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Old Friends

Severn Droog Castle, Shooter's Hill.

When Neil March asked me to write for the 100th edition of Trust The Doc, I had so many ideas. But the one that really stood out to me was the theme of old friends. 

Why?  

Well the answer is simple and not so simple. 

Indulge me. 

I watched a videoclip of Questlove, the drummer and bandleader of the roots talking about how music is a snapshot it’s a Polaroid of a moment in time. When you hear a song it takes you back to where you first heard it. 

I wholeheartedly agree with him, because some of my favourite songs of all time have memories attached to them, and I call them old friends. 

Now the reasoning behind this is where it becomes a little more complicated, but stay with me on this. 

The first time I watched Top Gun, a film which isn’t known for its Shakespearean dialogue there was a scene between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis. Tom had put on “Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay”, and she simply says “Old friend?” It was an incomplete sentence but my mind connected this as her implying the song to be an old friend and not reminding him of an old friend that realisation came later. 

But for me, for years that’s always been something that’s stuck in my mind. I took a walk last summer in my old neighbourhood- I grew up on Shooter’s Hill and I went to Severndroog Castle something I hadn’t done since I left the area 40 years ago even though it’s one bus ride away. As I did this walking through the ancient Oxleas Wood behind my old primary school, I played “This Used To Be My Playground” by Madonna, and that feeling of being connected with an old friend came flooding back again. I hadn’t listened to it in a while and I felt like I was being greeted by friends from my first primary class, people I hadn’t seen in so long. Even though Madonna had released that song seven years after I’d left it was still a very emotional experience. 

Being on Shooter’s Hill always reminds me of The Beatles and The Long And Winding Road. The Beatles because that’s where I first heard a Beatles song when I was growing up and the road where I lived wound down a lane. I had to put it on and listen again. I remember being in the playground with Mark and Philip, two older boys that told me about the other Beatles songs I didn’t know existed and I remember looking up to them. We used to sing those songs together. I still wonder where they are and how they’re doing. 

You would never guess it but I’m quite shy. 

I know right??? 

Yeah it’s true. 

But I use music as an icebreaker I genuinely want to learn what music moves you – what song do you consider an old friend? What’s the song that would genuinely make you dance or cry or laugh… 

For me music is has been and always will be an old friend to me. 

This is a playlist of tracks that I’ve put together that connects me to old friends. Some of them are from the past and some are from the present. But for some reason they always connect me to a certain period of my life in one form or another. 

 

 

 

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