X Doesn’t Always Mark The Spot…

Even to this day, I wish I was older. Although I am already what I would have considered in my youth as “well old.” On the verge of being exactly in my mid-50s, I sometimes lament at being in Gen X. I have always felt I kind of straddle two worlds, being born in 1970 (which I guess every generation does). I have a number of friends that are late generation Boomers and early generation Gen Xers. Then there’s me – the veritable meat in the sandwich – and then there are my younger friends (more accurately friends that are younger than me) usually from 3-4 years younger than me or more.

There is much within popular culture that unites us. There are many similar shared experiences. But there are some odd gaps. For example, the mystery as to why my brother Quince didn’t seem to be into Simple Minds when I was growing up? So much of what he listened to and exposed me to musically is the stuff that I return to when feeling nostalgic. I used to think he had such great taste in music. Don’t get me wrong! He does! But I’ve been pondering the gaps lately. I’ve been questioning how much more encompassing my musical taste might have been if I’d been equipped with better tools to experiment with my taste more as a child.

As you might have noticed from a recent post, I have been delving into the music of my childhood of late. Mostly Australian music, and even more so the bands and artists I didn’t really give much time to when I was younger (pre-teen). Bands that seemingly weren’t on my brothers’ radars, or if they were then it was something I must have rebelled against at the time.

I know that when I was younger I was much more rigid in my tastes. If I was exposed to it enough, it seeped its way into my consciousness. There isn’t much of my brothers’ tastes that I remember really disliking. I pretty much played anything. Listened to anything.

When it came to radio, that was different. I knew that 2JJ was **THE** “trendy” hip, indy station in Sydney (there were a few other underground stations too) but it felt too far of a stretch for me. I wasn’t an “experimental” child – yet I would sneak into my brother’s room to play his copy of Nina Hagen’s Unbehagen album because I bloody LOVED ‘African Reggae.’ I have such vivid memories of playing Split Enz’s True Colours, Icehouse by Flowers (as they were then), Boy by U2. There were things I really loved but so much passed me by.

The late 1970s and early 1980s was such an incredibly creative, thriving, explosive time for popular music and I will forever feel like I ** just ** missed the boat. I was just that little bit too young still to really experience it at its height. Yes, I was around and alive and was listening to some things, but I was too young to go to gigs and too closed off to experimentation to be exposed to anything too “out there.”

It wasn’t until my later teens did I begin to really explore and expand my musical taste through exposure to programs like Rage airing overnight on weekends.

On Saturday night, I listened to The Reels’ Quasimodo’s Dream. Released in 1981, I was 10 at the time of its release. Unless Quince had a copy, I can’t see that I would have been exposed to it. To my sketchy recollection I don’t think he owned a copy. Again, it was most likely exposure over the years to the songs being played on Rage did I begin to really love what I was hearing from this band. I know their cover of ‘Bad Moon Rising’ was played quite often on music video shows when it was released in 1986. I knew of their cover of ‘According To My Heart’ as well which had been on Quasimodo’s Dream.

It has been the very slowest of burns when it comes to this album. Even within the past decade, when I played the album – I would only listen to the first half. Basically after I’d heard ‘According To My Heart,’ I was finished.

On Saturday night, I played the whole album. I went on such a journey. Images of my bedroom – the way it looked before I left home to move to the UK flooded my memory. Then earlier images came rushing in. Scenes from the early 80s. The things I would have been doing. Outdoor activities, heat, dust, noise – kids shouting, flies swarming. There were images in my head of Dubbo too. It’s a town in country New South Wales. Not a place I’d ever been but a place my brother, David, would go to often with our neighbour from down the road, Barry May. The May’s had family there and Barry would visit them quite often and David would tag along. I’ve never been to Dubbo. But I feel I can visualise what it would look like – or at least what it would have looked like then. For a band to come from a place like Dubbo was, well, not the norm – put it that way! There’s a track on the album that I had never really paid much attention to until Saturday night. It’s called ‘Dubbo Go Go’ and it just struck me as kind of brave for a band to write about where they come from like that. I don’t know why.

The whole album is actually one that needs to be a complete start-to-finish experience. That all-enveloping immersion, as albums were made to be in 1981. What is it with me and albums from 1981, eh? I was left feeling this lament that I was so young and that for so many years the beauty of this thing passed me by. That I was too closed-minded to expand my musical horizons for so long. I was angry at myself for robbing myself of this thing for SO many years. The Reels’ Quasimodo’s Dream is BEAUTIFUL! The real sadness is that the band only ever produced four albums. In 2019 there was an EP released on download only titled 6 Great Gift Ideas, seemingly an update from their first EP release titled Five Great Gift Ideas from The Reels in 1980. The other sadness is that I obviously wasn’t alone in the album passing me by, for Quasimodo’s Dream only ever made it to number 27 on the Australian chart. A crime!

I want a copy. I want to cherish it. Whether it be on CD or LP, I need a physical copy of this album. When something affects me enough – feels part of my DNA or alters me in a fundamental way, it’s not enough to be able to play it on Spotify. I need to have it with me.

I wish I could have loved them from 1981. I wish I could have loved Simple Minds from 1981 as well. But, maybe it’s better with them that I didn’t, as it has allowed me to unshackle myself from them. I hope I can find my love for them again some day. I haven’t lost it completely – but I need to give myself time and space away. After Bellahouston Park, I have no intention of seeing them play live ever again. I’m okay with that. In all honesty, I have probably seen them far too many times in the past decade. Over-saturated myself with them. I need to find acceptance too. Acceptance in recognising that Jim Kerr is just not the person I built him up to be. That still REALLY hurts. But time will heal. I know time is a healer.

I’m off to find some more hidden treasures. Ta-ra!