Music As Memory

It's funny how we can so easily forget dates, names and places - the very fabric of our personal histories - but we can link times and events to music so much more easily? People often remember events via the music that was playing at that time - the event itself is more closely entwined into our synapses, as if the music opens a part of us perhaps unnecessary for day-to-day survival? Somehow, it locks in the memory. Anyway, I'm not revealing any great secret there - just identifying that we know it to be true. Humans - or proto-humans - making rhythmic music is older than language itself. We are hardwired to be enthralled by it.

Anyway, the reason I mention this now is the combination of thoughts that has led me to remembering events from a piece of music I've just heard on the radio. Back in 1998, there was this big-beat outfit called The Propellerheads. They were a funk/electronica/sampling act, who rode the crested wave that started in Brighton with the likes of Wall Of Sound and Southern Fried, took in the Chemical Brothers along the way for a brief period, before crashing in the face of the reinvigorated guitar band as the millennium hoved into view. They've just played the full 9 minute, 20 second mix of 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', the theme from the Bond movie of the same name. And here's how we got here.

Another similarly not-exactly-employed friend lives in the north of England. He has just bought a new 10MP compact digital camera, and now has a tripod so he can take good closeups on full zoom. He has been taking photos since lunchtime, and every now and then a new one pops up in our shared folder. So far, I've had a nasty closeup of an ashtray, a coin, a plant, a fern, the surface of his pond, some grapes and a bicycle pedal. He seems to want to be an outdoor chronologer, and so I compared him to Ansel Adams, the well-known American landscape photographer. I struggled for ages trying to remember the name of the national park he famously documented. We stumbled around Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, etc before remembering that it was, of course, Yosemite.

Thought number two. Talking about Yosemite reminded me of my best girl friend, who lives in London. She used to live in the same road as me when we were kids, and our fathers worked together, too. Fast forward lots of years, during university, this girl and I found ourselves without significant other and decided to go on holiday together. We did ten days in California, starting out at San Fran for three days, getting to know the place, do a bit of diner breakfasting, mooching, wandering, bumbling about on streetcars, shopping, lunch, gallery, museum, bar, wash and change, dinner, bed, and same again. We were staying in a hotel on O'Farrell Street, not far from the red light district, full of its bars, peepshows, adult toy shops and streetwalkers. The area was quite spicy.

On attempting to leave San Francisco in our 3-day ragtop hire, I got a burst tyre on the Bay Bridge, and did what any British driver would do in the circumstances: check all was clear and pull over to the left. Of course, in America, that is the central reservation. Cue amused traffic cop, who helped me change the tyre (or should that be tire?) before stopping the oncoming lane of fastest traffic so that I could get back on the road. And we were off.

We headed straight for Yosemite, imagining - from the map - that it might take a couple of hours. Hmm. The scale on maps is different over in the States. And so, having left San Fran around midday, we found ourself getting to the park around six, as the sun came down. We farted around for ages looking for somewhere to stay - there's a lot on offer there, from the full I-haven't-left-my-palatial-home style hotels, to sleeping under the stars and everything in between. Given the widely-advertised presence of bears in the park, we elected for something sturdy, made at least of logs and with a lockable door. Yosemite Lodge at The Falls was where we ended up, paying more than we had anticipated, but sleeping in a massive double bed each, and breathing the freshest air on the American mainland. Well, probably. Slept like the dead, that night.

Which was lucky, as the next morning revealed signs of activity that, had it woken me, might have made me lose control of my bowels. The individual lodges are scattered among the trees, with nice trails between them and the main reception and administrative hut. Cars are parked near to the hut you're staying in, but well screened using hedging and suchlike. As we walked to breakfast, we passed a car that had clearly benefitted from the attention of an American Black Bear during the night, as it's rear door was hanging off the hinges. There are signs everywhere telling you to make sure you leave nothing sweet or tasty in your cars while in the park. Repeatedly, signposts warn you of bears, their innate curiosity and love for sweet things. In short, the message is: empty your cars of everything but fuel. Clearly, this family or individual had thought better, and now has to explain to his insurance agent how his kid left some M&Ms on the back seat, and now there is no back seat, or door. And several of the windows are broken. And a lot of seating has been torn out and is all over the carpark. Sorry. Can I have my money now?

Having eating brekkie, we got in the car and drove around the place, stopping off at notable points like Half Dome along the way. Our loose plan was to head from Yosemite to the Pacific coast road, and drive north back to San Francisco. We had two days, two nights to accomplish that, and must be back at the rental dudes by midday on the third day. We headed out of the National Park, revelling in how the landscape changes on such a vast scale. We drove for what seemed like forever out of the High Sierra, the vastness of arable land stretching out across a softly undulating sea of neat fields, but one which never seemed to get any closer.

We drove all day, stopping off in these tiny little towns along the way, populated by arty, hippy types making kaleidoscopes and suchlike. A lot of art. You really feel like you're looking at the leftovers from that Great Generation, who hoped and dreamed that love and respect and community might be the answer to all our ills, before being slapped in the face by the GOP and scurrying away to the countryside near the epicentre.

Late in the afternoon, and the Pacific was still a big, blue dream, crashing against the rocks somewhere up ahead. Dusk was falling, and we still had some distance to go before finding our stop for the night. We were probably 30 minutes from the coast when the fog hit us. At first it crept in slowly, small patches lying in lower-slung parts of the landscape. A few minutes later, and it was like will-o-the-wisp, slithering along the road, so that you thought you were driving in cloud. Very disconcerting. Finally, the fog falls like an iron curtain, you can't even entertain the 50mph speed limit. You crawl at 15 or 20 miles an hour, full beams and fogs on, hoping, praying that one of those massive agricultural pantechnicans isn't going to burst upon you like some industrial apparition, before blasting you and your companion into a million shattered shards.

Sorry to sound morbid...but the tension of the situation, when we were in it, was palpable. And cue the music. As the fog had begun, the aforementioned track, 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' had begun to play on the stereo. The track opens with a very heavily stereoscoped orchestral rising, before breaking down into this insistent electro beeping, rather like morse code, over the beat. The famous theme line enters, and once again the horns are building up around the melody. And the fog is starting to gather in pockets.

Then the Propellerhead signature takes over, the funk-led bass-spank, wah-guitar and so on, before the bassline proper kicks in - uber-bass. This continues, the original theme weaving in and out of the 70s-cop-chase additions from The Props. Around 4 and a half minutes, the track starts to wind-up, as you would normally expect. Only it doesn't actually stop there. And the fog is crawling around your tyres, you feel you're riding a magic carpet as the landscape turns to, well, Narnia.

The tune breaks, and leads into a very soundscapey, ambient, Ennio Morricone section. The theme is still there, but very much slowed down and narcotic. Outside, the fog has now enveloped the car and the tension is rising. Speed has been cut drastically, much like the tempo of the track itself. We had been driving in silence - save for the music - for what seemed like a landscape. The sensory experience prompted me to break the peace: 'Well, at least the drama's not lost on the music.' My companion burst out laughing in her trademark explosive fashion, part Sid James' filthy snigger, part orchestral parp. I haven't heard from her in ages, I miss her laugh.

If I wrote a story that long about every tune in my head that sparks a memory, we'd be here for a thousand years.