114 - Mona

 Was it Dennis Potter who said there is a power in cheap pop music? Or was he quoting someone else? I can't remember.

As I write this post, I have on BBC4 which is showing old editions of Top of the Pops from 1990. Right now, Craig MacLachlin and his band, Check 1-2 are singing a song called "Mona", which absolutely doesn't rip off the Rolling Stones... no, sirree...

But it takes you back. When the two editions they are showing today were repeated it was the summer after i took my GCSes, and I was awaiting the results. We'd finished school in late May, or was it early June? Whatever, that was when the last exams were and we just kind of filtered away from school... nothing until the start of September when A-Levels were to start.

Looking back, I find I actually recall little of that summer. The summers as a kid/teenager seem to blur in to one with thirty and a half years' worth of distance. 

But the music is there. Mona makes me think of the Aussie telly I'd have been watching at the time - Neighbours, Home and Away, A Country Practice (where else could the wombat obsession have come from, and late at night, Prisoner Cell Block H.

And the thing was, as we lived in an area where we could get three different ITV regional channels (remember them?) I could watch PCBH at differing times in its run, depending on whether it was Central, HTV West, or TVS. I recall that Central was furthest ahead. A Country Practice was at different points in the run, too. Still, and any fule kno, the best era of ACP was the Simon/Vicky/Molly/Brendan era. Oh... Molly... when I get to watching that episode on my big DVD box set of the first third of ACP (which, I think, has all these episodes in it) I think it's going to be tough... it affected me at the time when I first saw it as a teenager... but now... it's tough enough even typing about it.

And I think of other things - Nicky Campbell's late night discussion show on Friday nights on Central - Friday Night Live, I think it was called. I loved that. And he's still sort of doing the same thing - albeit with a narrower focus and without "late night" topics - on a Sunday morning as The Big Questions. He's brilliant. 

And Dave Barrett's late night discussion programme on the radio - GWRFM - I listened to that loads. He was a great presenter, and it's so sad he died. 

It's these things that almost act as anchors, linking your present to your past. Reminding you of where you came from, and how you got to where you are, and maybe about how decisions you made back then affected your whole future, even if you didn't know it at the time. And how hindsight gives you perhaps a better idea of what you should have done...

...but then if that thing had been different, what kind of rippling effect could that have had on the rest of my life? What if I'd taken a pen with me to West Side Story? What if I'd been a bit braver about various things? What if I'd actually thought "what's the worst that could happen"? 

Oh, I dunno...

Hmm. Madge is singing about Hanky Panky...

And me calling her "Madge" has immediately made me think about Smash Hits, which is where that nickname for her came from. I read that every fortnight. In hindsight it was probably the best music magazine there's ever been. It was just fun. And all those nicknames... it took me ages to realise why the person who answered the letters in the letters page was called Black Type, though. Yeah. I was just slow. 

I guess this is one of the most very "wsd" posts I've made on this blog, as it's all just me waffling, going from one subject to another... digressing. And it's all from Henry from Neighbours singing Mona on an old TOTP...

After he left Neighbours, Craig defected to Home and Away where he played a character called Grant Mitchell. He was a very different character from his namesake in EastEnders... 

And Craig was robbed. Mona stalled at number two, kept off the top of the pops by that mediocre Sacrifice song that Elton John did. Craig followed up Mona with a song called Amanda; leading to people speculating that all the songs he ever released would be named after girls. I don't recall his third single. Maybe it was called Ethel... I could Google it, but that rather defeats the purpose. 

But songs are never quite the answer, just the soundtrack to a life. And they are important. Music is important. Whether it's a record, or live music, it can transport you to another place, another time, and the right song at the right time can totally change you mood. And make you happy. I could be happy. 

We're in to the second show now, July 26th. Aside from Craig most of the last one was meh, hence me not mentioning that many songs. The guide says they're playing The Soup Dragons on this one. I'm Free... what a blinder of a song. That is another one that takes me back - like I said, this was the summer after GCSEs and that was a song that seemed to suggest that anything was possible, and it was a song I listened to loads. Even the rubbish rap bit about the granddad. 

It was many years later I found out it was a cover version. Well, I was young and foolish then; I feel old and foolish now. 

Even then I tried to put song lyrics in to things I said. Still do it now. There's a couple above. 

I guess the whole point of this post - wait, there is one, I hear you cry - is that sometimes it's good to wallow in nostalgia, to remind yourself that there were times when things were different. 

Oh, interjection; Suzanne Vega... Tom's Diner. Oh... nostalgia. The remix. Which was the first version most people heard, I think. The acapella version seems... wrong, somehow. Was Sting's Englishman In New York around this time, too? I have it in my mind it was. 

So, yes. When things were different. It's good to have a wallow every now and then, but you can't live in the past. You've got to live in the here and now, and take things as they come. Plan for the future, but be aware that events can totally scupper it. The past gives us nostalgia, the future gives us the possibility that we can do anything, guide and shape our own destinies... because at the end of the day, your decisions are on you. What you decide today can shape not only tomorrow or next year, but the whole of the rest of your life. 

Choose wisely. 

---*---

PS; the Pixies, Velouria at number 28! And that sparks a memory; I recall buying the album this came from, Bossanova, on tape in WHSmith when on holiday in Weston-Super-Mare. The girl who served me was absolutely beautiful. She went to 11. I recall she dropped the tape accidentally on the counter as she went to put the price in till, and said "sorry", and I said it was okay, and she gave a little smile that lit up her face. I wonder what might have happened if I had struck up a conversation? Probably nothing. But possibilities and potential... 

Across the two shows today, Velouria was clearly the best song in either of the Top 40s... but did they play it...? Grr... 

Another song I didn't realise was a cover until many years later; California Dreaming, by The River City People.