1988: Shall We Dance?

S‘Express: Theme From S‘Express

[purchase

Bomb the Bass: Don‘t Make Me Wait

[purchase

It’s funny the tricks we allow our memories to play on us. All grown up, here on the wrong side of forty, it’s so easy to look back on the music of my childhood and teenage years with a nostalgia that goes beyond being false and strays into the realms of the ludicrously wrong. I remember 1988, for instance, as being something of a watershed year. Certainly, the summer of that year hold any number of fantastic memories – I was seventeen, had a group of friends whose company I enjoyed very much, and was having the time of my life in the knowledge that I had absolutely nothing else to worry about. Life was good, and in my mind so is the soundtrack to that year.

So imagine my dismay when I set about the challenge presented by this week’s theme and discovered that virtually none of the tunes or albums that informed my upbringing, the classic records I carry with me to this day, appear to have actually been released in 1988 (with the exception of Prince’s Lovesexy, but those are the waters upon which no music blogger may safely sail). The process of wracking my brains (and searching my library) led me to a horrible realization: the records which best define that year for me are the two which were the most ubiquitous in clubs that summer: Theme From S-Express and Don’t Make Me Wait by Bomb The Bass, two records about which I am ambivalent, at best.

Having said that, and as badly as both of these tunes have aged, listening back to them for the first time in two decades had a curious effect: they made me smile. Two songs I did not like at the time made me happy beyond my ability adequately to explain why such a thing should be so. And whilst I know that listening to them won’t transport anyone else back to the place to which they take me, I do rather hope they make you smile too.

Guest post by Houman