Shuffle Along To Another Time And Place

I love the I-Pod or any MP3 playing equivalent, one of the most convenient devices I've ever known. Last Friday night, as I often do on a Friday, I put my I-Pod on shuffle, poured myself a glass of cava and cooked dinner, a little ritual I look forward to after a week's hard graft. I have over the last couple of years copied my miniscule collection of CD's onto to the I-Pod and (quite legitimately I'll have you know) downloaded upwards of 1000 songs. It's a proper eclectic mix to cater for all eventualities, moods and occassions. I've set-up up various playlists with those quirky titles we all give them; Dance Pants, Little Anthems, New Year School Disco, Plastic Punks and Manc Mafia. So it's always interesting and surprising to do the old 'shuffle all songs' thing and just see what comes up.

The great thing is that whatever song comes up, resonates with you in some way, after all that's why it's on there in the first place. But the power of your 'old classics' whatever your musical persuasion is a thing to behold. Instantly I am thrown back in time to another place, wrapped-up in a cloak of memories whether they be good or bad, happy or sad experiences. I can be transported back to schooldays, fumbling lunchtime discos, the jukebox in the pub when I was 18, particular holidays and friends, whatever scenario, the list is endless. The songs are there for a reason and that reason is they are all part of me and my life.

There She Goes by the La's is pretty much the theme tune from a period in my life, of heady times gadding about Manchester and inevitably ending up in the cellar of a late night drinking shebeen in Fallowfield called Granville's ankle deep in broken glass, girls and alchohol. Or New York, New York which takes me straight back to The Smithfield in a part of manchester now called The Northern Quarter - it was always the finale of the set of a black guy (actually from New York) called Jerome who used to play their every Friday night.

But last Friday, Everyday Hurts by Sad Cafe shuffled into earshot, a song from a comedy playlist called 'Cheese' put together for a naff party I was going to, including such classics as Dancing In The City by Marshall Hain, Without You by Harry Nilsson, and one or two Barry Manilow's.

Everyday Hurts is a song I never put on out of choice, but it was one of my mum's favourites at the time it was a minor hit so in my book a cheesy song. Perhaps it just caught me at the right moment but I was transported into a nether world of broken relationships and heartbreak, got a little moist-eyed, and was sucked in to the soft rock schmaltzy world of Sad Cafe for 4 minutes. Then half an hour later the Gorgonzola of cheese I've Never Been To Me by Charlene came on, a quite bizarre song, a paen to a lost and corrupted soul but strangely compelling and wouldn't of been out of place in The Smithfield circa 1989...........that's truth, that's love.