2 posts tagged “31 songs”
From the age of 14 to 18 I sang in a choir at the Royal Festival Hall every Easter, performing Bach's St Matthew Passion. It possibly sounds more impressive than it was - our music teacher played piano for the choir's rehearsals and press-ganged a group of us into joining the Ripieno Chorus. The story is simple enough – Jesus does a bunch of miracles, Judas betrays him, he dies. The chorus’s job is to go "hey, look, it’s the son of God, you morons!" while the rest of the choir sings "this Jesus guy sucks! FREE BARABBAS!" like a braying Jeremy Kyle audience. Then the chorus has to not be too smug at the end when the choir realises that oops, he really was the messiah and they probably shouldn’t have called for his violent death. Too late now! I’m over-simplifying somewhat. Rehearsals, bringing together half a dozen different schools, were held at a private girls' school in central London. This was a masterclass in how the other half lived. The glass-walled building overlooked the Thames and smelled of scented cleaning fluid and privilege. It wasn't quite Scumbag College vs Footlights College, but we were very aware of being the only inner London comprehensive. We'd chat to the groomed private school pupils on breaks during rehearsals. They'd use words we didn't understand like "prep" and "day boarders", and we'd confuse them with our creative swearing. We bonded over Britpop though. Everyone did in 1995. We did several performances each year, having to get up at an ungodly hour to arrive at 8am to warm-up. We whinged half-heartedly about the early mornings but we would have done anything to stand on that stage and sing. We knew this was not an opportunity that would come round again. It was drawing near to the end of the last performance of one year and we were all tired. We’d been standing for over an hour and I was terrified of losing concentration and dropping my book. I idly scanned the audience and wondered if I knew anyone out there, if everyone was enjoying the music, if they all realised that they weren’t supposed to clap at the end (apparently it would be tantamount to applauding the crucifixion so, instead, everyone had to file out in silence. It was odd). Suddenly, there was a commotion in the stalls on the top right. A man clutching his chest, feet sprawled forward, head at an unnatural angle; a woman standing over him, a steward rushing over. The seating arrangements meant most of the audience were unaware of his struggle. Maybe thirty people around him saw him fall and felt the agonising delay before he was stretchered out, but from the stage we had a clear view. I sensed everyone around me watching him; we all had one eye on the stalls and the other on the conductor. We were, potentially, soundtracking a dying man's moments. I'd like to say it was the best performance we gave, but it wasn't. It was, however, the most intense and heartfelt, and the most coherent. We lifted our voices and sang as one for the final chorale. It’s quite beautiful – about grief and loss and abandonment, and the belated realisation that you should have believed in someone who has now left you forever. I remember listening for the clash/resolve of the final notes, where discord acquiesces into harmony and says that just maybe everything will be ok. I'm going a bit Pseud's Corner now but I love this music. That's how I'd like to die; holding the hand of someone I love, cloaked in beautiful music. Make it quick, don't let me linger.
This is a new "project" for my blog - 31 Songs, inspired by (read: stolen from) Nick Hornby's book of the same name. He writes about the emotional resonance of various songs from throughout his life. 31 of them, to be precise. Do! You!! See!!! I started writing about various tunes a few years ago, so if I'm feeling organised I may dig out the notebooks. If I was going to be very organised I'd do this in chronological order, but them's the breaks.
Glastonbury 1998 was nearly a total disaster for me. It was only the second festival I'd been to after V97, and the V festivals don't really count because it's like living in Toytown with jolly policeman coming round the campsite at midnight to check everyone's in bed, or at least not totally off their faces on crack. A good friend persuaded me to go to Glastonbury with her and an assortment of her college acquaintances and I agreed - it would be our last hurrah before university.
We met her friends at Castle Cary station and a judgemental atrium of my heart collapsed and died. They all took drugs, they were all bisexual, they all had Camden clothes and mobile phones (in 1998! This was crazily futuristic). They had "cooler than thou" attitudes, all glazed expressions and wandering eyes, drifting and listless except when they were taking coke. Which they were, most of the time. I pitched my tent alone.
