Here Comes The Summer (10/5/13)

So, these summer songs that I was talking about then.

Obviously they're not going to be songs about the summer and sun-sheeeeeeiiiiiinnnee as Mr Gallagher junior would have it, more just songs that happened to be there while summer was going on and (as ever) can put you right back into a time and place.

And it's amazing how many songs link into Newquay in the early to mid eighties, last family holidays (until we started taking parents away on holiday as in built baby sitters) and first holidays away as a (small) group of lads.

'Ghost Town' by The Specials, Spandau Ballet's 'Chant No1' , 'There, There My Dear' by Dexys, 'Ashes to Ashes' and 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' are long walks in the sun, trying to figure out what a gawky sixteen year old is supposed to do when he's on holiday with his family. 'She Sells Sanctuary', 'Town Called Malice' and (guilty pleasure alert) Don Henley's 'Boys of Summer' are the Red Lion pub and copious quantities of cheap lager. 'Inbetween Days' by The Cure is an evening in 1985 when being out in a club with a Scouse accent wasn't a great idea but somehow Malibu and ice seemed to be.

That holiday was all about sitting in the rain as the sun refused to come out. It was about standing in a service station somewhere in the South West as the sun rose, almost at the end of an overnight coach journey. And it was about a mix tape that I'd made specifically for the holiday; an Icicle Works B Side, the brilliant Dream Syndicate's wonderful 'Burn', and 'Im a Believer' - we were having a Monkees summer 18 years too late. Me, Mark, our Keith, Mally. There were these girls on the beach who presented Mally with a book for some reason. In it they'd inscribed the message 'To Mal, Le Puis Beau' although they clearly weren't in any way, shape or form French. They did, however, clearly think that Mally was the most attractive of us. I remember that we were extremely kind to him about this fact.

And it's about J's favourite ever photo of me; black crew neck sweater, pair of shades, 80s fringe, windswept on a hill reading NME. Effortlessly cool. If only anybody had told me that at the time.

Leonard Cohen is Minorca in 88. His greatest hits played on our battered cassette player on the balcony, his 'I'm Your Man' album playing completely out of place in a shopping mall where we went to get ear drops to cure the deafness that had hit me in one ear two days into a fortnight's holiday. I was in agony and I moaned about it endlessly. God knows how my wife to be (not even my fiancé yet at that point) put up with me.

Majorca 1994. My first spell in management had come to an end, we took a quick break to come to terms with the fact. Late April, early May. Too cold to sunbathe. We managed one dip in the hotel swimming pool. Cheap hotel, no heating, bitter during the night. We survived on a soundtrack of The Beautiful South - 'Hold On To What' and 'Good As Gold' ("I'll carry on regardless") became our anthems for a week - but the song of the week was Radiohead's Creep. Played in a bar in what we'd discovered was the part of town generally reserved for German tourists. We were the only English customers in the bar. Obviously they played the version that you'd never hear on English radio.

There's something glorious about the line "you're so fucking special" when you're the only people in the place that understand it.

Should we see another summer's day this year (and I reckon last week was it for us) or should we get away as we're planning for the week after next (just me and J, few days in the sun)  there'll be a song that brings back this summer.