This is a song that, to me, epitomizes hot Summer days as many areas in the Northern Hemisphere are deep into right now.
Back when this song was popular--the early 1970's--I was living in sunny San Jose in northern California. My friends (all budding juvenile delinquents whom our teachers no doubt thought would end our days in the laundry room at San Quintin Prison) would often while away a Sunday afternoon at the local High School, which offered its two swimming pools, one for swimming and one for diving. I once went off the 10-meter board and hit the water wrong--yow!
Anyway, none of our parents houses came with pools so my friends and I paid a modest fee on the weekends to join dozens of other kids and adults at the Prospect High's swimming pool.
This Edison Lighthouse song was one I heard often on the stereo/radio that was somehow usually on in the men's locker room. It's the one song I associate with the relief of hitting that moderately heated water on a hot day.
Listening to those opening chords, I can almost feel the heat and the sting to my eyes of the chlorine from the treated water. Fun times indeed. Hope you enjoy this.
For more on the brief success of Edison Lighthouse and its lead singer, Tony Burrows, see the link below.
PS: If anybody knows where this video was filmed, please let me know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison_L...
When this song was popular I was working as a dining hall/kitchen porter at a 'holiday camp' on the south coast of England. These collective fun farms are immortalised in the Sex Pistols 'Holidays in the Sun' and they still exist in modified form to this very day. Summer employment in this proletarian paradise which I did for several years in the early 70s.... was a heady mixture of mopping and romance with an ever changing cohort of 'campers' ....with whom to while away the scarce leisure time allocated to inmates like myself. The holiday camp in question had a fun fair which was a great place to listen to girls screaming and becoming ecstatically hysterical (and that was just the hamburger stall) whilst hanging about nonchalantly with a can of lager in hand. This pass-time was replaced by an interest in ornithology in later life.
ReplyDeleteMy point being however, that much of this washing up and it's natural corollary....wild carousing... was carried out to the strains Edison Lighthouse which will for ever remind me of the Waltzers, mini skirts and smell of fried onions.
Oh for the life of the 'Plongeur' as Orwell called that honourable profession of kitchen staff to which I proudly belonged in Bognor Regis 1971....thanks for the memories Doug
LOL at the links between hamburger and hysteria.
ReplyDeleteSo you might say you went from watching "birds" to birds.
I always count as one of the blessings that music--even a single pop tune--can trigger memories that bring to mind the other senses. Nobody has quite the same memory of an "oldie", but a song not heard for many years does bring back details and experiences more vividly than even an old picture to me.
"'Down and Out in Paris and London" is one of my favorite Orwell works and one of his earliest full-length efforts I believe. I worked at food prep at a Burger King fast food joint and did my share of hotel/motel work as I have recalled earlier, so the anecdotes he related had the ring of truth to me, even though I was not in the economic straits he was in. I always enjoyed the passages where he would gather at a small-time cafe in Paris with his fellow workers and they told great stories and sang songs to recover from the hard work of keeping body and soul together--this Old Etonian knew poverty and didn't flinch from getting to the core of what life at six francs a day does and doesn't do to the human spirit. The fellow who was a rigid Communist when sober but a patriotic blowhard when he had too much wine always struck me as a perfect metaphor for lower-class sentiments in the time between the Great Wars.
I had to look up Bognor Regis, because, frankly, I wasn't sure where it was...here's a shot below off a photo-posting service:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/2832724
Great song! It has an interesting beat. I always turn the volume up on the radio when I am driving along and I here this song. Thanks for the memories
ReplyDeleteMe too. the opening guitar riff is infectious!
ReplyDeleteYes it is!
ReplyDelete