The Soundtrack of Our Lives
A Double Album in Prose
by Annie Christie
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: For anyone who has ever got lost in music!
Swearwords: None.
Description: For anyone who has ever got lost in music!
Disc One
Side One
Lost in Music
We're lost in music
Caught in a trap
No turnin' back
We're lost in music (Sister Sledge)
Side One
Lost in Music
We're lost in music
Caught in a trap
No turnin' back
We're lost in music (Sister Sledge)
Track Six
Though we never thought that we could lose,
There's no regrets
If I had to do the same again,
I would my friend (Abba)
~ Eurovision, 1976 ~
Though we never thought that we could lose,
There's no regrets
If I had to do the same again,
I would my friend (Abba)
~ Eurovision, 1976 ~
There are many kinds of music and many ways to make music. That’s as lame a start as a Jane Austen novel (which we studied in class that year). But when John Denver’s Wings that Fly Us Home said it ‘there are many ways of being in the circle we call life’ I really thought I knew what he meant. Like Billy, it was the words of the music that spoke to me. Unlike Billy, I couldn’t communicate this to another living person. Not then.
Now, when I look back, I’m trying to give you an honest appraisal of what went before. I may be an unreliable narrator but only because life makes us that way. We are none of us omnipotent. I’m uncomfortable being the conductor even of my own life, but I played my part in the Orchestra at school, and in 1976 on a Wednesday afternoon, Orchestra was the place to be, believe me!
Now everyone agreed that music classes were lame – the female teacher wore ‘trendy’ crimplene outfits and couldn’t keep order but refused to resort to the belt. She tried to make us sing together – which was never going to happen.
‘We’re no Abba, Miss,’ Doobs said.
We were in third year, remember. You understand that none of us were taking music for exams; as a subject it was one of these things that had to be endured – like Social Education – for a couple of periods a week, to give the ‘real’ teachers a bit of a rest from the relentless grind. At least, that’s how we saw it. And if you think 1976 you have to think ABBA. They were the ones who threw Bohemian Rhapsody off the top spot, which was enough to damn them in the boys’ eyes. ‘Mamma F**king Mia,’ Stevie grunted – with the expletive said quietly enough that the teacher wouldn’t hear. Swearing in class was beyond even Scooby. There was bad behaviour and… well… it just didn’t happen. Not in the normal run of things.
Looking back, we did behave atrociously badly in music lessons (nothing compared to the horrors of mixed ‘social’ education in which some wit thought it would be a great idea to deal with sex education in a classroom with 30 kids of both sexes with raging teenage hormones) but at the time it was just our way to stand against what we thought of as part of the punishment that was school. Five days a week. Forty two weeks of the year. For thirteen years. By 1976 we were deep into what felt like a life sentence.
Of course they hit Eurovision glory in 1974 but in 1976 Abba were really making their mark. However, the 1976 Valentine’s Disco threw up a better tune. It was The Four Seasons Oh What a Night and that started an interest in Motown amongst us. It was the birth of an interest which would go past punk, into Two Tone and split into those who championed Reggae and those who championed the Mod Revival. The Carpenters, John Denver and country music were my own guilty secret. Most girls were stuck in Middle of the Road and looking for something else and the boys were looking for anything but Glam or Heavy Rock. Apart from Doobs. Doobs was born for Heavy Rock. Scooby and Stevie were looking for something else. Eventually Scooby found punk and Stevie’s Genesis was prog rock. His future lay with carpet crawlers and another brick in the wall. But for the girls it was Disco all the way. And the Four Seasons really paved the way. Almost without us even knowing it. Its impact was subtle. Not like Tina Charles. Tina was the battering ram of the spring of 76. I hated that song then and I hate it now. It makes me almost physically sick just to think of it, never mind hear it on the radio. I’m happy to say it now – I hated disco. I couldn’t say it then, of course. It would have been social suicide. It even took Billy till 1979 to crack under the pressure.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who hankered for David Soul and David Essex and the Bay City Rollers but to stay in with the crowd in the mid-70s, at least at our school, you had to love Disco. And in the spring of 1976 that meant Tina Charles. Retrospectively it was a relief that I Love to Love (But My Baby Loves to Dance) was destined to be a one hit wonder. At the time it was ubiquitous, all-powerful, inescapable. The song was used as a weapon along the corridors. Want to upset a boy – sing that song out loud as you pass. The boys fought back. They strutted the corridors playing air guitar shouting the Thin Lizzy chorus The Boys are Back in Town. It’s amazing it didn’t end in bloodshed.
