Soundly on track with music from Medders and the Meddermaniac

‘YOU are looking…thoughtful, Medders.’ Hermione was not convinced she had quite found the correct adjective. ‘Hmm?’ ‘You are looking…absorbed.’ She came around behind him, the better to peer over his shoulder at the computer screen. ‘Hmm!’

‘You are looking…at a list of the Bay City Rollers’ greatest hits. Sugar baby love, what on earth has got into you?’

‘Hmm.’

‘You were never a Bay City Roller fan, were you? Theirs was never your look, not since I have known you. Please explain.’

So Medders did his best to try to explain: ‘I’m thinking that maybe I should have been a psychologist, you see.’

‘I certainly do not see. How can a seventies boy band have anything to do with your career choice?’

‘Well, I was a boy, or a young man, myself in the seventies.’ ‘But you were not in a group. You did not wear ridiculous trousers on ‘Top of the Pops’. You don’t say shangalang.

‘Ha! I know. All these years later, you still envy the way the Bay City Rollers attracted the girls. Hordes of adoring Rollermaniacs swooning at the sight of a well-turned male ankle. That’s what it is.’

‘It’s not that at all. I got over my Bay City jealousy long since. And of course now I have my very own adoring Meddermaniac.’ ‘You say the nicest things.’ She wiggled her eyebrows alluringly. ‘Shall I get back to explaining?’

He told her how he was compiling a play-list to mark his forthcoming birthday and to represent a lifetime’s interest in music. The original idea was to play the chosen songs as soundtrack for a party but current circumstances (code for Covid lockdown) meant there would be no birthday bash.

Instead of entertaining relatives and family, the play-list became more a solitary pleasure. Over days of pondering and head scratching, it swelled to embrace hundreds of tunes. And it suddenly struck Medders that his choices could all be classified under a series of headings. These divisions were not part of any conscious thought process but he realised that there were several clear and distinct strands represented in the selection.

The pigeon-holes included ‘Nostalgia’, ‘Standards’, ‘Obsessions’ and what Hermione would call ‘Lived Experiences’. Only nostalgia could explain, for example, why there was a place in the line-up for ‘The Woods of Gortnamona’ as performed by Brendan O’Dowda.

It is a grand song but it secured its place here only on account of the fact that his late father used to sing ‘Gortnamona’ at clan gatherings. Da died more than 40 years ago.

Standards? Elvis and The Beatles, with perhaps some Abba and Queen, must qualify as common heritage. Obsessions? The Kinks. Early David Bowie. And the Blades album ‘Last Man in Europe’.

Lived Experiences? He found that acts seen in the flesh prominent in the list. Johnny Cash (‘Ring of Fire’), glimpsed at the terminal of Dublin Airport in his way to play the Olympia Theatre. Ian Dury (‘Reasons to be Cheerful’), seen in action on stage in Amsterdam. Mary Coughlan (‘Strange Fruit’) who delivered a memorable third encore for those who stayed long enough to hear her at the end of Dublin concert in the eighties.

‘Where does the psychology come in?’ Hermione demanded. ‘Well, any such play-list must be as individual as a fingerprint. A good psychologist-cum-profiler could draw a detailed portrait of me after examining my musical taste.

‘My standards are Rolling Stones and Dusty Springfield. Someone older would have Doris Day and Frank Sinatra. Someone younger, Ollie Murs and Adele. I’ve gone for Mary Black rather than Maria Callas, for Stevie Wonder rather than Stevie Nicks. The clues are endless. This has to be the work of a Dubliner, now residing in the provinces, aged in his mid-sixties.’

Hermione asked: ‘What about the Bay City Rollers?’

‘Ah, my little secret. They come under the obsessions heading. It’s a tartan thing.’

(The Medders play-list is available on Spotify – suggestions for additions or deletions welcome).