Memories – Total Recall. Sometimes

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No, not those sort.

I am currently playing some old songs from my yoof, including some stuff from Marillion (Kayleigh and Lavender, to name but two). And as soon as I played them I had instant flashbacks of when I first heard those particular songs (in this instance it was my time in 6th form at my local comprehensive, and playing darts in the Common Room, and playing LPs on the knackered record deck).

I can remember quite vividly of those days, purely because of an old song.

So how is it I can remember events from over 40 years ago based purely on a few lyrics, and yet I can barely remember what I did last week, or even yesterday?

Now listening to Talking Heads and “Once in a Lifetime” (1981). And again I can remember certain highlights from when I first heard that song (A 6th form trip to Blackpool – plenty of booze, dancing, and arcade machines. As well as finger/fondling a fellow sixth former girly up the back alley of an arcade!)

Memories are a total mystery to me. Even now I can still recall building my first PC back in the mid 90s, starting with a hugely sexy i486 socket 3 MB, awesome Intel SX25 SX8266 CPU (with x2 Overdrive of course), a couple of 4MB DRAM chips and 3Gb HDD. And all thanks to PULP and their “Common People” song.

I can also still remember playing doctors and nurses with the girl next door at the age of about 10 purely because of listening to some music of the time that somehow triggered a memory from deep within my mind vault. But again, ask me what I did last Monday and I wouldn’t have a Scooby Doo!

Nominated by – Technocunt

73 thoughts on “Memories – Total Recall. Sometimes”

  1. In 30 years time (Dog willing), you WILL remember your 1st post in IsAC👍

    Music is strongly connected to human emotion.

    With me it’s “smell”:

    I smell freshly cut grass and I am transported back to my bedroom, as a youngster, lying in bed of a Summer’s evening, window open, whilst The bloke next door (worked nights), Flymo’d his back lawn….
    😀👍

    • What amazes me is the quality of these flashbacks and the amount of sensory overload that comes with them. Like you say CG, you can smell the grass and hear the Flymo. It the only sense in which time travel to the past is possible.

    • You should have told him to get a Qualcast Concorde, they are a lot less bovver than a hover.

  2. Triggers which reach back into your memory. Music, smells, sounds and physical objects which are significant to you connect with the deep recesses of your memory and bring it back. Without these triggers the past can simply be an amorphous lump of memories difficult to distinguish and recall.

    That’s how some memorising techniques work. In the Renaissance there was an “art of memory technique”. If you wanted to memorise a lengthy passage of prose construct a mental building in your head and associate each passage with a room or object in that house. The rooms or objects act as a trigger to help you recall the passage.

    It’s Proust and his madeleines.

  3. Total recall? Like the cunt who is suing bob Dylan for something he allegedly did in the 1960s , I always thought if you remember the 60s you weren’t there, some woke money me too grabbing cunt more like

    • I reckon it’s bollocks about Bob and a Me Too cash-in.

      I have also heard some very tasteless (but funny) jokes about Dylan in the last couple of days.

  4. I just have to hear any early Van Halen (You really got me, Ain’t talkin’ ’bout love) and I’m instantly transported back to my halls of residence at university. Forever Autumn from War of the Worlds reminds me of getting my first girlfriend. The quality of the memories is phenomenal. Yet I can’t remember what the fuck I had for dinner yesterday.

    • Music definitely triggers memories.
      That Kayleigh by Marillion,
      It reminds me of the first pub we drank in underage.
      It was in the charts back then and getting airtime.
      The Hollies ‘air that I breathe’
      Reminds me of driving on a empty road in a snowstorm,
      Felt dead happy ,
      And the memory stuck.
      Musics great for memories as is smell,
      Strangely enough I don’t remember where I was yesterday though.

      • “Strangely enough I don’t remember where I was yesterday though.”….

        I’m sure the Ladies at the local golf-course can help you out with that one.

