Mystery Music March in April

The JCB Song – Nizpoli

The half hour I take to write the following will probably be a bit difficult. Regular readers of the blog will be aware (and possibly have commented) on the fact I’m a bit of a softy. Given the right conditions I’ll cry like a baby. Usually the reaction’s provoked by a film – end of Titanic, end of The Lord of the Rings, end of Love Story, even the end of bloody ET. But there are also certain songs or pieces of music which can act like a trigger. I’m looking for some catharsis (after this probably) and so here then is one of the songs guaranteed to make me sniffle.

Thanks to the magic of blogging I actually know when I first saw the video for The JCB Song and laughed through all of the pop culture references, hearing about Zoids what have you for the first time in however many years. I sensed it might be autobiographical and indeed it is based on lead singer Luke’s childhood experiences, of dyslexia, and bullying and imaginary characters. But despite some of the very personal references it has a universal appeal, and feels like something we (well those of us of a certain age) have collectively written in our memory.

I’m just going to play the song and in a couple of minutes I’ll tell you exactly when I blubbed then write the first thing that comes into my head. Apologies if it’s a bit rough. It might help if I sing along …

A few minutes later ...

‘My dad's probably had a bloody hard day / But he's been good fun and bubblin' and jokin' away’

That’s a guilt complex isn’t it? The idea of my Dad and Mum disappearing off to work every day, not really knowing what they’d actually be doing, having them home in the evening and expecting them to be happy to play which they were almost every night and then when you’re a teenager you can treat them like horribly despite all of the sacrifices they’ve made to get you into double figures safely.

Once I started work I realised that actually working can be a bit shit and that some nights all you really want to do is nothing and how stinky my attitude might have been. More than likely it's hard wired into our brains that they don’t understand why we don’t understand and that’s how they break from nurturing and we break from wanting to be nurtured.

That ... helped ...