78

 

78

 

It’s just one of those compilation videos,

you get them on YouTube, don’t you?

50 bestselling singles,1978. Not radio,

that’s gone, but remember tuning in

back then? To scratchy tunes of alien,

ethereal whining, haunting airwaves,

wondering how anyone might be saved.

Each tune carrying, clings to its back

something best forgotten - bootstraps,

kicked across concrete floors to strains

of Abba’s ‘The Name of the Game’,

‘Rat Trap’ or ‘I Can’t Stand the Rain’,

a last year of ‘Saturday Night Fever,

‘Grease’, ‘Star Wars’ just been released,

owning ‘The Boy from New York City’,

wishing to be there, somewhere else,

or if time would learn to defend itself.

How some of that music overlapped,

became tunnels into future days

bearing song into the 80s and far away.

Watching from anywhere but here,

remembers a house, back in 1974,

behind a wood-stained wainscoted door,

unknown staircase to an upper floor,

for young minds, this secret passage

tumbled, from pages of any Enid Blyton.

Ascending through darkness saw there

a suite of decorated rooms, now bare

of any fancy flourishes, soft furnishings.

Just hard clapboard, but laid with care,

across most drafty rafters and cladding.

Rumours of servants, of days long gone;

remnants of a bell system to summon,

discovered in a kitchen, by the range.

Had it always been there; was it bought?

Time flares, it lingers in your thoughts,

this tall cabinet, doors opening outwards,

upon which sits a grubby felt turntable,

no amps, no speakers, no electric cables

spring driven, a fistful of brass needles

and within, a multitude of acetates at 78.

Being brittle, they would easily break,

slip from fingers, hard discs would chip

but each held a promise of something.

Can’t remember now how it was broken,

and four years on, 78 had spoken

in lyrics that muttered concepts of fear,

all that was bad living in a final year.