Can I Rock ?

About 18 months ago I began to teach myself to play the ukulele which proved to be more difficult than I thought. So, I found a teacher. Although the lessons and subsequent practice was no less arduous, having a kind and supportive teacher is giving me hope. About the same time, I decided to return to piano lessons. Years ago, I did begin to learn to read music and play the piano but like my learning experiences over the course of my life it was not pleasant and therefore short lived.

I am often asked, and I ask myself ‘why? ‘I want to undertake a new learning experience so late in life. The reply is often brief, and subject changed.

However, I need to address this once and for all. I love music, to sing and dance. As a child l listened to the radio on the Light Programme, Junior Choice, Worker’s Play Time, Family Favourites, Sing Something Simple with the Cliff Adam Singers etc. I loved to listen to the Top Twenty on Radio Luxembourg late at night and write down the names of the records. Hoping one day that I could buy them or listen more fully. I did not have record player (or electricity), but my best friend had a Dansette record player and a growing collection of records to which we sang and danced to Neil Sedaka, Pat Boone, Frankie Vaughan and Alma Cogan etc. Later another friend had 2 older sisters and a huge record collection that included some by the Beatles and Rolling Stones, which was a bit controversial, as I was neither a Beatles nor Rollings Stones fan but it seemed then you had to choose your favourite.

By this time living in a house (not on a houseboat without mod cons), with electricity, a radiogram and TV and a paper round I was in a position to attend art class every Saturday morning in Southampton at the Art College. Furthermore, seek out coffee shops with a juke box and buy my own records in W H Smiths. Providing of course I was able to return home, get on my bike and deliver the Evening Echo and the football results! My choice then was Bob Dylan, Troggs, Them, Small Faces, Manfred Mann and the Animals.

When I left home on 1967 to live in Southampton, my work mates and I listened to the very first track on Radio 1, presented by Tony Blackburn, Flowers in the Rain by the Move. The music we heard from that day was the backdrop, alongside the current fashion, of daily life. From here I was able to go to see bands at the Pier and Top Rank such as the Small Faces, Herman’s Hermits and Spencer Davis Group. Coffee bars too, not so many with juke boxes but now I was able to go to Discos and dance to Tamla Motown, Soul, Ska, Blue Beat and Rhythm and Blues and a friend played Folk music on my wedding day December 1970.

I like all music there has never been a preference as long as it tuneful and has a story. I have grown with a melody in my soul even though the world around me is pretty horrible, I am enchanted by a good song.

I even believed I could sing tunefully or not, with my friends or alone. At school singing was a big part of the scholarship in assembly or at singing classes and I even enjoyed being the local church choir. However, developing that further was out of the question if one did not have an influential parent or musical background. General education in the 1950 and 1960s was not kind so I did not pursue my singing ‘career’. Until much later when I considered joining a local church choir when musical knowledge was required along with an outgoing gusto none of which I could claim to. I was turned away again.

So, here I am suffering the effects of a traumatic early childhood and education, still finding solace in music mostly on BBC Radio 6 and a vast collection of records and some local live events, this may be all I need for the rest of my life. However, there is something missing, something I ached for nearly 70 years ago, to sing, dance and frolic to a tune with no one looking, no one criticising casting doubt and forbiddance. I have established a visual creative world about me, now I want to rock.