It's stirring up all sorts of emotions in me, which are making it difficult to know exactly where I'm going to go with this. I am just spitballing here. It's not just in terms of the things that have changed since then, but how I was. It's now 2020. The me of 1989 couldn't have pictured where he'd be now (heck, the bugger wouldn't even have pictured where he'd be in 2000, or even just a few years down the line).
I was 15 at the time these shows were being shown. Now we're on a second edition and Then Jericho are playing. Bif Area. I had the album on tape and must have played it a million times. I can only think of one other song on it - What Does it Take? - and I'm not even sure that's correct.
15. 16 in September of that year. Very much a time of change, heading in to GCSE exam year, which could shape my whole future. But back then, it was a time when Maggie effing Thatcher was still Prime Minister, and in a small town in the country, it did seem the world was narrow and opportunities were very limited (despite what the Pet Shop Boys had suggested a few years before).
The world seemed smaller. It was hard to see beyond the part of the world I lived in. No internet to find things out; just what the media chose to show us. London seemed a million miles away, let alone anywhere further afield. There was a sense of hopelessness in the air, that things couldn't get better (D:Ream were a few years off at this point). But they had to in the end (if it ever can be said to be the end).
1989 is one of the years I look back on as being important (though not as important as 1998) to me, but I can never really put my finger on why. But the music does stand out. This was the year of Monkey Gone to Heaven by The Pixies, which I first saw on The Chart Show. The ITV version of Top of the Pops, where it was all promo videos. But every week they also played a specialist chart rotating between the Dance, Rock, and Indie charts.
That brought me The Pixies, and Eardrum Buzz by Wire, and of course, The Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses. I must have seen that edition of TOTP that everyone cites that had them both on; must have. I definitely remember seeing Kirsty with Shaun doing Hallelujah. I mean, I even had the 7" (probably still do) of that.
I'm cherry-picking, of course, as for all this great music there was still a lot of rubbish. And songs I don't remember (as is being proved by this very edition of TOTP). We selectively remember things, whether these are particularly good or bad; the indifferent just float away and are never called to mind. Perhaps that's good?
Or perhaps I'm just over thinking things. And 1989 was just another year that really wasn't anything special at all. Just something I've built up in my mind for no good reason. I once wanted to write a novel set in 1989. It would have been called - imaginatively enough - 1989. But thought never achieved anything. Got to put pen to paper. Got to actually write stuff. But it does seem that when I try to write fiction, it just seems rubbish, or I can't find the words to say anything. Which is kind of ironic as over the last half hour I've been bashing out this tosh, which I'm just about to publish on my blog.
And that doesn't faze me. I know this whole post really doesn't hang together in any kind of structure. It could probably do with a lot of editing. But I won't do that unless I happen to spot a blatant typo (like that one in the second paragraph; good job I spotted it). And yet I'll publish it. I feel free and able to do this, yet I don't give myself the freedom to write rubbish fiction knowing that I'll rewrite it, edit it and make it good. Even though the incredibly talented writer Paul Cornell once gave a piece of writing advice that went (and I may be paraphrasing here);
"Have an idea. Write it. It will be bad. Then you rewrite it until it's good."
I should pay heed to that. Give myself permission to be bad, and then to see what tangents I go off on. I mean, I started this post intending to just talk about music, and look where it's got me. Something got a hold of me... and... well, it's just like Marc Almond and Gene Pitney, who are singing that song on TOTP as I type.
Damn, I loved that song when I was 15 in 1989...
That's probably enough.
In anycase... the tea's getting cold. I've got work to do.
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