I have a tape. On one side is a Beatles Greatest Hits taped off my sister who taped it off a friend. Many years ago. On the other side is some of the favourite singles (7" vinyls) that I found in my collection at about the same time.
Im never really quite sure how to feel about The Beatles, really. They had split up by the time that I became aware of them, so I never had the experience of feeling something fresh and new. There are no Beatles songs I hate and few that I dislike, or leave me indifferent. But I am not sure that there is any Beatles song that affects me emotionally.
However, I am playing my tapes alphabetically, so there's plenty more Beatles to come...
'The Other Side' includes:
- Waves - Blancmange: one of those songs that I spent weeks going round saying 'ooooooh' everytime I heard it. Wonderful to hear it again.
- Sensitive -Mick Karn: one of the most obscure singles I have, and time has not diminished the pleasure of the tune and the melancholy "If you shake their hands and stab them maybe they'll become sensitive"
- Memory - Elaine Paige. OK, I'll admit, I actually do like this. It might have been written for my voice - a belt it out loud, and not too high, except for the "Touch Me..." at the climax, which has a swoop-up to help. Elaine Paige subsequently made a career of appearing on Pebble Mill, and, really, isn't very good. Still, the words are better than most Andrew-Lloyd Webber's songs. I have tried and failed many times to get into TS Eliot. (My mother met him once in a dry-cleaners near Gloucester Road Tube, at about the same time she Flanders and Swann live in concert. We went on pilgrimage to that dry-cleaners about ten years ago.)
- Waterfalls - Paul McCartney I really liked this when it came out; indeed I bought it, but I later worked in a pub called the Bulls Head and this was on a tape that played about four songs on a constant reel throughout the summer and Christmas vacations of 1987. It bugged the life out of me and I realise still that I actively dislike it. We visited that same pub on New Years Eve afternoon. It was a most weird experience, partly because they had changed the layout. Still, I had a pleasant glass of light mild and remembered never to go back to the past
- Crying - Don McLean. I subsequently bought the kd lang/Roy Orbison version which is superbly excellent, but this is good. Many years ago I tried my hand at writing stories based on songs ie what caused the song to be written, or what happened next. This was really quite inspirational. Shame that I threw out that notebook in a fit of *I'm grown up now so don't need the fiction I wrote at age 13*
- Joan of Arc/Maid of Orleans - Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Two of the prime examples of the beauty of 80s electronic music. And two incredibly ugly geeky guys, who would never make it now...
- It's My Party (And Ill Cry If I Want To ) - Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin - one of the best intros of any pop songs...EVER! And absolutely loaded with teenagey angst
- Total Eclipse of the Heart - Bonnie Tyler. A gloriously OTT Jim Steinman (best known for his work with Meatloaf) creation
- No Regrets - Midge Ure - see comments for OMD. Although Midge isn't ugly or geeky
