Back in the days...

I've been wallowing in nostalgia of late. There's me on the left, aged around 16, banging away on the drums in my former space rock meets the Stranglers type band, Food.

Most of this recent sepia tinted memory-fest has come about because of Facebook. I only joined it to play Scrabble, but it certainly works in a kind of, browse your mates photo albums way and, it throws up a fair few people you haven't seen in a LONG time. One add of an old friend lead to another and another, and then one of those old friends put up a photo or two, which inspired another friend to do the same, and, well, you get the picture (or I did :BOOMTISH:). I now have a growing collection of photos, that I'd never seen before, of me, fresh faced and fancy free.

You also get groups...I have joined a few. Basically related to my social circle here. The other day though, I noticed, amongst all the frigging pokes, that one of my friends had joined a group called 'Spiral Tribe'. Spiral Tribe were (are) the sound system I had some of the best nights/weekends of my life with, and there, in their group/on their website are photos of some of those events. Not brilliant photos it has to be said, but photos none the less and recognisable....parties in fields and warehouses from 17 years ago that I could still see more or less in my mind's eye, but now there they are on my computer screen. Torpedo Town, the best rave I ever went to, Worthing, which I remember for dancing for around 8 hours solid, and the New Year's Parties at the Round House in London, the first being brilliant, the actual New Year party being a bit of nightmare.

At times like this I really do love the internet. I imagine though that future generations will be able to call up almost anything, anytime, anywhere. I remember reminiscing, at around the time the top picture was taken, with friends about kids programmes we used to watch. I never thought at that time that I would see them again. Perhaps that was before nostalgia TV and video/DVD re-releases were so popular. More importantly though, it was before YOUTUBE. Hands up who's wasted many an hour on Youtube watching music videos/TV Shows from their youth? I have to say I love it, and it outdid Facebook in the nostalgia stakes when I discovered these videos of Nirvana playing at Reading festival in 1991. It's a gig I remember really well because they were so good on that day, but my god, the whole thing is there. My 17 year old memories, not just captured in a frozen image, but the whole bloody thing, audio an' all. It's like watching it projected from, or on to, as Alan Partridge would say, 'my mind's curtain cupboard'.

And why has most of this come from August 1991? Dr Emmett Brown might hypothesise about the cultural significance of that but for me, it represents a very (pleasant) surprising look back, and now record, of one of the most enjoyable times I've had. I never jumped into my drum kit like Kurt though.