Sounds of the 60s, 70s, 80s ?
Thu, 2004-01-22 08:53
#1
Sounds of the 60s, 70s, 80s ?
I was accompanied on my walk to the station this morning by the polyphonic chirrup-warble of a blackbird and was instantly transported back to a warm, luminous summer’s day, the sort of day when anything seemed possible.
Seagulls can do that too; I only have to hear their melancholy screech and I’m back with mam and dad, sitting on some seawall with a bag of chips, my feet tingling beneath my cotton socks from the rasp of towel and persistent sand. A day not where anything was possible but a day in which everything good that could happen already had.
What natural sounds take you back and to where and when?
[%sig%]
andrew pack
That Eck-Awk, Eck-Awk, Eck-Awk noise of space invaders marching across the screen and the high-pitched whining of the saucer that was worth 500 points and whizzed over really fast.
That takes me back to early eighties and Butlins holidays, Boot Hill and defender...
But the best arcade sound bar none was Phoenix, which had a really mournful tune at the beginning, de-ne-ne-noo, de-ne-ne ne-ne-ne, ne-ne-noo, noo, noo noo-no . It was more like the opening credits to the Water Margin or Crouching Tiger than a frenetic action game, sorrowful and delicate. Smacking that button to shoot the eggs, then the evil swooping birds, hitting the Shield button that never lasted long enough. If anyone (and I'm thinking Mark Brown...) knows what the tune was, I'd love to know.
Smell of the nineties has to be CKOne. And as for sound, well it is now hard to believe that I remember a time when if you were on a train and a mobile phone was being used it was bizarre and fascinating.
Martin_t
i never saw one of those enormous mobile phones the size of a brick, they must have just been in thatlondon....
space invaders....i've been playing that lately...i'm still good at it...my childhood wasn't entirely wasted
andrew pack
Tell you a sound that I used to hear all the sound and never hear anymore - those cap-guns that you used to buy, where you had inside the gun a roll of red tape with little grey circles of what I fondly imagined was gunpowder, but probably wasn't.... children taking out the roll and scratching each one with a sharp stone to make a 'crack' noise and a whiff of smoke. I miss that.
Martin_t
i had one of those....andwasn'tt here some kind of metal bomb thing, that you threw at the pavement and it let off a big crack....
jude
They say smell has the strongest association with memory. Who doesn't get whisked back to a burning heatwave day by the smell of cut grass or to Christmas by the smell of Satsuma peel.
Songs. The Levellers 100 years of solitude takes me back to driving down A roads near the New forest in a burning July.
The sound of a shower takes me back to this morning when I had a shower.
The sound of wood sap popping in a fire to a cool night at a festival
Tony Cook
As soon as my eczema recurs it takes me back to being a small child on the beach at Brodick, Isle of Arran in my woolly swimming trunks with the sea water running down my rash-inflamed inner thighs. And I still enjoyed my holidays!
Jamie (Schembri)
The sound of 'The kids from Fame' takes me back to my days in drama school...along with the thought of leg warmers, fishnets and frilly knickers.
(That was just on the blokes).
The smell of the sea takes me back to a time when I nearly drowned on an inflatable raft which drifted out to sea (same year Jaws was released) that was what I call a scary moment.
Old spice aftershave...takes me back to discovering there was actually something I liked about men.
The smell of disinfectant...( during childbirth) takes me back to the time before Old Spice when I was blissfully unaware
Hox
The scent of a stale Biryani reminds me to do the washing up.