When I was a teenager I had a Saturday job at Woolies in Welling. Apart from the dinner-lady nylon overalls that were the revolting uniform, I loved that job. Each week I’d be on the clickety clack tills and also on one of the specialist counters - either pick-and-mix or records. This was the ‘80s, before CDs, before streaming, when your music came in 2 formats - vinyl and cassette. As the Woolies equivalent of Fat Boy Slim, I chose the music to play in-store. Rotating the Top 30 singles was a must, but I could also choose which LPs to put on the under-the-counter turntable. With 2 older sisters, I remember feeling a very hip 16 year old, by playing Simon and Garfunkel, Carol King, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen. But my all time favourite ‘45 was Golden Brown* by The Stranglers, which for several heady months, I played all the time. Fast forward several years. Driving along the M8 to work at Habitat and one of the few cassettes I had in my ancient Mini was Chris Rea, so I played that incessantly. His On the Beach album reminded me of a beach bar that summer in Greece, even if this was city-centre Glasgow in wintertime.
Fast forward another 15 years. I arrive on my first day of work at The ONE, in Abu Dhabi. The company was still preparing for its first shop opening. Trucks were delivering container loads of stock daily, so it was a hive of activity in the loading bays. Walking in through the warehouse and my ears are assaulted by How Bizarre by OMC playing at top volume. (That song was playing all the time, that first month). If ever I hear it now, I can still recall that crazy culture clash of location, desert heat, the melting pot of nationalities and an exact point in time. All summed up in one pop song.
At Christmas, we had a work Secret Santa and my colleague, Malin, gave me a CD. Great, but I didn’t have anything to play it on! That was soon remedied, when another friend, Lars and I went shopping in the electrical souk. Every shop was piled high with small electricals from Sony, Samsung and other brands I’d never heard of. Every item, of course, was at “a very good price”. I went on a music-bender for the next 2 years as CDs were so much cheaper in the Emirates than at home. My Swedish friends introduced me to Sophie Zelmani, Lisa Ekdahl, The Cardigans, Eagle Eye Cherry and Roxette. Plus I bought Blues, film soundtracks, Folk, Jazz and Pop. Travelling on buying trips to other countries I added to my eclectic collection. In China, that meant some obvious bootleg copies - the translation of Elvis’s song titles on the photocopied insert was priceless, even if the CD was only a dollar. That souk-bought CD player was used a lot. It lasted 20 years and 4 house moves.
Two decades later and during COVID, I spent the first 2020 lockdown WFH. So, I listened again to loads of my old music. Ostensibly to prune my stash of CDs. Of course that involved playing everything at least one more time and rediscovering songs I’d long forgotten about. Now, I’ll happily admit to being an analogue type of person, but when my now nephew-in-law, Clayton, introduced me to streaming, it was an eye opener. An Instagram prompt for the music Clayton was listening to made me click onto Spotify, thinking I’m not quite sure what I’m doing…. 48 hours later and I had created 5 playlists! So it meant I really could downsize my CDs, without losing any songs I loved.
Compiling a playlist seems to me very like an improv quilt. Gathering lots of fabrics (songs), selecting what goes with what; deciding what to leave out. I often say to customers who are trying to decide on fabrics for a quilt, that sometimes in the first selection of fabrics, there’s enough fabric for 2 quilts. Learn what to shortlist and keep the rest for another project. And often, if you need a certain pattern for a quilt, you can recall, exactly the fabric that’s needed, even if it’s buried away in your fabric stash. So you dig deep to find it. And finally, I don’t try to coordinate everything perfectly. I always think a mixture of scales, prints and tones leads to a more interesting quilt. I never realised that choosing music was exactly the same process.
And so to my playlists. All of these first songs were ones I’d had on records, cassettes and CDs over the decades. By searching on Spotify, I tracked down tracks, where I could remember the artist or what the album cover looked like, but not the song title. And it was a bit like looking through an old photo album - hearing the song and I could remember the concert I went to, or the friend / place / heartache / holiday the music reminded me of.
Six years on, I still play my CDs, (told you I was old-school), but having these playlists is like having an extra smorgasbord of songs to dip into.
At Hometown we play music every day. It’s a mixed bag of styles from Blues to Jazz, North African acoustic to Cornish sea shanties. It’s whatever I like, rather than what’s seen as ‘cool’. (Note: I have never been ‘cool’). As long it creates the right atmosphere, then we play it. Several customers recently have complimented us on our playlists. Wow! I felt like Fat Girl not-so-Slim! Songs to sew by, whatever the style of quilt and time of day. One recent addition, A Taste of Honey, by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, was a prompt by my sister and is such a memory of my Dad. Now, that’s cool!
And currently top of our charts instore, is a special playlist that I’ve curated , inspired by our Deep Blue Sea window and the Whales art installation at the Cathedral. So, if your curiosity is piqued, pay us a visit soon to enjoy the tunes as well as the textiles.
* In music trivia, some months ago, Golden Brown was on a ‘name that year’ pop quiz. “1982”, I yelled. BAM! The first and only time I’ve been right on such a question. The Woollies nylon overall may be ancient history, but I’m pleased to see my little grey cells are still working!