Soundtrack to our death

May 26th – As alluded to yesterday, I have hidden shallows. I try and cover all forms of music in this daily Mcguffin I write (I'm already looking forward to December 31st) and today’s gubbins was going to circulate round that doyen of the music hall stage, him with the ukulele, pushy wife and aversion to spending money, Mr. George Formby. He was born this day in 1904… But then, like a child who sees a sparkly new toy and throws aside the one he’s holding in order to grab at it, I noticed that, in the same year as me, on this day, was born? Stevie Nicks!!!!!!!!! So, a no-brainer really. Probably the best pop voice in the business at the height of her fame, without doubt one of the most attractive ladies on the 70’s thro’ 90’s scene and the writer/singer of one of my DDI’s, Landslide to boot…but THEN…

It’s an amazing thing how popular songs and music enter the national psyche and become the backdrop to love and life. The ubiquitous headset that’s so prevalent now and which started out as The Walkman only to grow into the MP3 and beyond now provides the soundtrack to people’s lives; it has to be reported too that those sad individuals who are too preoccupied with the latest recordings by Flim and the Flams (or whoever the latest X-Fuckter toss-pot is) to notice on-coming traffic, these devices also provide the soundtrack to people’s deaths too. Sad to say this soundtrack is oftentimes how we measure the success or failure of our days/hours/minutes/seconds. It’s no longer worthy of an exclamation mark in one’s day to see two people walking side by side with a single earpiece in their ear, the ear alongside their companion open to conversation the personal player they each wear probably playing two different, customised tracks.

I'm no different. I can mate a song to an event in portions of my life; like a scent. How often is it we hear a track and are transported directly back to the space, mood or personnel of past happenings? The first kiss, the first ache of love (not knowing why it feels like this but knowing how it sounds) the first real loss and the last real find. Many of these events have their own soundscape that we weld on to them and which act as a doorway back into times of the other.

Well, in 1868 things were no different. The sound reproduction paraphernalia may have been different but the sentiments remained. On this day outside Newgate Prison the last public execution took place when Michael Barrett was hanged. 

To accompany his last seconds in this life, the soundtrack sung by the assembled masses gathered to watch his full-stop was a music-hall standard of the day; Champagne Charlie. Just what you want to hear at that time in your life; a song about a drunken toff who was a member of the privileged society that brought you to this end.