Some songs you don't remember learning. They were just there, on the radio and in the playground, and forty-odd years later they still are.
That's this playlist. Twenty tracks from the late seventies and early eighties, my primary school and even pre-school years. I couldn't tell you where I first heard every one of them, but they're all songs I've gone back to again and again since.
Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick was number one in January 1979. I was three. I loved it, and I thought it was the funniest thing on the radio. Ian Dury shouting "hit me, hit me" was made for small children to copy.
Turning Japanese came out a year later. I was obsessed with kung fu films and Monkey on the telly, so a song with that hook was always going to land with me.
Then there was ska. The Beat's Tears of a Clown (Spotify calls them The English Beat, but over here they were only ever The Beat). Madness. And The Specials. I've opened with Nite Klub and closed with Ghost Town, but almost anything by The Specials album could have gone on here. Too Much Too Young was a close call.
The Eton Rifles and Hurry Up Harry are going to the football with my dad. Sham 69 were singing about being one of the lads, and to a kid on the terraces that sounded like exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Rapture by Blondie is on here for a different reason. Around this time a few pop records started slipping little bits of rap in. Rapture was one, and Adam and the Ants' Ant Rap was another. Neither was a rap record, but they were the first time rap music made its way into my world.
The one to listen out for is The Guns of Brixton by The Clash. It isn't their best known song, but you'll know the bassline. Norman Cook lifted it for Beats International's Dub Be Good to Me in 1990, laying it under Just Be Good to Me and giving the whole thing a hip hop feel. A brilliant move, and an early preview of the kind of thing he'd go on to do as Fatboy Slim.
Every song on here has a memory attached somewhere. Press play and let it run start to finish.
Which song takes you straight back to being a kid?
