Long Lasting Impression

It's nice to have a soundtrack for your life, a favourite song, a tune or lyric that captures a specific moment or event in your life.

Couples have an 'our tune', single persons a melancholy or bitter 'break-up' song, others a coming of age song, a favourite driving song, a raucous sing-a-long song or a melody that is a faint recollection of something really good but seems a bit hazy and vague usually because of alcohol induced tiredness and fatigue.

Just an opening riff or a few bars of the song and you are transported back, willingly or not to that point in the past when nothing else but the meaning and association of that tune was of any importance.

The music that persists from my teenage years as a strong memory is not what you might expect of a young adult growing up in the decade of the seventies. I was a late developer as far as music and in particular, Pop and Rock music was concerned.

This was a combination of being very square and boring and having no tangible amount of pocket money or more to the point the lack of ability or conviction to save my allowance towards anything more material than a few fizz bomb sweets ,my geeky monthly  'Speed and Power Magazine" and a brief flirtation with smoking.

I remember my first ever record purchase. It was a birthday present for my older sister and I must say it was the best thing that the Wombles ever recorded, all of that remembering they were Wombles. My first album purchase was a second hand copy of "Paralell Lines" by Blondie from about 1979.

Apart from those innocent acquisitions the abiding memory and soundtrack of the younger part of my  life revolved around the activities of James Last and his Orchestra.

I was a little bit reassured just a few days ago by a tribute on the radio to the prolific record output of James Last. This made me feel that I had not been alone in being exposed to the high tempo, high quality production ethics and downright tunefulness of what was the template for Euro-Pop and what ,I always feel is a bit harsh-, elevator music.

My parents had at few centimetres of the record cabinet allocated to James Last albums. At parties at home where my parents were very much part of the beautiful people, the movers and shakers of a small town econony, the smulchy but ultimately catchy arrangements of ballads and movie themes made a perfect, non intrusive but comforting backdrop for conversations which sailed over the heads and consciousness of the Von Trapp, I mean Thomson Family Children, as we earwigged and eavesdropped from the staircase and landing at such gatherings.

The ladies at the parties in the 1970's wore long maxi dresses, very colourful, floaty and on reflection quite sensual and exotic. They would drift, mingle  and dip to the smooth trumpet tones of James Last. The recordings always had an enthusiastic crowd sound on them like an actual live audience but I suspect now, in my cynical middle age that this was a bit like a laughter track on classic comedy broadcasts. It served its purpose brilliantly however and my parents parties for Junior Chamber of Commerce or just inviting around the neighbours and their good friends crackled and raved , ultimately encouraged to lose their inhibitions by the canned sound from the static infused 33 rpm vinyl record.

So there it is. My big confession. Of course if I am ever invited to draw up my lifetime playlist or a shortlist in case I get stranded on a desert island I will deny any knowledge of ever having tapped a foot or swayed a sway to the smooth and dulcet tones and clinically engineered works of the maestro of bling-pop, that Mr James Last.