thirty years later, so I can afford a wry smile – I hope she’s ended up happy.

The relationship with Sue had been so intense, and the break-up so sudden, that I went into a kind-of period of mourning. We split just after New Year, and I just moped around for months. I didn’t attend lectures and, wherever I was, I just wanted to be somewhere else. It was not until the autumn that I met someone else – I know now that in the grand scheme of things, that’s not very long, but I was nineteen!

In my bereaved state, a couple of songs came along which just reminded me of Sue. They were very lovey-dovey, and not really the type of song I would naturally like. Also, they came along in the months after the relationship had ended, so they weren’t based on actual memories.

The songs remain imprinted on my mind. One of the songs was I’ve been in Love Before by the Cutting Crew. (I’ve provided the link, if you wish, but I’ll not talk about it further today.) It is not particularly a song I would listen to, but if I hear it, it gets me thinking about Sue, even now.

The other song, shich I will present is Wet Wet Wet‘s Angel Eyes. As it happened, Sue was as Welsh as they come, although when I knew her she lived with her sister up in Scotland. And Wet Wet Wet are Scottish. A very contrived link indeed, but in my state of mind, I found it.