Music Therapy #1

The crush, at work, sends out Song of the Day emails. Every morning, a song, except he just seems to send out lyrics. He doesn't include me, but I know about them, post-Glasto. It's quite a good idea, I suppose, but I once asked why he chose a song, and he said it was playing on the way to work that morning. It seemed a bit arbitrary for me. I like sub text. So, welcome to my own version of Song of the Day. It's totally stolen off Nick Hornby's Polysyllabic Spree book reviews and his 31 Songs (which I sort of half-read at Gemma Potter's house... it's wasn't what I'd been hoping, which is what I'm setting out to do. I wanted more autobiography). So, welcome to Music Therapy. Trite title. But I didn't want to call it Song of the Day, since I can't update every day, and also because it's more about me than about music, and while there might be some lyrical subtext, maybe, sometimes, today there's definitely not. It's more just wittering, which, after all, is what a blog is for.

Music Therapy #1: Rhythm is a Dancer by Snap

I was driving home this afternoon, alternating between the Radio 2 Chris Evans Show, and Sara Cox on Radio 1. It strikes me that both of those esteemed broadcasters were on the Radio 1 in the breakfast slot during some of my formative years, and that probably explains why I am so fond of them both. Anyway, Chris Evans had my attention for a short while with Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' December 1963 (Oh What a Night), but then Coxy grabbed it back during a channel hop with Snap's Rhythm is a Dancer.

I remember, in either Year 7 or 8, singing this at my desk in English, and being told by Jale, who was always a bit snooty about my cool stakes, that it was an old song. I always thought it was a top song, and I've been proved right, because it's being played on the radio 14 years after it was originally a hit! Which proves what I always knew; I was inherently much cooler than Jale, who was a damaged, and vulnerable, but ultimately, pretty nasty little girl. But at the time, I didn't stand up for myself, I said it was because I was going trampolining later, and the step class always began with the song.

And it did. It'sthe initial clash of the opening parts of the song that transports me right back to the Sports Hall in Camberley Arena, partitioned off, trampolines on one side (poorer, half inch beds, not the snazzy 5ml beds like the ones in the school sports hall), and on the other side the step class. The opening clatterings at the start of the song could always have been someone moving equipment, shifting of multicoloured Reebok steps, even shifting of her raised platform. I thought that the aerobics instructor was glamorous, even though she was old. 1980s-throwback shaggy permed hair, permed for volume, not curl. Gladiators-style leotard over cycling shorts. I emulated that look myself, as I grew in confidence in my teens. By the time I gave up trampolining and moved on to Jazz dancing, I was still in leotard over 'footless tights'. Funny how we were all wearing 'footless tights' last winter, but now they've moved halfway up the calf, they're leggings. Let's best pray that cycling shorts don't come back, because I don't look as hot in my leggings as I did before I went to university and overdosed on cottage pie, cheap chardonnary, and Baileys.

So there are then the memories of trampolining, the early years, before the school team, and competitions, and realising I was pretty damn mediocre at that physical activity, too. Sarah, Caroline, who died, poor girl, before getting to take up her place at Cambridge. Who told me she couldn't cut her thumb nails or even bite them because they were now so thick and strong. Who my mum worried wasn't really cared for at home. Who I thought looked black, even though she was white (she had South African roots, that's where she died). Sarah who had been a beautiful younger teenager, and then started to go to seed, much to my mum's disappointment.

Sarah's mum used to take her cross stitch to do in the cafe. My mum preferred my own cross stitch, which wasn't kit or chart based, like Sarah's mum's (Janet, her name was), but that I tended to design myself, being a bit precocious, with only a few little friends. Janet would turn over the back of her frame, to show us the reverse of her cross stitch, proud that the back was as neat as the front. Mum thought it was bloodless, and while now, with wisdom and age, I also appreciate a neat backside of a piece of needlework, and it does save on thread, I'm not averse to a cheeky knot or tangle, and I appreciate that my mum instilled in me the value of creativity over neatness. Which probably explains why every Friday before the weekend starts I have to have a quick whip round my bedroom because it's just too depressingly messy, especially when like this week, I've been out every night, and coming home late, disrobing and falling into bed a bit pissed.

Mum was a bit dismissive of Sarah's mum, who would talk to her in the arena cafe, and sometimes cry, because her husband had been made redundant and she had to go back to work, and she was worried he wasn't going to get another job. Firstly, that probably wasn't very tactful of Sarah's mum, as my mum was a single parent with her own worries. But also I think that mum probably just wanted to be left alone in the cafe, a place that I think she probably appreciated because it had a smoking section. Very much like how she appreciated the UCL Bloomsbury Cafe when we visited the department for my interview, due to its smoking leniency. It hasn't occurred to me until just now that student unions are all going to be smoke free, too. It's not the same without the smoke. At the Honeypot, for Amy's leaving do, there was a strong smell of bleach, air freshener, and the toilets. Of course, it is typical that the month England gets a smoking ban, I become pro-smoking, even though it's terrible for you, and it is nice if horribly middle class, to return home not stinking of cigarettes after a night out.

And I suppose the final thing about Rhythm is a Dancer is that it was the first 'dance' song I really liked, I was growing up, a little bit, I suppose. Prior to that I'd been all about Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which is still perhaps my favourite musical in the world, but not exactly rock and roll. Neither is Rhythm is a Dancer, I guess, but it is about losing yourself in the music, to the rhythm, it's about lifting your hands, shared experiences, and the primitive urge to just move, that I used to feel as my be-Lycra-ed bottom twitched along to the beat as overweight women thwacked up and down those plastic steps, separated from us by only a mesh curtain. I used to love it when the music was playing and I was bouncing. Soaring in the air, letting a bit loose. Something I was starting to learn about, I suppose. First discos, later cast parties, then actually dancing. That innate urge we have as humans, to dance. I'm not an anthropologist (although Caroline might have been, if she'd not died), so I don't know much about human dance history, but I'm pretty certain it's an innate part of our make up. It's been happening for years, since before even the Greeks and Romans had their Bacchanals, and as Mrs G. my Classics teacher said when I was in a sixth form - what do you think a disco is?

One of the reasons why I love pop music is that I believe that just because it's popular, doesn't mean it's crap (I'm not elitist about art), and I think that even what I might think is crap gives people pleasure and transports them. It's not an original argument, but I think it's worth stating my side. My point is that even something as deceptively simple as pop music (and it's not easy to write a pop song, I am positive) can tap into parts of the human psyche, reveal things about human nature, hold power in our memories. I mean, Rhythm is a Dancer is by no means a great song, it's a banging choon, yeah, but it's not really fabulously put together, and apart from the beginning bits, when it's getting going, it's a bit boring, but all the stuff it brought back, that's got to be worth something.