Blast from the past - Echo Beach

For an audio version of this story Blast from the past

A song from a moment in time perfectly captured the essence of me. The single or 45 as we used to call them was a one-off hit for Martha and the Muffins in February 1980, a time when punk was in vogue and glam rock was passé. I bought the record in London while living in a hostel even though I hadn’t a record player to play it on!

I’ve always been a sucker for guitar riffs and this song catches the listener’s ear with a repetitive riff that just grew and grew in volume until it finally arrives and then the band jumps in and drives the beat forward while Martha sings:

I know it's out of fashion and a trifle un-cool

But I can't help it I'm a romantic fool

It's a habit of mine to watch the sun go down

On Echo Beach I watch the sun go down

“That’s me,” I said to myself as I listened on. I have been out of fashion all my life, which at that time amounted to twenty-four years. I regularly spent my last penny not on clothes or beer but on vinyl. From the age of fourteen, I became aware of pop music, of “Top of the Pops”, of Radio Luxemburg and the existence of records. Suddenly there was something out there that I could own. Imagine a fourteen year old possessing something that lasted longer than a gobstopper? For twenty pence I could possess a round black thing with circles carved into it and a hole in the middle. It doesn’t sound exciting does it but then the needle enters the grooves and fabulous music fills the room. Now you are getting it!

Music became a drug, an opiate to me and I couldn’t get enough of it. I started collecting singles because I just wanted that song, not an album of songs I’d never heard of. I started logging the charts in my diary, just the top ten each week and then buying the records for twenty pence when they fell out of the charts. I stored them away and indexed them with cloakroom ticket stubs as their number grew to five hundred or more. I made plastic bags to protect them and played them endlessly until I left for England in 1980.

I’m a romantic fool – well, you are looking at him. The eldest of four boys I was going where no one I knew had ever gone before. Women were exotic and not of my world.  I looked wistfully at them admiring from a distance but offering little that would interest them.

Watching the sun go down on a beach – is still one of my favourite things to do.  To sit with sand stuck between my toes and watch the rippling waves stretch out to meet the sinking red sun are moments of pure pleasure I often recall during winters like we have all just experienced

.

From nine to five I have to spend my time at work

My job is very boring I'm an office clerk

The only thing that helps me pass the time away

Is knowing I'll be back at Echo Beach someday

Hey, this is was just too much of a coincidence. My job was very boring and I was an office clerk. Hell, I must have a twin brother in Canada! Mark Gane the songwriter is beginning to sound a very familiar person. It turns out he worked in a wallpaper factory quality checking roll after roll of patterned flying geese when he wrote this song. I share his pain.

On a silent summer evening, the sky's alive with lights

A building in the distance surrealistic sight

On Echo Beach, waves make the only sound

On Echo Beach, there's not a soul around

Echo Beach, far away in time

Echo Beach, far away in…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEQkIEkxm7k

Forty years on the record still sounds fresh and new. For me, it's a timeless relic from a misspent youth. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.