Kids nowadays have it so easy compared to when I was teenager back in the 80's, want to know if your mates in? Pick up the mobile phone you have and ring them. Want to know a football score? Look it up on the internet. Want to listen to a song? Download it. You've done all of this from your settee and its instant.
As a kid if I wanted to know if someone was in I had to go and knock for them. They weren't in? Well you then went to the next house, and the next one, and the next one, until 2 hours later you found them and they wondered where you had been all day!. The bloody cheek of it, you had just rode your back for 26 miles to find them and they wondered where you had been! Did you moan? Did you heck you just got on with it.
Music played a huge part in my development as a teenager you would get your girlfriend into your room, you would take that record out of its sleeve, blow it for dust, come on we all did it, place the needle on the vinyl and make your way back to her as Luther Vandross started singing from your AWIA stereo system. We weren't allowed our Dads Barry White records in case we scratched them. The lights off you would start smooching away, working your way a little lower, this by the way had taken months to happen. Months of planning and telling her you loved her, months of your mates boasts ringing in your ears, months of hoping and praying that what you had been told it felt like wasn't true, but somewhere hoping it was. You would just start to feel the curly clock springs, working your self into a frenzy and the bloody record would end.
You would hope she didn't notice and just be so into you that it was no holds barred but oh no, the noise that needle made as it finished scratching on the label killed any hope you had. She would pull your hand away and ask you to turn the record over. You would try and persuade her, telling her you had washed you hands and trimmed your nails especially, but she would insist on listening to the other side. So you would get up, walking like someone had just kicked you in the nuts, trying to hide the bulge in your jeans and turn the damn record over.
You would hobble back to the bed but you could see her straightening her hair and you knew the moment was gone and Luther Vandross was a bastard for not singing more 7 and 8 minute songs. Thats why as kids we never played the Beatles when we had girls round. 2 to 3 minute songs pfft no chance mate.
The top 40 was realistically the only way I could afford the records in the quantities I wanted to listen to them. Every Sunday I would finish my dinner and go upstairs with my TDK 90 cassette and tape the latest records from the radio. Trying to beat the bastard DJ talking over the end of the record and ruining it for me. I hated Bruno Brooks for this for years. I swear he did it on purpose, 10 seconds before the end of the song, there he was saying how well it had done in the charts that week, how good it was, god I hated that man. You desperately tried to press the pause button before he spoke and every time you missed it. It was like the bastard was watching you, thinking go on press it, go on beat me, ah you wont sucker.
No matter how hard I tried I never managed to get the full song without him talking on it. So kids when you say how tough your life is now, you havent even lived. We didnt have selfies, we didnt have 128gb playlists that meant we could just let the songs play and get on with it. Oh no we had vinyl and bastard DJ's talking over our records. We had to compete with an Album that meant you was always one song away from being a man. It was absolute hell.
Ah who am I kidding its the absolute dogs nuts of time.
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