‘A song that reminds you of an event’
This is a difficult one. I could write about a hundred different events, from parties to concerts, weddings to birthdays… but somehow only two songs spring to mind and the events they signal could not be more different. Arguably one shouldn’t really qualify as an event at all…
In my mis-spent youth of music lessons I was in a few different youth orchestras. One of these, the National Youth Orchestra, was based in Dublin and provided some of the highlights of my sixth form and early university years, with residential weeks twice each year and a couple of European tours. At the end of every residential week (and on New Year’s Eve annually as well) there was a disco: I was that kind of awkward teenager who stayed on the fringes of that event and raised a cynical eyebrow to hide a lack of confidence. It was probably a lot more about hoping a boy would see me as something other than a verbal sparring partner or a good listener or someone who could join in with debates on what it all meant, rather than true cynicism, but I suspect my sardonic persona was rather too convincing. Either that or my ‘look’ didn’t work with the boys’ ideas of beauty. It always felt as though everyone ended those evenings paired off except for me, but nevertheless they present happy, often funny memories. At every single one of these discos in those years, the last song of the night was always ‘Come On Eileen’ by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Yes. I know. This means I’m really old and this is depressing and sad. But it’s funny, that even so many years later, when I hear that song I’m always back in the recreation hall of whatever Irish boarding school we’d taken over that year, and I’m always remember everyone screaming and laughing and singing along, and the chaos of the end of the night, and it never fails to make me smile.
The other? Well, as I said - it’s not really an event, though it felt very much like a mini-event at the time. I used to belong to the health club of a local hotel… I went there most afternoons after work to swim or use the gym. It was a happy ritual in simpler times… when work was less fraught, when I needed to recover some fitness after a few tricky years. It was very calming, swimming 1000 metres most afternoons (or in the holidays, in the early mornings), but then, like things always seem to in the end, it all went wrong, as the hotel lost money and laid off staff and stopped keeping the pool clean and I eventually gave up and left. Anyway. Enough of chlorine and germs and swimming lengths: I’m meant to be writing about music. One afternoon, one stormy, dark February afternoon, I got into my car around 6pm, tired and relaxed after my swim, ready to drive home. A song came on the radio as I started my car and right from the first few notes I thought my God… what is this song, and whose is that incredible voice? As the winter gale shifted the car slightly in its parking space, and the hailstones hammered against the windows, I sat there transfixed, unable to drive off, listening…
It was, it turned out, ‘Jolene’ by Ray LaMontagne. I’ve listened to it many times since that, of course… especially as one of the first things I did that night when I got home was to go straight to amazon and order the album (which had just come out). I remember forcing people to listen to the song and that hearing their reaction felt like some kind of test… that if they liked it, they passed; if they didn’t, they didn’t. I still like the song… still like the almost regretful, mournful huskiness of his voice and the deceptively simple perfection of the guitar and piano accompaniment. It’s still on my playlists of favourite songs. My ‘songs in case of emergency’. I’m sure it will be for years to come. But nothing, no matter how many the years of listening, will quite match those minutes of hearing that song, almost holding my breath, for the very first time, stereo turned up loud against the clattering hailstones - shivering and cold and tired and wanting to go home, but afraid to move off in case the engine noises would break the spell.
And that’s just as much an event as a wedding or a concert or a birthday or a party.
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