Music was a maelstrom in those days. It was when people still cared about the Eurovision Song Contest and in 1976 Brotherhood of Man won by saving kisses. We felt betrayed by it – There’s one thing I must say before I go. As a love song it had lyrics a teenager could relate to, until they realised they were being cheated and it was actually being sung about a three year old. We felt duped and we rebelled. As did Abba, who struck back with Fernando. In the insanity of the pop charts of those days they were both toppled off the charts with that hideous rip-off of the earlier musical abomination D.I.V.O… – which still sends a thousand memories flashing through my mind: No charge. Thanks for nothing J.J.Barrie. My life has been blighted by one-hit wonders. When it comes right down to it, whatever other great songs there were that year, Tina Charles’ Disco classic was the song that rang through the whole school that year. It was totally the girls’ revenge on the Bohemian Rhapsody.
No one could save us, Not Lying in the Arms of Mary, or Silver Star or Silly Love Songs. Our resistance was low and just when it couldn’t get any worse the Wurzels had hit the top spot and the boys of 3S2 were getting ready for a long hot summer of rebellion.
With all the musical mayhem that surrounded us, that year Billy and Rachel stood, as always, in a class of their own. Rachel was keen on Rod Stewart and Billy was still into Bowie. They compromised on Fleetwood Mac. Music was a battleground in our school that year and it was music not love that was tearing us apart. Joy Division came later. When I look back on it, the only uniting experience in our musical lives in 1976 post Bohemian Rhapsody was the Orchestra. There we all met in unity – though to hear us play you wouldn’t think that.
When the instruments were handed out we weren’t offered much of a choice. Billy and Rachel played violin. Natch. Then instruments were dished out less on a first come first served basis and more on a ‘what gaps do we have to plug and what instruments do we have in the cupboards’ one. As a girls’ school many of the pupils had taken private music lessons and so owned their own instruments. Strings were heavily over-subscribed. The weaknesses were in the brass section. Somehow a job lot of French Horns were delivered. The brass section would be dominated by them for the next few years. By the time I got to ‘choose’ there was no Trumpet option left, and fortunately for me the Euphonium went to Scooby who was still in a huff because he’d wanted a violin case, less for the violin and more for the gangster cred it might give him. So he took the biggest weapon he could find.
So my ‘choices’ (and I use the word loosely) were French Horn, oboe or flute. I tried the oboe, couldn’t get a note out of the reed. I tried the flute and fainted because I couldn’t get the breathing right. So French Horn it was for me. Me and another four hapless kids who spent the next three years with permanent bruising on our legs from the constant clattering of the cases whenever we walked anywhere.
But every cloud has a silver lining and mine was that we sat right next to the second strings. Which was where Billy and Rachel started off. I worked my socks off to get to First Horn so that I’d be sitting next to Billy as second violin, but on the very day I ‘made it’, he was moved up to the first violin section – along, of course – with Rachel. You couldn’t keep them apart. I gave up on orchestra from that point on. I was there in body but not in spirit. Anyway, most of the pieces we played were all about counting thirty bars then trying to make sure that your instrument actually gave a toot without a rattle. All too often I was caught with the horn upside down, tipping out the spit just when the ‘big moment’ came. I was not a natural by any means.
Billy really took to the violin. Not as an orchestral instrument you understand, though he could play well enough. No, he got into traditional music. He played ‘fiddle’ rather than violin. I think he started doing it just to piss off the teacher who conducted the orchestra, but he got really good at it and before he left school he was earning money playing at ceilidhs. He got into the folk scene with Laura’s brother Grant – following the Battlefield Band and the Corries – but he kept that separate from his Rachel time.
