Music. In many ways, is as much a part of my life as breathing. I love music, I love going to see my music live. I love listening to my old favourites and some new discoveries.
I love playing music through my amp back at home. I'm not sure my mum appreciates the latter contribution but what can I do, this is her fault anyway.
I don't really get a lot of musical influence from my mum apart from a few weird singles such as the Worzel Gummidge song and Neil from the young ones’ hole in my shoe. But she did start off my love for music initially.
It must have been around 1998-1999 the pre-sister years. At this time, my mum worked for an independent card shop where she would create and produce hundreds and hundreds of handmade, personalised cards. She made these while I was sat in front of the tv or having a nap presumably because at this time I was only around 2-3 and she did this to make some money while looking after me. And when she had completed a few boxes of the cards, we would pack up the boot of her blue Rover Kensington and head to a small town not far from Wrexham (where I live) called Mold.
Mold wasn’t really anything to brag about, it was a nice little town with shops on both sides of the street. Mold boasts that Jonny Buckland from Coldplay grew up there which if you said that to me in my teens I would not care a bit. But now, I'm a Coldplay megafan so to think he walked the streets where I've been is very cool indeed!
Once mum had dropped off her cards to the distributor, we wouldn't go home straight away but instead, we would take a short walk down the street, and turn the corner onto what seemed a street that was always sunny, I can always remember it being sunny there.
I can't remember what the place was called but it was a little cafe/tea room where everything inside matched the colours and details of a china cup with the white and blue floral design. That was already very striking to me as a child. I can remember the smell as if it was yesterday, and they always had a small pot of sugar cubes which fascinated me because it meant I had something to play with while mum was having her tea probably.
Now I really don't know if this song ever played there but it's really intertwined with one another. I can't think of Mold without thinking of the song/band and I can't listen to the band without thinking of Mold tea rooms but my earliest memory was The Beautiful South.
The Beautiful South was a small, insignificant part of my childhood but this has transformed my listening tastes. I'm not a huge fan of modern genres of music, I like good songs with good lyrics and a great tune when I was discovering ‘my band’ I oriented toward The Beatles first and from that grew to like The Kinks and the beach boys and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, that style of music suits very well with me.
The beautiful south to me was a mix of great vocals and a happy tune. Perfect 10 is a lovely tune and I love Rotterdam. The song of theirs that I remember most is You Keep it All In.
This song also takes me to 2017 too, I bonded with a work friend over it, we would break out into songs while cooking in a hot cafe kitchen and it was really great fun in the summer just having a sing with your co-worker.
A small claim to fame on my part is that in the same workplace, I worked with the Julie from ‘song for whoever’ by none other than the beautiful south!
I think it’s incredible that I have a few strong Early Music Memories in my life and The Beautiful South has been there for some of them.
To sum up my first music memory would be the happiness, sunshine and the smell of a coffee shop. fantastic.