  7. My first blowjob (receiving, not administering, before any of you filthy cunts say anything) was at a party, upstairs in a bedroom while CCW’s Bad Moon Risin’ was being blasted out downstairs.

    Every time I hear it I get a pleasant stirring.

    Ask me where I was two days ago and I have no fucking idea

  8. ” Even now I can still recall building my first PC back in the mid 90s, starting with a hugely sexy i486 socket 3 MB, awesome Intel SX25 SX8266 CPU (with x2 Overdrive of course), a couple of 4MB DRAM chips and 3Gb HDD. And all thanks to PULP and their “Common People” song.”….

    you’d be remembering hearing snatches of ” We all live in a yellow submarine” as your head disappeared down the shitter if we’d caught you doing such an Eggheady thing when I was at school.

    🙂 .

    • You should have seen what I was doing with a Sinclair ZX81 and 16K RAM pack back in 1980/1

      Phwoarrr!

      • Getting it to change the background colour on the television screen and draw coloured circles, like everyone else?

      • I got my ZX81, plus a reed switch, to read Morse off shortwave automatic weather stations, Also to generate the Mandelbrot Set….very, very slowly.
        Had it wired into a surplus keyboard. Had to solder it to the RAM pack too because the contacts were shite. Those were the days, before machine code was submerged under metalanguages.

  9. “Strange – the potency of cheap music” (Noel Coward, Private Lives)

    Start the day with a quotation “Anthony Blair is a cunt” was the subject of my first ISAC contribution.

    Music: The first music that stirred me was “Flamingo” by Earl Bostick, on a pink and white (! wonder I didn’t go all “Mandy” ) 78 – a sentimental ballad dragged into the 1950s with a raucous alto sax and vibraphone. It was quite a change from my parents Joseph Locke and Deanna Durbin. “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” was never the same after that I think my mum was suffering from shock!.

    In a way it is a good job Dennis Norden isn’t still with us, otherwise I’d be one of those boring old farts on “Looks Familiar” – TV of yesteryear (1970s), trotting down memory lane.

  11. The steak bar at the students’ union at Durham always seemed to have ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ by Thin Lizzy blasting out whenever I went there . For years later whenever I heard then opening bars of the song I could smell steak being grilled.

    • She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult does it for me. That was always playing in my Student Union and it brings sensations flooding back to me.

  12. Big fan of memory myself.
    I recall George Floyd resisting arrest and having some upset.
    That cheers me up no end.
    The daft cunt.

    • Can’t wait for a pasta nomination.

      “Pasta dough must be kneaded, a bit like what happened to George Floyd”

      • “she was only the baker’s daughter, but she really kneaded my dough boom boom!”.

        Okay, I’ll get me coat…

    • Going for the back alley is par for the course for rather too many on this site.
      BTW, any ideas where B&WC is currently?

  15. Billy Idol’s White Wedding always takes me back to a café in Amsterdam.

    A fucking huge place it was.

    The Hardrock or the Bulldog?
    Fucked if I can remember, I was well stoned at the time.

    • And on the subject of being stoned………..

      The song ‘Son of my Father’ by fuck knows who.

      A particularly pleasant acid trip where I was in a friend’s front room being amazed by the 70’s wallpaper dancing around the room.

  16. The smell of two-stroke reminds me of friends and me going out on our 250 yamahas and suzukis back in the 80s. Also Gitanes and Gualoise. All gone forever alas.

  17. Then of course there’s the “Where were you when…” flashbacks

    For example with 9/11, I was in the local pub on a lunch break playing pool, when the TV in the lounge had a newsflash showing one of the WTC towers being hit. At first I thought it was a film trailer (Die Hard 4, perhaps)

    I can still recall Neil Armstrong landing on the Moon in 1969. I was playing with some Lego with a friend, and my mother hauled me up onto her shoulders and told me to watch the TV (black and white, no remote control. A rented Bush 18″ I think)

    But I can’t remember what I did the day after!

