Entertainment Agents Blog

Radio One Roadshows-The Shorts,The Hats,The Loud Shirts

I believe in literary circles it is referred to as a “Proustian Rush” in reference to a character getting  whiff of cake and being transported back to childhood…..or in the words of wikopedia …….

“Involuntary memory (fr. souvenir involontaire) is a concept made famous by the French writer Marcel Proust in his novel In Search of Lost Time (or Remembrance of Things Past), although the idea was also developed in his earlier writings, Contre Sainte-Beuve and Jean Santeuil. It is, thus, sometimes referred to as “Proustian memory.”

Proust contrasts involuntary memory with voluntary memory. The latter designates memories retrieved by “intelligence,” that is, memories produced by putting conscious effort into remembering events, people, and places. Proust’s narrator laments that such memories are inevitably partial, and do not bear the “essence” of the past. The most famous instance of involuntary memory by Proust is known as the “episode of the madeleine,” yet there are at least half a dozen other examples, as in In Search of Lost Time, including such distinct memories produced by the scent of a public lavatory on the Champs-Élysées.”

Whilst a smell can transport you back in time (I once shared a B and B with four blokes and the smell of socks takes me back there every time) theres nothing like a song for putting you back in a particular time and place.

Hidden amongst the 9,000 songs on my Ipod is “Perfect” by The Lightning Seeds.I havent heard the song for several years but last night ,as I was driving on a perfect summers evening to pick my 90 year old grandad up to take him for a half of beer and a bite to eat,it played on my random shuffle.

Immediately I was taken back to a summer  in the early 90s when my band were playing Radio One Roadshows across the UK.

Without record company support we camped in tents at seaside camp sites and followed the circus around the coast line from Hunstanton to Southend and beyond.The daytimes were spent hob nobbing with the likes of The Bee Gees,Kim Wilde,Ant And Dec,Boyzone,Suggs etc and the nights were spent under canvass on grotty camp sites.

The reason Perfect by the Lightning Seeds is so etched into my memory is that each morning we would walk onto the beach where the stage had been built overnight.The hard core fans of the boy bands would just be arriving to queue up and get front of stage.The sun was shining every morning and we would walk along the sands whilst the sound crew tested out the PA system.They may have played other songs but it is Perfect which stands out.The beautiful summer sound drifting along the coast line as we walked back stage to grab a coffee and get ready to perform.

Last night I was back there again with this memory….A Perfect Day,A Perfect Night!

Music has the power to do this.