How did I get into…

…Stackridge? I was thinking about this earlier on as I was reading a book that I got for Xmas. The story of how I got the book is sort of interesting but I was reminded of Stackridge as their place in my taste has quite an odd pedigree.

For those that don’t know, Stackridge are a West-Country band who began life in the early 70’s. Their sound is pretty unique; folky, whimsical and very English. Not the sort of band I would have ever found out about or even bothered seeking out, but…well…

In 1980 I was nine years old and I got meningitis. It was pretty serious and I was kept in an isolation ward in my local hospital. My parents visited every day but I spent long periods by myself waiting for them to arrive and I was unable to do anything but lay in bed and listen to the in built bedside radio. There were only three stations available in the daytime; radios two, three and four (hospital radio came on in the evening). None of these were really much fun for a nine year old, but radio two played the most nice music so I kept the radio tuned into that station.

Perhaps it was my illness but it seemed that they only played two records during the whole time I was in hospital – “Crying” by Don Mclean, and “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime” by the Korgis. The two songs are etched into my memory along with the view from the high windows and my search for the sight of my parent’s car. My time in hospital and subsequent convalescence was pretty confusing and left me in rather a mess in more ways than one, so once I was out and well again I tried not to think back much to those days and banished as much of it from my mind as possible, songs and all.

Fast forward to 1999 and a busy day at work. At the time I worked in a big open plan office where departments were delineated by rows of filing cabinets and potted plants. You could always hear all sorts of conversations going on and one lunchtime I heard a colleage say “Hey, I’ve just made a webpage, it’s dead easy!”; curious, I listened in as he read out the URL and I typed it into Internet Explorer and in a moment there was a photo of my colleague walking in the Lake District, with the caption “Love to Mum and Dad!”.

Suddenly, after 19 years, the concept of Mum and Dad sunk into my heart like a stone tossed into a lake and I thought of how much I always wanted to see my parents when I was in the hospital, and within seconds I’d remembered the song by the Korgis. In the intervening years I had probably only thought of that song about 5 or 6 times, each time trying to ignore it as it brought back so many memories for me. But this being 1999, and this being the age of the internet, and me being an internet professional, I had to have a surf and find out about the Korgis, and one link led to another (you are encouraged to click that link and find out for yourselves).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *