30 Day Song Challenge - Day 5

Songs that remind you of someone. Hmmm, how easy would it be to get all maudlin and look back to painful break ups and shitty situations? But, you know, I love my life as it is now - I wouldn't change my wife for any other woman on the planet. So I think I will take the route of songs that remind me of people that mean a lot to me.

Track 1 - "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia



When I was a student in Birmingham, my best mate Cristi and I were responsible for clearing up after the live in students had breakfast. While cleaning various pots and pans, we would listen to Chris Evans on Radio 1. Chris Evans made a point of playing Natalie Imbruglia's cover version of "Torn" until it got to number 1 in the charts, and he played it every morning while we were working in the kitchen and we both loved the song. Even though I haven't seen Cristi in well over a decade now, I still regard him as one of my best friends and one of the most genuinely wonderful human beings I know.

Track 2 - "Shoals O'Herring" by The Corries



Yes another song by The Corries, but this song always makes me think of someone I have never met, and never will, my grandfather. My mother's family come from Fraserburgh in the north east of Scotland, a town more famous these days for the BrewDog brewery. Mum's family were fishermen, working up and down the east coast of Great Britain, following the herring. In my grandfather's eventful and thoroughly unorthodox life, one of his jobs was as the Managing Director for a fish canning company in Lowestoft, before emigrating out to Adelaide in Australia.

Track 3 - "Start!" by The Jam



I have three brothers, two older and one younger. When my little brother and I were kids, my eldest brother Mark came to live at home for a while. Every Saturday we would get the newspaper, decide what we thought the football scores would be that day, pick a horse from the day's races and he would put a £1 bet on for us, a fiver on the Grand National. Mark was a fan of The Jam (actually a fair bit of my musical taste is entirely his fault), and he had this song as a 7" single. We listened to this song a lot.

I am not going to decide on a single track from these three. They are all excellent tracks and the people they bring to mind are, or were, all excellent people as well.