My life in music (part 1)

Inspired partly by Rachel's Temple of Love post last week and heavily influenced by the 'CD CV' feature Mark Radcliffe does sometimes, I present to you some of the stand-out tunes that I can date my life by.  There's even an accompanying Spotify* playlist which I had a great time making this morning, and which could have contained an awful lot more songs.

Stand and Deliver/Take it Easy: These are two of the first songs I ever remember, largely down to having a much older sister who thought it was hugely amusing to teach a 5 year old all the words to the very first Eagles album. As she was a punk at the time, I suspect she knew she would be pushing her luck to teach me to sing along to any of the other music she listened to.

Agadoo/The birdie song/Pass the Dutchie: 3 songs that launched a thousand children's birthday parties. Not a high point to be fair.

Love in the First Degree: We could spend hours pretending to be Bananarama and making up rubbish dance routines. Happily this phase didn't last too long thanks to...

Hot in the City/Paradise City: The same sister who indoctrinated me with The Eagles as a small child also introduced me to rock music when I neared my teenage years. She very kindly copied some of her vinyl onto cassette for me (yes, it was that long ago) which I had to hide from my parents. My mother walking into my room right at the sweary bit of 'Mr Brownstone' got us both into a lot of trouble, but it was worth it.

The Final Countdown/China in your Hand: For some reason I had a tape with Europe on one side and T'Pau on the other and I listened to them both far more than is actually healthy.

Money for Nothing/Poisoning Pigeons: These were courtesy of the record collection of my friend's dad and we spent many Sunday afternoons listening to Dire Straits and playing cards. Tom Lehrer was more reserved for singing in the van on the way to one of our frequent camping trips.

Harvest for the World/Another Day in Paradise: These were the first two albums that I ever bought with my own money. I'll be your baby tonight was the first cassette single I ever bought, I think because it was in the bargain bin (at least I hope that was the reason).

Time of my life: I remember vividly going to a sleepover with a load of friends and watching Dirty Dancing for the first time.

The Time Warp/Should I stay or should I go: Listening to these takes me back to secondary school discos and sweet sixteen parties. Mostly good memories...

Dizzy/Sit Down/Birdhouse in your soul/Mmm mmm mmm mmm: Inextricably linked with 6th form college and sneaking off to the pub at lunchtime with boys who had floppy hair.

Purple Haze: My first serious boyfriend who forbade me to speak while Hendrix was playing. He was also into Sepultura at the time, but I tried not to listen to that.

Caravan of Love/We are Family: We used both of these in 6th form productions. Best thing about being in the music & drama department was being told indirectly by one of our teachers that if we put Bacardi into a can of coke, nobody would know that we were drinking.

Two Princes: My year out working and living away from home for the first time. This was the favourite song of one of my housemates'. I think I probably drank too much to remember anything else.

The playlist has a few more that aren't mentioned here - no particular memories associated with them, but they're very much of their time.
Post-1994 music will come another day.

*If you don't have Spotify and would like it, send me your email address as I have a spare invite or two.