If you’re smart, what you’ll see is that everything but everything we did in those days was to keep us out of the house. Unlike kids today with the lures and comforts of social media; locked in their bedrooms or permanently attached to smartphones; our goal was to be as far away from home as possible. Apart from Thursday nights when Top of the Pops was on and, for those whose parents allowed them to stay up and watch it The Old Grey Whistle Test. I never was. When you think that our parents were still being weaned off the Black and White Minstrel Show and Sunday Night at the London Palladium – into a world of soap opera drama and The Goodies – it reminds you how much has changed. This was even before Grange Hill, remember. We didn’t need that. We lived it. Our TV’s were still black and white and our lives were being lived in glorious technicolour. We watched Happy Days but we lived our own version of teenage angst without the aid of technology.
All we looked for were reasons to be out of the house after school. We weren’t allowed to ‘hang around’ the streets but school clubs and extra-curricular activities kept us out most nights till at least eight o’clock. Some kids pushed it to nine o’clock.
Billy and Rachel weren’t in the same classes at school, but they were inseparable at breaks and lunch. And after school there were stolen moments before and after activities. He always walked her home. We all wished we had a boyfriend like that. The most we got was a kiss and a grope behind the bike shed before the boy in question obeyed the once bitten twice shy routine of moving on to the next victim. They were like pond-feeders most of them. And we, who were terrified of ‘going too far’, didn’t encourage them to do so.
So in those days we kept ourselves safe by hunting in packs and, despite the horrific memories of Tina Charles and the Wurzels, they are days that I cherish. They are my own Wonder Years.
Discography: Want to sing along? Here are some YouTube links – sorry about attendant ads – sure you can find these all on your streaming music delivery platform (if you have such a thing!):
The Four Seasons Oh What a Night https://youtu.be/liyiT_DGREA
Abba Fernando https://youtu.be/G8bm6XlxuCY
Genesis Carpet Crawlers https://youtu.be/PtzgBJ13vro
Pink Floyd Another Brick in the Wall https://youtu.be/HrxX9TBj2zY
Tina Charles I love to love https://youtu.be/yHRYYtiIMJY
Thin Lizzy The Boys are Back in Town https://youtu.be/SGZqDzb__bw
Brotherhood of Man Save your kisses for me https://youtu.be/fhq_Q1Ut8SQ
Sutherland Brothers and Quiver The Arms of Mary https://youtu.be/7G93_uxIBRY
Tammy Wynette No Charge https://youtu.be/ELFeaD6h9LY
The Four Seasons Silver Star https://youtu.be/PWoY91zeQ1Y
Wings Silly Love Songs https://youtu.be/ap87QgZKTNw
Now, when I look back, I’m trying to give you an honest appraisal of what went before. I may be an unreliable narrator but only because life makes us that way. We are none of us omnipotent. I’m uncomfortable being the conductor even of my own life, but I played my part in the Orchestra at school, and in 1976 on a Wednesday afternoon, Orchestra was the place to be, believe me!
Now everyone agreed that music classes were lame – the female teacher wore ‘trendy’ crimplene outfits and couldn’t keep order but refused to resort to the belt. She tried to make us sing together – which was never going to happen.
‘We’re no Abba, Miss,’ Doobs said.
We were in third year, remember. You understand that none of us were taking music for exams; as a subject it was one of these things that had to be endured – like Social Education – for a couple of periods a week, to give the ‘real’ teachers a bit of a rest from the relentless grind. At least, that’s how we saw it. And if you think 1976 you have to think ABBA. They were the ones who threw Bohemian Rhapsody off the top spot, which was enough to damn them in the boys’ eyes. ‘Mamma F**king Mia,’ Stevie grunted – with the expletive said quietly enough that the teacher wouldn’t hear. Swearing in class was beyond even Scooby. There was bad behaviour and… well… it just didn’t happen. Not in the normal run of things.
Looking back, we did behave atrociously badly in music lessons (nothing compared to the horrors of mixed ‘social’ education in which some wit thought it would be a great idea to deal with sex education in a classroom with 30 kids of both sexes with raging teenage hormones) but at the time it was just our way to stand against what we thought of as part of the punishment that was school. Five days a week. Forty two weeks of the year. For thirteen years. By 1976 we were deep into what felt like a life sentence.
