You know how they say that smell is the sense closest linked to memory?

Well, I think listening to music is a close second when it comes to triggering my memories.

I was listening to Steve Wright’s Golden Oldies the other day, and Curiosity Killed The Cat’s song ‘Down to Earth’ came on.

I was immediately transported back to my secondary school days when my friends and I used to sit on the school bus discussing Ben Volpeliere-Pierrot (surely not his real name?) and who was featured in Smash Hits that fortnight.

Smash Hits was my music ‘bible’ in those days, replaced by NME only when I grew older and got into Indie music.

I loved Smash Hits.  The double-sided posters featuring your favourite singers; the quandary about which side to put up on your wall when it had bands that you liked on both sides.

A-ha, Duran Duran, U2, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure – just a snap-shot of what I was listening to in the 1980s, on my Sony personal stereo whilst out and about or on my ‘ghetto blaster’ at home.  Not sure you can really have a ‘ghetto blaster’ if you live in rural Northants, but I’m pretty sure that’s what we called them back then!

I can still recall most of the words to the songs too, and I think I can thank Smash Hits for that as I used to avidly read all the song lyrics they printed and tried to work out what their meanings.

I also vividly remember standing in a record shop in Leicester (I think it was Our Price) listening to U2’s ‘The Fly’ on one of their listening posts and thinking it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard. 

Now there’s no Smash Hits and very few High Street record shops.  How times have changed.  Luckily I still have my memories...