Musings on music and nostalgia

 Nostalgia. It’s a powerful thing. A comfort blanket for when things get tough. A reminder of lost moments and past glories. A sedative for dull the pain. 

We've all inhabited that space for a while, and I guess the past two years have heightened the need to embrace all of these emotions to varying degrees. The desire to be transported to another time and place is powerful when it feels like the world has closed in. Music is often the release mechanism for these emotions - the safety valve that allows us to leave our bodies for five minutes (or five hours) and come back to reality with a new sense of perspective. Well it is for me. 

I've been meaning to write this piece for several months after musing on the part that music kept me sane during multiple lockdowns. The immediate trigger though was when I deliberately took a trip down memory lane and got hold of a number of new compilations from the early 1980s. Like a flash of lightening on a dark night, there I was, back in Cornwall, aged seven, eight, and nine, looking at myself through my childhood eyes. I could vividly remember, clear as day, driving down country lanes in my mate's dad's red 2CV, standing up with my head out of the sunroof as Gloria by Laura Branigan played in the background. I could feel the sand under my feet at Carlyon Bay, and mucking about the Disco Bounce with my friends from school. And water fights with the French students who used to come and stay with us over the summer - and who I used  to think were achingly cool 'cos they smoked at 14 and listened to Euro electropop like Freez's IOU. I then made then mistake of listening to ABBA - I remain an unrepentant fan - and there I was, aged five, dancing up and down the lounge with my sister to Fernando. It was of course only a short step from there to remembering being in the crowd at Glastonbury in 1995 as Orbital played Halycon while the sun went down, or dancing to This Love by Craig Armstrong and Elizabeth Fraser with my wife at our wedding.

These memories got me thinking about what is about the first few bars or even notes of a song that can have that effect on you. How does music have the power to make us recall in crystal clarity our first dance, our first kiss, our first sunset, our first break up, or the first time we lost someone close? After mulling it, I decided I didn't have an answer. Maybe music is unique in its ubiquity though in being able to do channel these emotions? It is after all something  experienced and ingested by everyone. God knows a vast TV and radio empire has been built upon feeding my generation's apparent desires to relive the good times when you didn't have kids, a job, bills, and a mortgage to worry about. In these moments, the guilty pleasure of listening to the songs that defined your childhood - whether they be good or bad - can alleviate the juddering feeling of riding a middle-age treadmill. By all means re-evaluate the past too. One of the most undeniably enjoyable things about my trip down the 80s memory lane was realising just how diverse the music in the charts was back then. Pop, ska, reggae, hip-hop, dance, heavy metal,  R &B, new wave, indie, punk, and goth, all seemingly happily coexisting in the same musical melting pot. And, regarding my own "things were better back then" sense nostalgia, the pop groups seemed more real. Love them or hate the, the likes of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet were proper unmanufactured groups who worked their way up the charts the hard way by writing their own songs, playing local clubs and venues, and fighting for a record contract.

Beware though. Nostalgia has a short-term effect. It's nice place to visit, but staying there too long can be dangerous. God knows we as a country have seen in the last five years the damaging effects of looking back to an imagined past. So it is with music. It becomes overly tempting to fall in to the trap of saying everything was better back in the day (see above!) Looking back should never blind us to the here and now. Music is constantly changing and there is always something new. By all means visit the past, but equally, always be curious about the present and what may come. Adapt to the changing landscape because your life will be better for it. As with so many things, lessons in music are lessons life. 

I will end this by indulging on another nostalgic excursion. While formulating this piece, the sad news was reported that Andy 'Fletch' Fletcher from Depeche Mode, my favourite band, had died suddenly and shockingly out out of the blue. I've been DM fan since I first listened to Violator in 1990 and it blew my mind. It remains my favourite album ever. I won't repeat the obituaries and tributes to Fletch, suffice to say that he was the unsung hero of the band, the quite one who kept the others in line, and the arbiter of musical good taste. The best tribute to him would be to post his own favourite DM tune, World In My Eyes. Rest in paradise Fletch.