When Rohan Candappa circulated his very amusing and charming piece about his 17 year old’s party, I very much enjoyed the read and was thrilled when Rohan agreed to me posting it here on Ogblog as a guest piece.
Here’s a link to Rohan’s wonderful guest piece. It triggered off all sorts of memories for me. I had already written up a couple of Alleyn’s School, after show parties:
- my Andorra embarrassment story from February 1978 – click here;
- my Twelfth Night aftermath story from December 1978 – click here.
You might have detected a theme here; school parties didn’t go so well for me back then. Conversely, the youth club ones rocked. That’s why I threw a couple of those myself. They were seminal moments for me, even if/when things did not go “entirely right”.
So Rohan’s wonderful piece induced me to write a trilogy of rite of passage club party pieces:
- Ivor Heller’s wonderful 15th birthday party, complete with firkin of Youngs, May 1978 – click here;
- my youth club party as soon as my parents’ left me alone in the house, November 1978 – click here;
- my subsequent “parents are away” party, in which the club world and gatecrashers descended on my parents’ poor little semi in Streatham, October 1979 – click here.
There are some pictures in the pieces, some unintentionally funny scribblings in my juvenile diaries (scanned and there to be seen in glorious technicolour) and also some of the best bits translated from scribble into English.
But one aspect of Rohan’s delightful piece is absent from those stories. The soundtrack of the events.
Rohan focuses on Mirror in the Bathroom by The Beat as the soundscape of his teenager’s party. Why his kid is playing music from our era rather than his is anyone’s guess.
But it got me thinking. Can I name one song that was stuck at the front of my head from each of the three parties I have just written up? Answer: yes.
- Ivor’s May 1978 party – Because The Night by The Patti Smith Group;
- My November 1978 party – Rat Trap by The Boomtown Rats got stuck in my head that night, although I didn’t much like the song. Down In the Tube Station At Midnight by The Jam was my soundtrack of choice during those weeks of my parent’s absence, so also deserves a mention;
- My October 1979 party – Queen of Hearts by Dave Edmunds…no idea why, but that song was utterly stuck in my head that weekend. Fact. At least there’s one that I can play now on my baritone ukulele.
So here they are, for those who have got this far and want to hear/play any/all of those party tracks – five tracks below, they’re crackin’:
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