I was that teenager. You know, the one with the indie band t-shirt, who would stand outside in the rain waiting for the record shops to open on new release day. I was that girl, the one who told you that you weren’t a real fan unless you had the entire back-catalogue, and had seen the band live. Twice. The one who brought her lunch to school in a vinyl bag and sat with headphones on in the corner.
I used to make mixed tapes for my friends and then test them to make sure they‘d listened, I’d obsessively read through New Musical Express weekly to see if I was on top of everything and I bored everyone around me senseless by going on and on about the latest indie band. I’m pretty sure that the only reason my friends stuck around was because they were too intimidated to leave. Plus I had a cool mum who let everyone hang out at my house all weekend, every weekend.
Over the years I calmed down, listening my way through every genre, old and new, and generally easing off the obnoxious-music-fan-peddle.
And then I met my husband.
I thought that I’d been obsessed with music, but his passion for and knowledge of obscure alternative bands made my record collection look like a feeble yard sale giveaway. We settled into a happy pattern of shows whenever we could, lots of CDs and MP3s and the occasional festival, having to face the fact that growing up meant jobs and not-so-many late nights of musical fun.
And then we had kids.
It’s not like I never listen to music now, but it’s snatched between daycare drop-off and work. Between a shower and getting dressed. The other day, when I found myself humming as I prepared lunches I stopped dead in my tracks, horrified by the fact that I was not singing the Bowie track that had been hanging around in my head for days, I was not humming a tune from the new Flaming Lips album that had appeared in my stocking. No, I was singing Raffi.
And I knew all the words.
Like I said, these things come back to bite you and I figured that somehow I’d ended up with Raffi in my head as payment for all the times I’d one-upped someone with my musical banter or dismissed someone whose record collection didn’t ‘cut it’. I smiled as I thought that perhaps, this was poetic justice albeit served up a little late.
I smiled even more tonight when my husband was using kitchen paper to pat the grease off some bacon while making a quiche. He turned to me in horror and said, “Did you notice that I was just patting the bacon to the tune of the wheels on the bus?”
