The World of Pretend

I was reading the latest copy of Q magazine. For those living outside the United Kingdom, Q is an excellent magazine on rock music that is accepted as one of the leaders in its field.

Anyway the January 1998 edition featured albums and tracks of the year and it took me back to my boyhood years when every week I would devise my own pop chart.

I kept all these charts until a couple of years ago when they were thrown away with "other rubbish" in a definite attempt to streamline my life. Sadly I now wish that I had kept them. They would have been an interesting addition to my internet site.

I remember every Sunday night as I was growing up listening to the top 20 with the legendary Alan Freeman (Fluff was brilliant and so much better than the clones who do the charts on Radio One and Independent Radio today). I loved the melodrama of the countdown towards number one. At the time I didn't understand how those charts were put together and I didn't really care.

So sometime around the age of about 14 which must have been about 1966 I decided to devise my own charts, featuring my favourite singles. The inference here must have been that I spent many hours listening to the radio as I seem to remember that I had a good grasp of most of the music going around and my charts also featured some pretty much unknown artists.

Each week I listed my top 20 favourites with singles moving up and down, entering and leaving. I made charts of my charts to find my singles of the year. Some songs I kept at the top until they faded from radio play and then I slowly edged them out of the chart and into my memory.

Some songs would have fleeting entries in the lower end for a week or so, others stayed in for three months until I felt they had to go. The sad thing is that I don't remember too many of them now. I do remember under-rated and relatively unknown singers such as the American Paul Williams had a couple of number ones. Jim Webb also had a number one. I took great delight in shunning some of the major acts of the day. It was in a way a mild way of rebelling.

Over the years I built up a list of my favourite songs and today would love to still have them to put on the www. Alas all those memories are now consigned to dusk. I am saddened by the fact that I kept them for almost 30 years before deciding I would have no more use for them. C'est la vie.

This all takes me on to more memories of childhood and adolescence. Memories that mainly surround the world of pretend. I suppose in those now long off days it was okay to pretend.
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