The Soundtrack of my Life: Essex Girls and Electric Warriors By Lee Cassanell

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During the mid to late seventies my mother worked in the music department at WH Smith which at that time was the place where most of Hulls record buying public purchased the latest vinyl releases. One her biggest claims to fame is that she arranged the promotional stand for a little film called Saturday Night Fever at the ABC cinema, and although that may seem a little trivial to some of you, she talks about it as though it was the coolest thing in the entire world and her face lights up like a Christmas tree every time the subject is raised.

I was born in April 1979 and by that time the house was full of records that she had bought or acquired during her time at Smiths. In fact some of my earliest memories are album covers, especially Clifford T Ward's Home Thoughts LP that contained bizarre family photographs of the man himself posing with his wife and children in a Victorian style living room. I guess working in that environment must have broaden my mothers musical horizons, given her the opportunity to hear bands and soloists who very rarely made it into the Top of the Pops chart.

She had a very wide-ranging collection but it was dominated by the two artists whose posters had adorned her bedroom wall during her teenage years.

David Essex and Marc Bolan's T-Rex

I'm not a big Fan of David Essex yet I know the words to most of his songs, and although it can be quite advantageous knowing all the words to Rock On when you're attempting to seduce ladies in their mid to late forties, asking the nightclub DJ to play Gonna Make You a Star will do nothing for your Street Cred. I can see why a lot of ladies liked him though, he's got the that swarthy gypsy pretty boy thing going on and I suppose if I was a hormonal teenage girl growing up in the seventies I would have also fantasised about snogging Mr Essex backstage at the Hull City Hall.

He never exactly pushed any musical boundaries and his songs never exactly set the world on fire but if you compare him to the Pop Idols of today's charts he's practically Jimi Hendrix, so I guess I should maybe cut the guy some slack and take him for what he was.

T-Rex on the other hand did push musical boundaries. Marc Bolan formed a psychedelic folk band called Tyrannosaurus Rex in the late 60's. They where very popular on the circuit but never achieved any chart success until they changed their name to T-Rex and released the classic Ride a White Swan in October 1970.

Continued on www.thisisull.com...... The Soundtrack of my Life: Essex Girls and Electric Warriors.

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