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Do you recall the precise moment you became aware of music? Not the nursery rhyme type stuff your exasperated parents would sing as you lay in your cot, determined to make them regret that rainy, alcohol infused weekend at the B&B in Rhyl some twenty-seven months previous. No – real music. The stuff that set you off on your personal musical odyssey. (See how I cleverly avoided using that dreadful ‘J’ word, just there?) I grew up in a household filled with the sound of marching military bands and film soundtracks. The Royal Marines Bands Service and South Pacific still come back to haunt me. In fact, having asked my Dad what was the music of choice to get me settled when I was a nipper, I was horrified to hear it was ‘I’m Getting Married in The Morning,’ from the musical, ‘My Fair Lady.’ Sheesh! 1958 – even Pat Boone or Dean Martin would have almost passed as ‘cool’ then. But no – I must have been the most uncool six year old in Glasgow when I first became aware of some combo called The Beatles.

1964 – The Swinging Sixties and all that were just around the corner and the only reason I became aware of the biggest music phenonemon until Wet Wet Wet came along (‘J’ for joke) some twenty-odd years later, was because my father had written a banner with the words ‘She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah Yeah’ to stick on my Uncle Robert’s Triumph Herald on the day of his wedding. And even that was a year after the release date. Unbelievably, it would be another five years before I eventually ‘got with it,’ as we would say. And I remember the precise moment. I was climbing the apple tree in our back garden with my pals, when one mentioned the cartoon he had seen on TV (yeah, I know – apple tree / garden / TV – we were terribly middle class, not that I’m at all ashamed of that) Cartoon? He said ‘cartoon?’ That was me – I was in. What was this ‘cartoon’ of which he spoke? TO BE CONTINUED …