Running With History
There has been this CD knocking around my desk for the last few days, sent over from Polydor for me to make a decision as to whether we will review it or not. Well it's not quite in what we would normally cover or is it? Why? Well for a start it is a 'Definitive Collection', of an 80's band, that were well, seen as more of a funk band back then when I had hair and a slim line belly.
Infact the CD cast my mind back 20 years to 1986, when I was prefect in lower sixth studying for my A levels. Yes you have got it, there was a World Cup going on, over in Mexico this time not Germany, and we got stuffed by the hand of God! Well there was this girl in the school, quite cute I remember, who said I was not bad looking, because I looked like the lead singer of this band; just wish I could strum the bass like he can. She would need beer goggles these days to pass that compliment on me!
So it is Saturday night, England have done their duty against Paraguay, it is a lovely and wonderfully warm night outside, and my mind has started to drift back to that summer of 86, when I was young, had hair, the whole world in front of me, and on a Saturday night trying to act the man and buy a beer in a pub. Then with the mate that had passed his driving test go and get a McDonalds or if we were really rich that weekend a curry. Well there are songs from that time that always bring the good times flooding back, and quite a few appear on this CD.
You know the songs that you played in the clapped out Vauxhall Astra, that you now hear on the radio on nostalgia nights like "School Days: all the hits from the 80s"; you know the songs that you played while trying to look cool in the 80s clothes and hair cuts (I wish these days). Well all those old songs are strapped like weapons around Rambo, on this CD. And my God you have to get that air bass out and strum it at chest level. "Yes tonight Mathew I am going to be Mark King."
From the opening strains of 'Lessons In Love' bouncing off 'Something About You', they are still 'Running In The Family' and like the loves of my life, and that thin body I once had they are 'Leaving Me Now'. The distinctive bass line of Mark King is there screaming out, the synths are still as fresh as they were in the 80s.
The tunes are as fresh as they were in the 1980's, and it has been a pleasure to take a trip down memory lane and remember some good times. Bloody hell I knew how to live once, how to have fun, before things went tits up. Is the album worth getting? Yes, somehow it is a brilliant feel good record that reaches the parts even I had forgotten about.
.......Now if you don't mind, bugger off leave me alone with my memories, and let me be 17 once again, even if it is for the length of the album and drink my lager!