The First Single I Ever Bought - Thoughts Upon

Hey. I was cool back then.

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Hello Red Cabbage Heads,

I am sat here in 2025 with R (re)watching the original Live Aid concert 40 years on. I was 18 at the time it was broadcast. A world ago and a real blast from the past. I wasn’t able to go to the concert in London, in fact it didn’t even cross my mind as it was on a Saturday and I was working. The idea of taking time off didn’t even occur to me. And there was no way I could have afforded a ticket, transport and accommodation. (I ‘Ran the World’ instead a year later.) It is one of R’s bigger regrets that he didn’t go, he would have loved to have seen Queen with Freddie Mercury live. We didn’t know each other back then, now we have been together a lot longer than we were ever apart.

Watching back the documentary and highlights - 7 hours of 😳 (available on BBC iPlayer) brings back the music of my youth. We are sitting here watching Bob Geldof being passionate and despairing and feeling the disconnected irony of putting on a massive expensive concert to try to change the world and end poverty and hunger. But it brought the ‘woke’ agenda to the fore (yes I’m using that word intentionally - I'm very proud to be woke) and tried at least to change public perception and world affairs.

The rock stars of the day are so different to the rock stars of today. Seeming so much more down to earth to me at least. And of course R and I have been discussing the acts. And doing a fair bit of gossiping and googling. Did you know - Bono of U2 is only 5’6” - no wonder he was wearing high heeled boots. That Brian Ferry of Roxy Music has always given me the ick - no idea why. That Sting is a very handsome dude and both of us thought that, and he is still married to Trudie Styler - since 1992 - though I was slightly disappointed to find out that he had been married before. That Phil Collins not only produced some cracking classics but plays piano not just drums, and after 40 years I still can’t stand Sade.

R likes the more rocky bands, I am more into the indie bands of the age, though I’m quite picky.

I bought my first single at 14. I was very late to the music scene; as many of you will know my father was a classics freak and we only listened to classical and selected folk (the Beatles were also allowed but rarely listened to). So I spent some of my hard earned paper round money on Ultravox ‘Vienna’. Quite a classic now and it makes me feel quite cool 😎 to have chosen that one. I know there were a few I liked but I could only afford one. I even went home and forced my father to listen to it. It’s probably a good thing it was only 4 mins and 37 seconds that he had to endure. I could feel his need for it to stop. Endure it if you can.

Of course Bob Geldof was the driver behind Live Aid, and before I was 13 years I had never heard of him or the Boomtown Rats. They had been producing music for 5 years before I was enlightened. Most especially the hit single ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ had passed me by. Until my cousins visited in the year I was 13 and ribbed me senseless for not knowing it, and I became acquainted with it. I was only a year late but it was enough to feel the gap between me and my peers.

Once introduced to the pop scene I eschewed the classical almost completely. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Variations’ and Vivaldi’s 4 seasons were the only one that stayed. I kept the folk I knew and the Beatles. Everything else was new. I was quite fussy on my choices though.

I liked Haircut 100 and not Wham
I liked Depeche Mode but not Duran Duran
I liked Nik Kershaw but not Howard Jones
I liked Ultravox but not Simple Minds
I liked Tears for Fears but not Paul Young
I liked Yazoo but not Madonna  ….  you get the drift. 

Back then you had to choose wisely what to spend your money on, there was no Spotify to listen to anything you wanted and so you chose and stuck to it. It took me a long time to catch up with my musical listening. Mix tapes were a blessing and I made up a good few. I don’t have the cassettes any more but I kept the track listings. I came up with weird names for them like ‘Hitting the Tenuous’ and ‘Split the Sunshine’, feeling all cleverly poetic 😳🤪😜. I have most of them saved on my Spotify playlists (excluding the few that were not on there).

Photo by Bruno Guerrero on Unsplash

I remember sitting at the reception of my SILs second wedding which was being held at their new house. She is about 4 years older than R and I. Sitting in this long, thin conservatory with all her and his mates a guitar was produced and for the next couple of hours songs were sung. Songs everyone else knew and I didn’t. R knew them too. Being the youngest by 7 years from his brother (sister in the middle) he had grown up with more modern music in his life, even though his parents didn’t listen to anything much, but it wasn’t such a taboo as in my house. As the eldest in my family I forged the way and missed out on loads. He knew those 70s and early 80s songs that had passed me by whilst I listened (not always willingly) to Ravel and Mozart (for example). ELO’s ‘Mr Blue Sky’ was resounding, stunning harmonies were hit, the guitar resonated with camaraderie, the conservatory amplifing the sound in the right way. It was quickly followed by ‘Wild West Hero’. The only discordant note in the room being my silence and embarrassment at not knowing the song at all. I’m sure my SIL thought I was being obstinate or deliberately rude for not joining in, I did get shot a few odd looks, enough to make me leave the conservatory and wander away from the group festivities to sit on the edge looking in.

My tastes in music have broadened over the years. Both backwards and forwards in time. I enjoyed U2 in the late 80s delving back into their back catalogue but grew away from them after the 90s. Queen too, I love their old stuff, Seven Seas of Rye and Night/Day at the Opera albums but disliked the newer stuff R liked. I never ever got into his favourite band, Jethro Tull, and even now can only manage to endure a couple of songs before I need to either change the track or walk away. I hated heavy metal when younger but have grown into some of the classics - Metallica and ‘Enter Sandman’, etc. Some bands I disliked in the 80s I like now.

My tastes have become ‘heavier’, though I still can’t abide music that screams at you, and I can’t get into rap at all. The Foo Fighters is a band I wish I knew more of.

I love how our music tastes change and evolve over the years. My MIL is stuck in the past, believes ‘all this modern stuff’ has no tune and isn’t easy to remember. Basically anything after the advent of rock and roll (approx 1940s) is awful to her ears. I have spent many a happy hour finding the old stuff on Spotify for her, which she is always amazed at, and listening to her sing along, and as is the wont of the old, each song sparks off another of her long stories often something we haven’t heard before so that’s always interesting.

In the early 2000s I was into Kasabian, Athlete, The Kaiser Chiefs, Snowpatrol, Keene, and Travis. Today’s listens often include Lewis Capaldi, Chapell Roan, Billie Eilesh, Ed Sheeran, Hosier, Wade Morgan, and many, many others that I can’t remember the names of. I’m awful now at knowing who artists are. Back in the day I would know a lot about singers/groups etc. my weekly Smash Hits magazine read cover to cover over and over. I don’t listen to Radio 1 any more I’m far too old for that now, so I have to wait until it comes onto either Radio 2, or since we moved to Yorkshire, Radio Leeds. One recent favourite ‘Messy’ by Lola Young. Now it just took me 10 mins to find out what it was called and who it was by. That’s my level of knowledge nowadays. Of course it didn’t help that the radio was playing Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’ in the background.

And on that note …. I don’t know how to finish this other than to reiterate that once upon a time I was cool. (I still have my Ultravox single.) So here is one of my favourite songs from Travis to end with.

So, that’s all folks, thank you in advance: til next time…. Tx

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