Stand Up. My name is (fill in gap). I am a Stuff Collector. I am here because I am a reforming Addict. There was A Successful Intervention over the double figure collection of guitars and pretty pedals and now I am working on other aspects of my habit.
The Hat is someone who is regarded by his long-suffering offspring as the World Champion of Keeping Pointless Stuff; the Emperor of the Universe of Never Throw Anything Away That might be Useful One Day and the Long Serving Chairman of the Committee that looks after things that can Never Be Re-cycled - until he, personally, has finally been rolled up and smoked - and then he won't know anything about it. I have a 'man drawer' the size of your local pub. I tell everybody who will listen that They Just Don't Understand Me.
However, to cut, painfully, to the chase. I recently gave away my metres high stacks of sheet music. Trust Me. It was not easy. Of course, I had to check it all very carefully, page by page – well, you would, wouldn't you?
Everything from P.J.Proby's version of 'Somewhere' to Purcell and Chopin via The Beatles, The Stones, Brubeck, Lonnie Donegan, Don Lang and his Frantic Five stopping off briefly for my love affairs with Fats Domino. Django, Errol Garner and Nat King Cole. Ballads, Boogie, Ragtime and loads and loads of Unadulterated Popular Rubbish from The Sweet to Peters Sarstedt, Skellern and Gabriel.
Two pages for two shillings, a whole musical for three and sixpence. My Band Life in a mountain-size pile of pages. Oh, Oh, Oklahoma! Unplayable Czerny exercise scales, for god's sake! Many dog-eared memories. Some tear-stained and Stolichnaya spotted, felt-pen annotated and many flecked with the telephone numbers of amazingly beautiful people I will never see again.
For a while, these tattered pages were my passport to Having Fun. You bought the proper notes, you modified them, of course, you stored them in memory-ville and then you put the pages away for ever....so when they shouted “do you know?”...you actually did. Being a Top Ten Pop Maestro at a weekly village hall 'hop' was the only way of getting paid. If you couldn't do 'The Hits' you were stuffed. The Trad Jazz, Jive and Rock and Roll gigs were rather different. Dance, keep dancing.....made-up Jerry Lee and Little Richard. Get your foot up on to the keyboard, a wet comb through your hair, too tight trousers...and the night was yours. You owned it Dude. Life Changes but now they shout FreeBird.
However, I am not here to tell you about the days when you could buy bread and dripping for tuppence and always got a farthing in your change - others do that better than me – but to wonder aloud about the things that you and I found in our tottering music towers. First, I wonder if you have ever stumbled on your old set lists? It is a surreal experience....did you actually play that? what on earth is that 'rumba-numba'? what is this bit called 'encore'? We actually had encores? My set lists were often written out by the drummer, (so they must be accurate)...although I did wonder about that "solo bit while he fucks around” number that cropped up regularly...
Yeah...set lists. I can hear you all nodding at the memory.
Yeah...set lists. I can hear you all nodding at the memory.
Then there are the carefully handwritten “chord books” inherited from the thirty-six bar break piano men from the trad era. Everything, and I mean Everything, was written down there. One of those precious volumes even had 'this is a good place to start' inscribed in it by someone who used to be quite famous.
Finally, the discovery that really floated my boat was finding a cache of staved manuscript pads and paper. Real handwritten music and lyrics, some of it transposed adaptations, much of it original. A mass of black-inked love full of heavily underlined crescendo markings, italian short words and those wiggly clef things. These pages were a sort of homage to my music teacher Maureen who struggled with my moods and potential for years but left me with that single wondrous mantra.....There is nothing like A Clean Page, a Pen and an Unplugged Imagination.. These days you can push a button on your computer and it offers you 'think bites'..
So now we have got to the heart of the matter. I didn't really need that mountain of music any more than I needed that growth of guitars. I have gone weeks...no...months without missing them and I haven't died or lost a vital organ. There is always the internet. There are always the charity shops. There is always e-bay. I can replace everything. Is this the look of a sad broken ex-stuff man? Given time, I can replace everything. I can replace everything....I can replace.....I can.
You can sit down now. Meanwhile, I am here to help if you have people in your life who just don't understand the need for stuff....
Pip Pip!
Pip Pip!
The Blues Man in The Hat