OK let’s get this out of the way. I am a 45 year old man, married, with two teenage daughters. True to type, my blogs will inevitably be filled with misty eyed infant / adolescent memories of the 1970s and misty eyed teenager / early twenties memories of the 1980s with the occasional rant and whinge about modern life and times thrown in.
Enough of that, for now at least.
Barely a day has passed in the family home lately without someone humming or singing the recently revived ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ by Journey. This is apparently as a result of a cover version sung on The X Factor and extensive TV / Radio exposure following its return to the popular music chart thanks to a mass download by an adoring public. My daughters tell me also that there is now a dance cover version thanks to a new ‘Croakfest’** TV show called ‘Glee’ but it’s the no nonsense, honest rocking original I’m concentrating on here.
For me, ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ will always be the first song played at one of the many excellent mid 80s Saturday night house parties hosted by the legendary (and very sadly recently deceased) Andy Gray (our mate from Amersham of course, not the footballer turned pundit – and incidentally the only man I ever knew who would willingly succumb to a couple of rounds of ‘Ride The Prod’ and still come up smiling)
Me being me of course, I would wait until a little later in the evening when everyone was either wrecked or had copped off or both, then try to get a sneaky play of ‘Murmur’ or ‘Meat Is Murder’ or at very least something by The Clash. I’m sorry to say that much as I loved the life, the era, the great friends and the Grey Man’s incredible shindigs, I absolutely hated ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ which to me epitomised mid 80s soft stadium rock, all backlit bubble perms, cap sleeve t-shirts and sprayed on spandex. (Can I just say however that some of the best live gigs I have ever been to were mid 80s rock festivals – just another little contradiction of mine)
And whilst the nostalgia gets sweeter as the years go by, the song remained ignored and unloved, my only brief reminder being in an excellent episode of Family Guy when Peter and his cronies sang it on a karaoke night at the Drunken Clam.
So here we are, some 25 years later, my kids are singing it, my Mrs is singing it, I’m bloody well singing it, doing my best ‘Air 80s Keyboards’ to it *** and I find I love it to bits. How excellent it is that having just seen off a decade in which the self indulgent navel gazing of the dreaded ‘Bedwetters’ was often the musical order of the day, how great it is to be starting the new decade singing loudly once more about 'midnight trains' and 'cheap perfume'. I’m so glad that me and this innocent piece of good old fashioned Rock n Roll are friends at last.
More to follow,
Col
** Eventually I will blog extensively about what I regard as a ‘Croakfest’ but that will have to be when I’m in a more grumpy frame of mind.
*** ‘Air 80s Keyboards’ – lean forward, head back, one ‘air keyboard’ in front (left hand) and other ‘air keyboard’ to your right (right hand) and don’t forget, plenty of flourishes. With a little practice this can be far more rewarding than Air Guitar
poodle rock will never die!
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