    • I was in Dublin on a fishing holiday with my dad on September 11th 2001. I came out of the bogs in the pub and my old man said ‘You won’t fucking believe what’s happened’. Then the second plane crashed into the other tower…

      I remember when Marc Bolan died and also Elvis Presley. I was in the car with my old man when I heard about when John Lennon had been shot.

      I also remember when that American heiress was kidnapped by these nutters, and next time she was seen it was during an armed robbery.

    • I was on the bus home from college.

      Turned on the telly and saw the dust cloud from a helicopter over New York harbour

  18. “Abracadabra” by the Steve Miller Band takes me right back to my student days. It was always playing in the local pub. As soon as I hear it I can see one of my lecturers, pissed out of his skull holding court and, seeing everything through a haze of smoke from er… exotic cigarettes. You just had to breathe in and you were away.
    Sadly it was demolished a few years ago after a fire. It was described as a burnt-out shell which was a danger to the public – but then they might have been referring to my old lecturer.

  19. One of my sons suffers from Korsakoff’s syndrome and he remembers exact details especially music from being a child and up to the Hacienda club.
    After that it’s not a case of remembering the other day but more 30 seconds ago.
    He manages quite well and has gone 13 years without a drink so I’m proud of him for that.
    I expect it’s a condition not known to many so for anyone interested hears a link.
    https://bit.ly/3k9edtw

  20. I bet for some of the truly old cunters on here their memories are probably in black and white

    • Brilliant observation Techo!
      I reckon I’m pretty much the same as most people Techo; I remember where I was when I first heard The Beatles, where I was when the Kennedy and 9/11 news broke, my fast taste of malt whisky, my first Villa game, my first fondle of a firm tit, my first blow job (oh God Cherrie, you sexy bitch)…
      Just don’t ask me what I had for tea last night.

      • I can still recall the 1982 European Cup Final between Villa and Bayern Munich. I was watching it with a bunch of Villa fans at someone’s home (I was the token Bluenose who only went because it was free beer and dodgy curries)

        I think it was live on ITV and commentated by the late-great Brian Moore. I also remember Villa keeper Jimmy Rimmer haven’t to be subbed early in the game due to an injury to his neck, and novice keeper Nigel Spink made his cup debut!

        All the Villa fans shouted out “Fuck’s sake. That’s it then. Game over!” But despite total Bayern domination, Spink played a blinder. And then of course came the goal, involving Sid, Tony Morley, and the irrepressible, Peter Withe!

        Despite myself I was really pleased for the Vile winning the cup against all odds. Not least for beating the Germans.

      • Yes great memories for me as well Techno (obviously). I was in Holland with half a dozen other guys and the atmosphere was utterly electric at the game.
        We had a few days off and after the game drove into Belgium and spent the time lying on the beach and consuming enormous quantities of that light, nutty Belgian beer (the weather was very sultry), consuming industrial amounts of chips, and trying to click with local talent in Ostend. Sadly only the local ‘bar ladies’ were interested, leading me to be overdrawn at the bank for months.
        What a week that was. I came home with a sore head and a sore cock. Happy days, eh?

      • I remember Jimmy Rimmer at Manchester United. He wasn’t a bad goalie. He was better than that useless cunt Paddy Roche anyway.

        That Villa side was a good one. Shaw, Cowans, Mortimer, Morley, Evans, Withe. Ron Saunders was a miserable cunt. Good manager though.

      • Yeah, Saunders did a good job at Villa under Deadly Doug.

        Had a great team, especially at the back/midfield with Gidman, (Mike Pejic?), Evans, McNaught, Paul McGrath and Mortimer.

        I think they won the old first division under Saunders, but then he walked across the city to Blues before the European Cup final (was it Tony Barton who took over?)

  21. Cor! This nomination brings back memories of discovering this here fine website.
    That saying, ‘I can remember the war, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast’.
    A memory of firsts. My first Matchbox car etc.