Of course they hit Eurovision glory in 1974 but in 1976 Abba were really making their mark. However, the 1976 Valentine’s Disco threw up a better tune. It was The Four Seasons Oh What a Night and that started an interest in Motown amongst us. It was the birth of an interest which would go past punk, into Two Tone and split into those who championed Reggae and those who championed the Mod Revival. The Carpenters, John Denver and country music were my own guilty secret. Most girls were stuck in Middle of the Road and looking for something else and the boys were looking for anything but Glam or Heavy Rock. Apart from Doobs. Doobs was born for Heavy Rock. Scooby and Stevie were looking for something else. Eventually Scooby found punk and Stevie’s Genesis was prog rock. His future lay with carpet crawlers and another brick in the wall. But for the girls it was Disco all the way. And the Four Seasons really paved the way. Almost without us even knowing it. Its impact was subtle. Not like Tina Charles. Tina was the battering ram of the spring of 76. I hated that song then and I hate it now. It makes me almost physically sick just to think of it, never mind hear it on the radio. I’m happy to say it now – I hated disco. I couldn’t say it then, of course. It would have been social suicide. It even took Billy till 1979 to crack under the pressure.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who hankered for David Soul and David Essex and the Bay City Rollers but to stay in with the crowd in the mid-70s, at least at our school, you had to love Disco. And in the spring of 1976 that meant Tina Charles. Retrospectively it was a relief that I Love to Love (But My Baby Loves to Dance) was destined to be a one hit wonder. At the time it was ubiquitous, all-powerful, inescapable. The song was used as a weapon along the corridors. Want to upset a boy – sing that song out loud as you pass. The boys fought back. They strutted the corridors playing air guitar shouting the Thin Lizzy chorus The Boys are Back in Town. It’s amazing it didn’t end in bloodshed.
Music was a maelstrom in those days. It was when people still cared about the Eurovision Song Contest and in 1976 Brotherhood of Man won by saving kisses. We felt betrayed by it – There’s one thing I must say before I go. As a love song it had lyrics a teenager could relate to, until they realised they were being cheated and it was actually being sung about a three year old. We felt duped and we rebelled. As did Abba, who struck back with Fernando. In the insanity of the pop charts of those days they were both toppled off the charts with that hideous rip-off of the earlier musical abomination D.I.V.O… – which still sends a thousand memories flashing through my mind: No charge. Thanks for nothing J.J.Barrie. My life has been blighted by one-hit wonders. When it comes right down to it, whatever other great songs there were that year, Tina Charles’ Disco classic was the song that rang through the whole school that year. It was totally the girls’ revenge on the Bohemian Rhapsody.
No one could save us, Not Lying in the Arms of Mary, or Silver Star or Silly Love Songs. Our resistance was low and just when it couldn’t get any worse the Wurzels had hit the top spot and the boys of 3S2 were getting ready for a long hot summer of rebellion.
With all the musical mayhem that surrounded us, that year Billy and Rachel stood, as always, in a class of their own. Rachel was keen on Rod Stewart and Billy was still into Bowie. They compromised on Fleetwood Mac. Music was a battleground in our school that year and it was music not love that was tearing us apart. Joy Division came later. When I look back on it, the only uniting experience in our musical lives in 1976 post Bohemian Rhapsody was the Orchestra. There we all met in unity – though to hear us play you wouldn’t think that.
When the instruments were handed out we weren’t offered much of a choice. Billy and Rachel played violin. Natch. Then instruments were dished out less on a first come first served basis and more on a ‘what gaps do we have to plug and what instruments do we have in the cupboards’ one. As a girls’ school many of the pupils had taken private music lessons and so owned their own instruments. Strings were heavily over-subscribed. The weaknesses were in the brass section. Somehow a job lot of French Horns were delivered. The brass section would be dominated by them for the next few years. By the time I got to ‘choose’ there was no Trumpet option left, and fortunately for me the Euphonium went to Scooby who was still in a huff because he’d wanted a violin case, less for the violin and more for the gangster cred it might give him. So he took the biggest weapon he could find.
So my ‘choices’ (and I use the word loosely) were French Horn, oboe or flute. I tried the oboe, couldn’t get a note out of the reed. I tried the flute and fainted because I couldn’t get the breathing right. So French Horn it was for me. Me and another four hapless kids who spent the next three years with permanent bruising on our legs from the constant clattering of the cases whenever we walked anywhere.
