It's Sunday, let's talk music! It has shaped all our lives and I guess if you look back we were all influenced from day one. As a kid, in our house classical music was acceptable but anything else, you had to hide to listen to it. So by the time I was 15, I knew all about the great classical composers, their lives and music. The first LP's I bought were all of this nature and yes, I even had some 78's! Tchaikovsky and Beethoven were my favourites but I loved them all. I started to play the violin, not because I wanted to but because my father told me in the 60's that this new 'pop guitar stuff' would never catch on! I won a scholarship to a music school in Colchester; well, on Saturday mornings. No surprise then when I went into the army and started to play the tenor drum in a Scottish pipe band and then clarinet in a military band. I even ended up playing second flugelhorn in the Blandford Forum Brass Band. In 1967, when Radio 1 first came on air and all my mates were out at dances, I was still listening to Radio 3 and following score sheets back at the barracks. Maybe that's why It wasn't until I was 18 that I had my first girlfriend! In later life I made up for it big time. Because everyone else had drifted into the pop scene, I had so much catching up to do that I dived in; and I guess that's the way I am today. You won't catch me sitting at the bar, give me the 'mosh pit' every time. The last, what I call 'active' concert I went to was in Glasgow; 'The Wildhearts.' Bloody good old bashing out blood and guts heavy rock; they set the place alight! Looking back, If you had set the place alight, nobody would have noticed!

And all those thousands of songs, when we hear them in later years, flick little switches in our souls. Some really happy, some very sad and others just have meaning. If I am ever a bit down, I play 'I'm still standing' by Elton John; one of my favourite lines comes from that song. "...and if our love was just a circus, you'd be a clown by now". 'Your my best friend' by Queen: 'Wishing I could hear your voice again, knowing that I never will' from Phantom: 'Come up and see me, make me smile' by Cockney Rebel: 'Lady in Red', Chris De Burgh: 'Honour Him' from Gladiator: 'Strange Little Girl', The Stranglers: When you walk, through a storm: Unchained Melody: Just about any ABBA or Johnny Cash song: Sarah Brightman, Debbie Harry, Dolly Parton: Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Neil Diamond: ELO, Erasure, The Waterboys: The brilliant Andrew Lloyd Webber.....The list is endless, but every piece, a link to a past time, a trigger for a memory that may otherwise not have returned.