Music that reminds you of people

[Sits]

We've watched two dramas about the Queen lately, A Royal Night Out and The Crown. One (and I think it was the former) featured a piece of music which reminded me instantly of my Dad. He didn't play much music, and far too much was James Last and Perry Como. But he had this and it instantly makes me think of him and those times: Glenn Miller - American Patrol.

Then this morning, this came up on the iPod: Hawkwind - Master of the Universe. This reminded me of my brother, which without wanting to get maudlin is a new experience as he died suddenly in December. In our teens he adored Hawkwind and saw them live many times. As the younger brother I was heavily imprinted with a lot of this and it was really evocative this morning. Goosebumps.

[Various Artist]

Can't let this stand as a nil thread, Sits, especially after that last bit mate.

I'll submit Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, which reminds me of a friend of mine I knew at university in Aberystwyth. She died aged 22 in late 2001 of a congenital heart defect – which she knew about, and knew of how it could shorten her life, yet always remained an optimistic, gentle-natured soul.
It's not because of the title, or because the song's an elegiac kind of number, per se: it's that she'd quite often absent-mindedly sing it to herself and so, since I'd already been a fan of it since I was 16, we'd usually end up singing it together. So ever since it's reminded me of her – sadly, yes, but warmly and with a kind of fond joy.

The Floyd compilation Echoes came out just a few weeks before she died, and I think I'd lent my copy of it to her and later had it returned by her parents when they were sorting out her things afterwards. I certainly remember them being surprised when I mentioned her love of the song to her dad as he said she didn't like Pink Floyd to his knowledge; I remember it being a sort of neat little demonstration of how those of us in our tight-knit little circle of friends knew what she was like on a day-to-day basis much more clearly than her family did, in many ways.

[Sits]

That's a bittersweet story VA. And thanks.

[Various Artist]

You're welcome. And yes, it is the most bittersweet thing of course – there's something in particular about hearing the lines "We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl / Year after year" and being able to hear her voice in my head still, while knowing there were to be no years-after-years for her.

Losing her was particularly hard as we were exactly three months apart in age and I'd only really got to know her that year, and indeed she rather fancied me (!). She'd been in hospital for a week recovering after a scare but seemed entirely on the mend (and rather embarrassed about the fuss she'd caused everyone), then one morning collapsed and died in the shower on the ward. I was quite possibly right there outside its door at that very time, it emerged in retrospect, as I'd dropped in for a visit only to find her bed empty and so spent 50 minutes beating a path up and down the corridor wondering where she'd got to and waiting for her to come back. It still chills me to this day.

The other song that reminds me of her is one indicative of her cheerfully morbid view of her own fragile condition, which she used to have her computer play on startup: it's this jaunty little number from the 1996 Discworld 2 PC game, sung by Eric Idle – That's Death.

[Giggler]

My grandad used to sell organs from a shop on Bolton Street in Bury long after he'd stopped playing them in the town's clubs. The tune that Mr Bean requests at 21m 50s into this video is just the kind of thing he used to play for me when there were no customers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIHGixnuUMM&t=8s

We used to have some audio tapes that my grandad recorded of himself playing. It haunts me to this day that I recorded over them with nonsense off the radio when I would have been about 10.

[Various Artist]

My grandad used to sell organs from a shop

God, that was an unnerving sentence to read until I got to the end of it. I thought you meant he had a racket flogging stolen kidneys and the like.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I spent more time talking to my Dad during the last few years of his life than the previous fifty. He was caring for my Mum by himself during the later stages of her dementia. He knew the time left for both was brief — for him more than her as it turned out. He recognised too that, because of that, there were things that needed to be said. I’d seen him in tears a couple of times so had some notion of the hell he was going through, which made him less emotionally guarded than he’d been in my lifetime. I could only visit a couple of times a year, so between times I’d assemble books of family photos, and so on to send him. Latterly I included a couple of music comps with favourite artists of his, and one or two tracks I knew he wouldn’t be familiar but might like. One of these was Stan Rogers’s 45 Years, which, for me, beautifully captured the love and dedication my Dad showed my Mother throughout his life. When I visited him later that year I ask if he liked the CD. “Yes,” he replied “ and Oh... that song, that song.” I knew exactly which one he was talking about.

45 Years

[Benjm]

Since my mum passed away last month I've come across a few of her faves without choking up but am pretty sure that exposure to the Everly Brothers would floor me at the moment. This despite her not having a good word to say about them in later years, after an expensive but underwhelming concert experience during one of their periods of not talking to each other.

[Sits]

Sorry about your Mum Benjm.

[Benjm]

Thanks, Sits. She'd been ill for a long time so it has been a shock without being a surprise, so to speak. Lots of to-ing and fro-ing between here and home town since. The wrenching moment is leaving Dad when he's going to be there by himself, even though that's the new reality so can't be avoided indefinitely and objectively we know that he has got lots of support around him.

[Jah Womble]

I'll always associate Teenage Fanclub's Mellow Doubt with my father: it's a wonderfully minimal song that was released at the time that he passed away in 1995, and lyrically it seems to reflect somewhat the occasionally awkward relationship that we had. ('Awkward' in the sense of 'deferential' rather than 'distant'.)

[Giggler]

The album that'll always remind me of my dad is the album that's a bit of an anomaly in my collection: A Trick of the Tail by Genesis, and especially Ripples, Entangled and Mad Man Moon.

I've surmised - because I'd never dare talk to him about it, obviously - that the album came out at around the time he was spending extended periods in hospital and that it helped him through it, as it's a bit of an anomaly in his collection too. However he came by it, the love has been passed on from him to me.

[Snake Plissken]

Stereophonics' "Local Boy In The Photograph" always reminds me of my brother. He loved that band and that song, I hate them and it, which is a neat summation of our relationship. And then obviously the lyrics have a connection as it is about suicide, so yeah, that one.

[Thierry Ennui]

God, that was an unnerving sentence to read until I got to the end of it. I thought you meant he had a racket flogging stolen kidneys and the like.

If he was selling organs, maybe "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion?

[caja-dglh]

Geez, you lot are all dark. There was me thinking how a lot of bands (or specifically albums) remind me of ex-girlfriends I went to gigs with.

[Satchmo Distel]

I think music about the suicide of a person whom you only knew from afar can also affect you, such as Durutti Column's The Missing Boy

http://songmeanings.com/m/songs/view...2107858557362/

Because that's the power of art.

[Giggler]

Geez, you lot are all dark. There was me thinking how a lot of bands (or specifically albums) remind me of ex-girlfriends I went to gigs with.

The Space Between Us by Craig Armstrong reminds me of the first girl I thought I loved, not least because there's a tune on it that shares her name. However, it's more Glasgow off the same album that reminds me of her, because that's where she moved with the lad she chose over me.

Still pretty dark, sorry mate.

[diggedy derek]

Hawkwind are really underrated