Alex Burton – Five Miles Out

If I could buy my reasoning, I’d pay to lose

In Spring 1990 we had a university reunion at Dave Carter’s in the Lake District. I met Alex at a station near his house in Slough and we drove up together. It was a warm spring day, but the temperature progressively dropped the further north we went. By the time we got to Carter’s IContinue reading “If I could buy my reasoning, I’d pay to lose”

Blackness, blackness draggin’ me down

There was one other source of borrowing music at university besides the town library and the College record library. The Union Society record library. It was in a pretty sorry state, obviously money was not being spent on it and most of the stock was some fairly poor-quality cassettes. Still, Dave Carter and I foundContinue reading “Blackness, blackness draggin’ me down”

Now There’ll Be No Turning Back

Our family played a lot of board games. This was the 70s and early 80s when computer games might just about mean tennis being played by two sliding blocks on a TV screen or going to an arcade. A time of three TV channels. Long school holidays and wet weekends lead to boredom. We playedContinue reading “Now There’ll Be No Turning Back”

All the Work Shutdown

Another one Michael likes. I mean really likes. We took exams at university seriously. Despite tutors saying that our failure would reflect worse on the admissions tutor than us, as Cambridge did not accept people who could fail. First year exams were particularly scary as we did not know what it would be like. So,Continue reading “All the Work Shutdown”

Have You Ever Had It Blue?

The mid 80s turned into a pretty barren period musically. After the regular injections of innovation from Punk, New Wave and New Romanticism mainstream popular music moved towards a fairly middle of the road approach. Do not even mention Jazz/Funk dance music – no one ever does because it is like muzak. The Style CouncilContinue reading “Have You Ever Had It Blue?”