    Morning, Techno. 🙂
    Morning all. 🙂

    • Blimey Spoons, first Matchbox car. I remember mine was the little steam roller (green, I think) and each car had a series number. Unless my memory’s playing tricks, I’m sure that the roller was no. 1, first of all the models.
      A bloke I know still has a couple of dozen, with the original boxes, that have been stored in his loft for donkey’s. I keep telling him that they’re worth a fortune to collectors nowadays.

  22. Marillion were alright when Fish was about. Garden Party and Assassing were top tracks. Sugar Mice was a good record too.

    I remember important stuff, like my first game (Ipswich Town, Old Trafford, 29 December 1973 with my dad). My first Cup Final (1976, Bobby Stokes, you offside cunt). My first record (Buzzcocks and the Spiral Scratch EP). First concert (The Jam at the Electric Circus). Too many birds – good and bad – to mention, and one psychotic witch of an ex (fucking cunt).

    I can also remember all the storylines and characters from the old Doctor Who and Coronation Street, but I know fuck all about them now (except that they are now both woke and shit).

    • Sorry Norm but Martin Buchan played Stokes onside. Just take solace in the fact that United beat their bitter rivals in the final12 months later and Buchan played a blinder keeping Kevin “I’ll love it if we beat them” Keegan quiet. Jimmy Case’ equaliser was an absolute beauty though.

  23. Not all memories are good. I resent the way my Samsung cellphone keeps sending me pictures on the anniversary they were taken as if I want to restore that day. Recently it sent me one taken after a funeral four years ago, a day I certainly don´t want to remember.

    • Be aware that any Android device is probably sending your memories to Google for further exploitation. Can you not turn that ‘feature’ off?

  24. According to someone on the radio, can’t remember who…most people have visual memory, which is to say they can ‘see’ remembered faces etc ‘in their minds eye’. Is this true? I don’t have that ability. I can recognise faces, but I don’t have a mental picture. Music can bring back a scene, but no real detail, but smell can sometimes invoke powerful recollections.

    As to stuff from long ago being better remembered than today’s input…more stuff was new, fresh and memorable then, simply because you were young and naif/naive. If you’re still remembering the important details from this week, you’re probably ok.

  25. On the subject of memories, Well sad to hear that Denis Law has dementia.

    The greatest centre forward (alongside Jimmy Greaves) who ever lived. Those cunts Harry Kane and Marcus Rashford aren’t fit to clean The King’s boots.

  26. My first ever memory was of climbing the stairs and not being able to see out the window at the top (1968) – I can remember the first time I ever saw Manchester United play on a colour TV – I still remember George Best (and a few others) playing around some foreign types like they weren’t there, I can remember my first car (1976 Ford Escort, had to get Wiggy the dodgy car salesman to show me how to drive it before going home in it, I learned how to drive a car in the 5 minute journey home) like it was on the drive outside – ask me what I did yesterday and I would have to think!

    • My first memory is of sitting under – yes, under – a clump of lupins and admiring the gigantic snails that lived there. I grew a bit subsequently.

  28. UB40 reminds me of my childhood more than any other band or artist.

    ELO are probably a close second, particularly this (it’s not Mr Blue Sky)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq0szCX7A1Y

    Growing up with Wacko Jacko, Jason and Kylie in the charts, this always sounded very strange, and good fun.

    • Great record, Cuntamus.
      Interesting fact about ‘Horace Wimp’. Jeff Lynne did all the days of the week in the song except Saturday. Jeff said that Saturday was ‘for the football’ and nothing else. Well, he was right at the time.

  29. Have mind-blowing powerful memories from when I was a few months short of nine years, the less said the better…
    If I could wave a magic wand at the mo, it would be to get rid of the sleepless nights and shitty, surrealistic dreams. Not nightmares, just fucking weird. This morning’s were to do with tiny, but highly toxic fish.
    My worst fear is ending up in a home, with all this dream-crap being my daily conversation…

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