Thursday 21 February 2008

Yes, THIS is The Point



If you haven''t got this album, you should. Thanks, Phish, for making me think of this track, with your comment. Do you know why?

It could have been written, perhaps, to go with this post. But it means something more to me as well. It is a special track to me.

Summer of 1999, our last year at University.

Sitting in my bedroom in our house on the seafront. Getting stoned. Listening to this track.
And I remember listening to the lyrics and saying 'It's true though, ain't it, people ARE the greatest thought. Everything else is pointless if you don't have people to DO them with. What's the point of being rich if you have no mates?'

And I remember thinking; We graduate in a month. I wonder how many of us WILL stay in touch. I bet we'll ALL meet up for ALL the parties this summer (all 'the lads', about fifteen to twenty of us), but I bet within a few years many of us will lose touch. Not these guys, I hope. Not those of us sitting here. These guys are life friends, I hope.

There were five of us sitting in that room, that day, as this sequence of thought passed through my head. One, I see perhaps three times a year, maybe, though he regularly e-mails details of Indie gigs down in London. The second, I have seen twice in the last year, he borrowed Reactivate 12 from me, and I have my doubts as to the likelihood of it's return.

The other three? Myself, The Baker, The Chimney Sweep. I see The Chimney Sweep at least twice a month, often more.
And the Baker? On weekdays I don't see him (He DOES live over a hundred miles away), but I at least get a phone call most days. Weekends, we generally spend together.

Life is about priorities.
I think mine are the right ones.

People are important.
Listen to the lyrics. That was me then, it is me now, it will always be me.

And I'm sorry to say, if you don't agree with the sentiments of the track, there's no hope for you.

Post below explains the whole thing better.
Yeah, I'm having a lazy night :)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You always have me writing music titles and groups in my little book. I must have been living under a rock for years, musically speaking.

Yes people are important, friends especially. May they always be close for you. But friends do come and go in your life, especially when you move countries as I have done.

The experiences you shared at university make for a very close bonding. Sadly I have lost contact with all my uni friends but still keep in touch with school friends. Pretty amazing after more than 50 years.

Anonymous said...

Who's it by?

Anonymous said...

jmb- It's a great album, tracks 5 and 6 are my favourites, the end refrain to The Red Telephone sums it all up 'They're locking him up today, they're throwing away the key,
I wonder who it will be tomorrow, you or me?',
in accelerating pathos.

It's going through the rits of passage. I think in the first year, you are the person you grew up as, by the third year, you are the person you will be.

Oestrebunny- The group is actually called Love, lead singer Arthur Lee. The album is Forever Changes, from 1967(?), it very much encapsulates all that was great about sixties ideals.