ALL OVER THE PLACE

I think it was my neighbour from down the corridor Mike who first introduced me to “The Bangles”. Well, of course, I say “introduced” but I never actually met them, in fact I don’t think I’ve ever been in the same room as any of them, but it was their music to which he introduced me one chilly afternoon in the early 1980s when he’d just got back from the record shop and felt the need to share.

“The Bangles” however do seem to have been an odd musical direction for this notorious “metal head” to have moved in. After all his now legendary late night “Who’s got the loudest stereo?” wars with his neighbour Leigh usually involved a battle royal between his Motorhead selection being up against Leigh’s more sedate Mike Oldfield back catalogue, a strange altercation that is almost impossible to visualise ever happening in real life (I’m sure that Mr Oldfield and Lemmy are “great showbizzy mates…”) and which I’m sure annoyed the hell out of people like Frances and Nicola who were trying to get some sleep one floor below.

Strangely enough, quality usually won out, and the superior quality of Leigh’s record player meant that Mr Oldfield usually came out victorious from these little spats. Who’d have thought it?

Anyway, I was rather taken with Mike’s “Bangles” record that day, and easily persuaded of their musical prowess – maybe it was just down to the hideously shallow reason that the LP had some pretty girls on the cover - and it was fairly soon after that afternoon that I had my own copy of “All Over the Place”, even though, in the end, it never really got played all that often because I didn’t have much in the way of a sound system of my own.

Or a girlfriend… (So maybe it was just down to the picture on the cover after all...)

I may very well be the only student in history not to have had a sound system, being totally dependent for my own unique musical choices upon the crappy mono sounds that came from the tape deck that was part of my radio alarm clock.

What kind of an art student was I, for God’s sake? No music system, no “significant other” but I did have an alarm clock??

No wonder I was shunned and despised for most of those three years…

Anyway, a few months later I was able to return the favour for Mike when I bought “Different Light” (the difficult second album) just as it was released but, even before that, to be perfectly honest, they had kind of seriously hit the mainstream and, being fickle creatures who didn’t like to share the things we thought should be ours and ours alone, we’d already kind of gone off them.

The only other “Bangles” music I ever bought after giving them that second chance was the 12” single of their cover of “A Hazy Shade of Winter” a couple of years later and, as with many things from that time of my life, so the relationship eventually fizzled out.

However, here we are a quarter of a century later and they popped up in conversation a few days ago when we were having a bit of a chat about those bands and musicians that you used to like but haven’t actually listened to in years… Bands like (well, for me anyway) “Hothouse Flowers” or the “Soup Dragons” or “Deacon Blue”, or performers like Tinita Tikaram, whose albums I once owned on vinyl LP but which I never replaced on CD (or in any other format) and which wallow all but forgotten and unloved, gathering dust on that shelf of old records to which I never venture.

I don’t know whether it’s because they stop being “cool” or “trendy” or that you just “grow up” a little, but sometime you just find yourself thinking that you used to really like a particular album and performer and yet it’s been years (or even decades) since you actually listened to any of their music.

There are other reasons, of course. You discover new things and your tastes move on. Sometimes the band themselves split up or stop making new records for any number of reasons and you just kind of lose touch with them, especially if their individual “solo efforts” don’t quite spark the same excitement in you as the band as a whole used to.

This of course then sometimes leads to the occasional “reunion” in which people who used to be fans suddenly find that they’ve got old enough to appreciate the nostalgic value of things that were once so “hip” and “happening” and “now” but which are now seen as “just a bit of fun” or a chance to “let your hair down” and wallow for a few brief hours in what is now your lost youth…

The upshot of all this is, of course, that I’ve recently been listening to “The Bangles” all over again having first searched the house from top to bottom seeking out that elusive “Greatest Hits” CD that I was sure that I had somewhere…

To be honest, they weren’t half bad for a four piece Rock’n’Roll beat combo, and some of the tunes still hold up, even if it’s only in a slightly kitsch kind of a way. “Going Down to Liverpool” remains a particularly soulful favourite, even though I have a sneaking preference for the “Katrina and the Waves” version, if I’m being perfectly honest. Maybe it’s all those references to UB40s in the lyrics which don’t quite sound “right” in an American accent...?

In the end, I suppose, it’s the nostalgia that helps when it comes to appreciating these kinds of songs and performers. If you liked them when you were at a particular age, then you’re more likely to be immediately transported back to those times and find that more optimistic, hopeful version of yourself (even I am, with my miserable existence), and that generally makes for a warm feeling inside, and as the days of your life grow ever shorter and colder, we can all appreciate the benefit of that.