The first night, we sat around a campfire with a man from the next tent who claimed to be a psychic doctor who could diagnose complex medical conditions on sight alone. In the fire's twilight glow, he mistook me for a boy. I didn't think he was much cop if he couldn't even psychically detect my ovaries. I retreated to my tent and shivered myself to sleep while everyone got noisily drunk on the doctor's contraband stash. I didn't think it was very sensible to swig from a stranger's whisky bottle (not a euphemism). A man woke me in the early hours unzipping my tent and trying to steal my trousers, but I slapped his hand and he went away. I lay awake, listening to the tribal call of "bollocks!" across the campsite, trying not to cry and wanting to go home. The festival didn't even begin for another two days.
I woke the next morning with a fresh resolve. There was no way I could face the crushing shame of leaving early, so I would just have to make the best of it. I'd woken before anyone else - except one girl who was wailing to her boyfriend that she had trenchfoot - and set off alone. I was determined to enjoy myself and try everything; I didn't have to be the timid and restrained suburban girl who was ashamed of her very existence. So I talked to strangers about everything and nothing. I ate strawberries for the first time. I rescued a child stuck in mud up to his waist (this was one of the monsoon years). I fashioned a rainmac out of a binbag and bought a horrible brown dress for a pound. Ultrasound played and it rained so hard we couldn't look up and had to constantly move our feet to keep from sinking. The rain was crazy and relentless. It made getting anywhere ten times harder because the mud slurped my shoes away with every step. I fell over approximately every nineteen paces. I formed a zen relationship with the mud; I was the mud. There was no-where dry to sit down so my legs were exhausted.
And it was brilliant. I managed. I'd lost my friends and danced alone, but it was ok. I was thriving.
I repeated this pattern for the next few days as the festival got into full swing, only returning to the tent to sleep for a few hours. No-one seemed to notice my daylight vanishing act, which was fine. I didn't care. One boy took so much coke he couldn't stop dancing. I looked out at 5am to see him sat outside his tent, rocking manically and waving his arms like a windmill in a hurricane. The group had started to fall apart. Couples had split up and formed different pairings, everyone was tetchy due to lack of sleep and trenchfoot girl had moved into the first aid tent.
Suddenly it was Sunday. Final day. I washed with baby wipes, brushed my teeth with stale tap water and set off. The morning and afternoon were a blur because my head was buzzing at the thought of Pulp headlining the main stage that night. They'd done a legendary set three years previously, back when I was dividing my time between revising for GCSEs and crying. At the appointed hour I weaved my way to the middle of the crowd, so I was surrounded by people without being crushed. The sun set.
Jarvis came on and congratulated us all on staying til the end of the festival. Evidently some people had escaped early in their camper vans. We cheered, like we'd actually achieved something. We felt like refugees who had struggled through a war rather than indie kids in need of a bath, a non-crisp-based diet and a meaningful relationship. An electric surge went through the crowd. The weekend was almost over but its death throes were going to be spectacular. And Pulp did not disappoint us. Their set was amazing, truly amazing, even though I was exhausted and hungry and spattered with mud. My memory of it is largely hazy and jumbled now; I remember a video screen at the back of the stage, fireworks going off, and every song sounding gloriously fresh and energetic. I was alive, rejuvenated, deliriously happy.
Towards the end of the night, they played Babies. And something happened to us as the jangly guitar introduction washed over us. It was like the crowd was pulsing with a single force. I looked around and it was as if everyone was glowing with energy. I have an intense memory of a light that came from no-where that lit everyone up from within. The crowd surged forwards and I was surrounded by people dancing and smiling and laughing, and suddenly I could no longer tell where I ended and the next person began; the edges were blurred, we were fluid, we were lost, we were tumbled in together. My veins flowed with pure joy. I have never felt so connected. I was one of those moments where the world splits open and reveals itself to you.
I knew this moment couldn't last, and that was what made it perfect. When I listen to the song now I can't quite capture what it meant to me then, but I still have that thrill of feeling that something important had changed in me, and that - somehow - everything was going to be just fine.
