pop music – Maddie Grigg

In these momentous days when there is strife all over the world and things seem particularly crazy, it’s good to look back and recall memories from a carefree childhood.

Two of these came to mind this morning, when I didn’t want to see the latest nonsense in the news but had to go on to social media anyway.

The first blast from the past was in my daily music quiz, Popquizza, where I pit my wits against old friends from trainee journalist days.

Today’s theme was Number 1s from 1973.

I should have scored higher than seven out of ten, because this was my era. A time when I was getting into music of my own rather than being influenced by the (good) taste of my older siblings.

The first single I ever bought was Venus by Shocking Blue, which came out when I was eight. The second was When I’m Dead And Gone by McGuinness Flint which I got when I was nine.

And then, in 1971 when I was ten, The Partridge Family came on our televisions in the UK. I was smitten. David Cassidy had arrived.

Down came my sister’s Rory Gallagher poster and up went a picture of the beautiful, smiling David.

And low and behold, one of today’s Popquizza questions was about my early 70s idol. There was also a Donny Osmond question but I was never a Donny fan. It was David all the way, even though at that time my older brother looked a bit like him.

The show was manufactured tosh, I suppose, but I loved it and especially David Cassidy. The songs were great and he had such a lovely, breathy singing style. So I’m now down an internet rabbit hole with David Cassidy singing Could It Be Forever, just for me, in my headphones while I type.

Hearing It’s One of Those Nights (Yes Love) now, I’ve got goosebumps from my toes to the tips of my fingers. (I ought to get that seen to.) It certainly blots out the rest of the rubbish going on in the world right now.

Looking Through The Eyes of Love has just come on and I’m almost crying, as I did when David Cassidy died in 2017. He was 67, an alcoholic and died of liver failure.

David, may you rest in peace. I think I loved you.

(I’ll tell you about the second piece of nostalgic bliss later in the week.)

For just shy of a year, I’ve been doing a daily pop quiz online called Popquizza.

I can’t be bothered with Wordle (sorry!) and Sudoko brings me out in a rash (maths?) but give me ten random questions on pop music and it gets the old brain cogs whirring every morning.

Depending on the era, I usually manage to do reasonably well, my pop music knowledge informed by being the youngest of five and the child of parents who liked anything from the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein and Gustav Holst’s The Planets to Joan Baez and Elias and his Zig-Zag Jive Flutes.

In our house, it was anything from The Everly Brothers, Joni Mitchell, Lou Reed, The Brothers Johnson, Somerset folk songs and Steely Dan, depending on the sibling.

And then I came along, loved all of it and added my own punk and ska twist and then, latterly, techno and electronica.

So when a friend put me on to the daily quiz, it seemed like a good idea at the time. But I realise now that I have whole gaps in my pop music knowledge, which corresponds with being a grown-up and not caring very much.

I’ve had a few ten out of tens but, for some unknown reason, I keep getting a five or, as I like to say ‘foive’ in honour of Janice Nicholls who said famously ‘oi’ll give it foive’ on Thank Your Lucky Stars, a remark which apparently catapulted the 16-year-old Black Country clerk to fame.

According to Nostalgiacentral.com, she remained a regular on Thank Your Lucky Stars for three years, and her phrase entered British colloquial speech.

The show concluded in the summer of 1966, when I was coming up to foive. I don’t even remember it. But clearly it entered my family’s colloquial speech, because we’re still saying it now.