I'm the fifth of seven music-loving children, so for my first 12 years or so my older siblings pretty much did all the hard work for me when it came to discovering chooons. I vividly remember sitting with my brother Daniel, 11 years my senior, when I was about four, watching the video for Guns N' Roses' November Rain. I loved it. I lost it for several years, then my sister Soph re-introduced me to it when I was about nine and I fell in love with it all over again. It was like being reunited with an old best friend.
That's one of the things I love most about music: its ability to recall you to a different time. I listen to QOTSA's Everybody Knows That You're Insane now and it's suddenly Christmas 2006 again and I'm wrapping presents in my old house.
But anyway, Daniel did a lot for me in the '90s. He had mixing decks in his bedroom (at least that's what he said they were; they were probably just glorified tape recorders) and he used to make me tapes. They were random as hell – usually an eclectic mix of the likes of The Corrs and Eminem – but by the time I was nine, I was never seen on a car journey without my beloved cheap imitation Walkman, a set of dodgy Woolworths' headphones and a little case full of tapes. Shame Dan went on to borrow my CDs without permission, do drugs, take on a great many bouncers and eventually marry a chav. But in the '90s he was awesome.
I was a bit retarded and loved playing with dolls and shit long after all the other girls at school had started wearing high heels and make-up from Claire's, so I was probably about 12 (all right, 13!) before I stopped asking my parents for Playmobil for Christmas and asked for a CD player and a CD instead. To my eternal shame, the CD was Busted's second album, A Present for Everyone. More on that later.
In the years between listening to Daniel's tapes and obtaining my very own CD player, I was eavesdropping on Soph's and my other brother Ben's chooons. We had a PC on the landing, and they would take it in turns to play games like Baldur's Gate and The Sims while listening to music. I copied them both. I thought they were both awesome. So I very well remember playing Diablo (the only game I've ever completed, because it was a piece of piss) on that old PC, listening to their music. Two songs that have stayed with me from then are Achilles Heel by Toploader and Citizen Erased by Muse. Citizen Erased was another lost song. I struggled in vain for years to remember what it was, then when I was 15 my best friend gave me Time is Running Out to listen to and I knew it was the same band. I got Origin of Symmetry for my 16th birthday and as soon as I heard the intro of Citizen Erased, I knew it was my lost song.
The same thing happened with Macy's Day Parade by Green Day, which Ben used to play on the PC all the time while I sat on the stairs listening. And Gone Away by the Offspring, which I only rediscovered last Christmas. It really is the best thing I can think of, to suddenly have long-forgotten memories of being 10 sitting on the stairs listening to a song you didn't own flooding back, and to suddenly have that song all to yourself on an iPod, to listen to whenever you want. So I'm eternally grateful to my siblings. In Part 2, I'll attempt to excuse myself for that Busted album.
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