So much of the music I like today was formed through Sandra’s tutoring. She was a child of the seventies as I was of the eighties, but much more involved in music and listening to music than I ever was. So she told me of the time she saw Blondie perform in Plymouth at a time when nobody knew them yet, of going to see Depeche Mode in Atlanta when she lived there because you went to every English band coming over because not so many English bands hit Georgia back then, of dancing in the Wigan Casino and other near-mythical discotheques. She collected music and rare records at a time when that didn’t mean having a large hard drive and a fast internet connection, when you still had to hunt for that import single in scruffy record stores in dodgy neighbourhoods, building up a massive collection of vinyl, then losing it all when one of her uncles cleared out her father’s house after his death…
In day to day life she prefered to have the radio on (BBC radio 4, natch) rather than have music on in the background, having to a certain extent grown tired of it, or at least having it on all the time. She wasn’t really interested anymore in being nerdy obsessive about her music, though was still open to new stuff. She liked hip-hop, funk, pop music like the Style Council, baroque composers like Handel or Telemann but not twentieth century composers like Stravinsky, jazz of course, everything that sounded mellifluous, so Dutch language songs were right out…
She introduced me to everything from Ann Peebles, Bill Withers, Marvin Gaye, the Brothers Johnson and George Benson (which would always recall summer holidays in France with her parents for her), Chaka Khan/Rufus, Outkast, De La Soul, Digible Planets, Dizzee Rascal, The Streets, Billie Holliday, Ella, Half Man Half Biscuit, and so on unsoweiter.
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