But every cloud has a silver lining and mine was that we sat right next to the second strings. Which was where Billy and Rachel started off. I worked my socks off to get to First Horn so that I’d be sitting next to Billy as second violin, but on the very day I ‘made it’, he was moved up to the first violin section – along, of course – with Rachel. You couldn’t keep them apart. I gave up on orchestra from that point on. I was there in body but not in spirit. Anyway, most of the pieces we played were all about counting thirty bars then trying to make sure that your instrument actually gave a toot without a rattle. All too often I was caught with the horn upside down, tipping out the spit just when the ‘big moment’ came. I was not a natural by any means.
Billy really took to the violin. Not as an orchestral instrument you understand, though he could play well enough. No, he got into traditional music. He played ‘fiddle’ rather than violin. I think he started doing it just to piss off the teacher who conducted the orchestra, but he got really good at it and before he left school he was earning money playing at ceilidhs. He got into the folk scene with Laura’s brother Grant – following the Battlefield Band and the Corries – but he kept that separate from his Rachel time.
If you’re smart, what you’ll see is that everything but everything we did in those days was to keep us out of the house. Unlike kids today with the lures and comforts of social media; locked in their bedrooms or permanently attached to smartphones; our goal was to be as far away from home as possible. Apart from Thursday nights when Top of the Pops was on and, for those whose parents allowed them to stay up and watch it The Old Grey Whistle Test. I never was. When you think that our parents were still being weaned off the Black and White Minstrel Show and Sunday Night at the London Palladium – into a world of soap opera drama and The Goodies – it reminds you how much has changed. This was even before Grange Hill, remember. We didn’t need that. We lived it. Our TV’s were still black and white and our lives were being lived in glorious technicolour. We watched Happy Days but we lived our own version of teenage angst without the aid of technology.
All we looked for were reasons to be out of the house after school. We weren’t allowed to ‘hang around’ the streets but school clubs and extra-curricular activities kept us out most nights till at least eight o’clock. Some kids pushed it to nine o’clock.
Billy and Rachel weren’t in the same classes at school, but they were inseparable at breaks and lunch. And after school there were stolen moments before and after activities. He always walked her home. We all wished we had a boyfriend like that. The most we got was a kiss and a grope behind the bike shed before the boy in question obeyed the once bitten twice shy routine of moving on to the next victim. They were like pond-feeders most of them. And we, who were terrified of ‘going too far’, didn’t encourage them to do so.
So in those days we kept ourselves safe by hunting in packs and, despite the horrific memories of Tina Charles and the Wurzels, they are days that I cherish. They are my own Wonder Years.
Discography: Want to sing along? Here are some YouTube links – sorry about attendant ads – sure you can find these all on your streaming music delivery platform (if you have such a thing!):
The Four Seasons Oh What a Night https://youtu.be/liyiT_DGREA
Abba Fernando https://youtu.be/G8bm6XlxuCY
Genesis Carpet Crawlers https://youtu.be/PtzgBJ13vro
Pink Floyd Another Brick in the Wall https://youtu.be/HrxX9TBj2zY
Tina Charles I love to love https://youtu.be/yHRYYtiIMJY
Thin Lizzy The Boys are Back in Town https://youtu.be/SGZqDzb__bw
Brotherhood of Man Save your kisses for me https://youtu.be/fhq_Q1Ut8SQ
Sutherland Brothers and Quiver The Arms of Mary https://youtu.be/7G93_uxIBRY
Tammy Wynette No Charge https://youtu.be/ELFeaD6h9LY
The Four Seasons Silver Star https://youtu.be/PWoY91zeQ1Y
Wings Silly Love Songs https://youtu.be/ap87QgZKTNw
About the Author
Annie Christie is a pretty ordinary person, except that she was born Annie Christie and then married a man called Christie and so is still called Christie despite having taken on her husband’s name. She sometimes wonders if she should have called herself Christie-Christie: but who would believe that?
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project.
The Soundtrack of Our Lives is Annie's fourth McSerial written for McStorytellers.
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project.
The Soundtrack of Our Lives is Annie's fourth McSerial written for McStorytellers.