“Sweet dreams,
I remember it all.
I remembered it all.”Let’s skip back to this very day 17 years ago. I’m sitting in a small portacabin behind the local library for the beginning of a week-long Jobplan Workshop. Sitting down next to me is a man who will read the Sun newspaper and then disappear at the mid-morning break, never to be seen again. The dozen of us that remain will be taught the wonders of writing a business letter and talking to a potential employer on the phone. Through it all, I will be sitting here thinking only of lunchtime, when I can go down the Rock Box to hunt down the three new limited edition 7-inch singles from the Cranes (including a sparkling Robert Smith remix). Perhaps that’s why I’d been on the dole for two years at this point.
I’ve often wondered how different my life would be if I’d pursued other things as obsessively and devotionally as records. Would I have found a job sooner? Possibly. Would I have had a string of relationships instead of shelves of alphabeticised vinyl? I doubt it. Would I be happier? Who knows.
What I do know is that so many of my memories are linked to music that I can’t imagine my life without it. Even now, looking back at Monday 13 September 1993, I clearly remember the feeling of arriving back to the portacabin after lunch with my bag of Cranes singles. And new CDs by The Cure (Show) and Nirvana (In Utero) also out that day. And the debut Curve album. (I love days like this when you get a flurry of new releases - more than you can sensibly listen to in a day.) I then spent the afternoon longing to go home when I should have been learning about overcoming hurdles in the crowded job market. But it all worked out in the end: it only took me another year to find my
first job.
Spotify linky:
