False Memory Syndrome

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(having given the thread its title I just KNOW there will be some shitey punk band called this - that is not what it's about)

Just heard F.R.David's "Words" for the first time in maybe 10 years. I remembered it as being a slow, smoochy ballad, Manilow style, and was surprised to hear a wimpy disco-synth number!

Similarly, before I got into the Smiths my main memory of them was performing "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" on some TV show or other, in an upbeat rockabilly style. As far as I know this never happened.

Do you have any examples of turning pop songs in your memory into something else?

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Could it be that FR David's "Words" turned into Morris Albert's "Feelings" in your brain Tico?

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:22 (twenty-two years ago)

No, I remembered the tune exactly right, and the lyrics - just the arrangement was completely string-drenched and really slow! Maybe someone did a cover.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:23 (twenty-two years ago)

is this 'words don't come easy to me' etc etc...or is that something else? if so, i remember that as slow and smoochy too.

― hobart paving (hobart paving), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh right, so it's not the Bee Gees' "Words" either - now I'm wracking my brain tryin' to remember how it went, damn you!

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes - words....don't come easy to me

not

it's only words, and words are all i dum dum da dum etc.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh right, I remember it, I remember it!

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Wasn't he something to do with Vangelis? at one time?

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:31 (twenty-two years ago)

... my memory of F.R. David is of a small, dark, hairy, bespectacled, balding Frenchman/Italian - but he may well have been a tall, blonde Scandinavian

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:31 (twenty-two years ago)

I think my using the word 'disco' in the vicinity of FR David is somewhat of a stretch but it was much more synthesised and upbeat than I thought. In which case the Vangelis connection would make sense, hmmm.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:33 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.eurodancehits.com/frdavid1.jpg

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh no no, now I am suffering from false memory syndrome

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:34 (twenty-two years ago)

... I envisaged a cross between Danny De Vito and Martin Scorsese

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Now you see that's what I thought the Sunglasses At Night guy looked like.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 16:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Hm, this is good stuff. I'd love to know if all the various weird one-off TV performances I saw of bands in the late seventies were indeed all that disco.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 19:00 (twenty-two years ago)

False Memory Syndrome is often the result of having listened to something either a) early in age, but also b) in an unusually soft volume initially.

I'm more intrigued with B, because in a way, that concept was a major influence on Eno, shortly after his accident. He had no control over the radio/stereo in his hospital room, but somehow was forced to listen to the music in a different way.. more lucidly.

I think in certain ways, when we listen to music for the first time while, say, in a friends car in his/her shitty car stereo which is heavily distorted, it sounds beyond awesome, and then when you finally track down the song, it just wasn't the same as when you first heard it.

First impression has a lot more to do with being turned onto a song than most people think. Obviously, the opposite (prolonged exposure and patience with a piece of music) can have the same effect too, but not relevant to this topic.

― donut bitch (donut), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 19:27 (twenty-two years ago)

So, really I should change "b" above to "in an unusual/unexpected circumstance for the first time"

― donut bitch (donut), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 19:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Um...I once convinced myself Fern Kinney's 'Together We Are Beautiful' was an all-time classic, despite not hearing it since I was 6 years old. Having tracked it down I realised a)it features a very bad, primitive drum machine, b)it's really quite bad, and c)it probably wouldn't set clubland alight with teary eyed dancers singing "can't you see - it's the chemistry!" to each other after all.

― Jamie Fake (the pirate king), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 23:22 (twenty-two years ago)

One time, I was convinced I'd heared, a long time ago, a takeoff of Bob Dylan doing "Ilkley Moor baht'at" like it was "Catch the Wind" or something. Asking a few in the know, I heared Bill Oddie doing that song as Joe Cocker. Very good but that wasn't it. Internet trawls produced nothing. Until one day, I remembered where I'd heared it. Someone's front room in Henley where we all used to hang out. Yes, it had been me. Very drunk with a borrowed acoustic. Would that count as false memory syndrome?

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 09:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Did you go to KJC Mark?

Not sure if this counts either but I was just reading an AC/DC thread and started off sniggering to myself in a comfortably assured, self-satisfied way, at some idiot who'd obviously misread the title of one of their albums.

Then I noticed that someone else had made the same mistake....

Then I realised that everyone was doing it; so I thought I'd better just check AMG....

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00008AJL6.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I still can't help thinking that "Power Age" would have been a better album title that "Powerage" 'though.

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 10:02 (twenty-two years ago)

KJC?

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 10:05 (twenty-two years ago)

King James College Henley - I'll take that as a no!

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 10:13 (twenty-two years ago)

err no. Various pubs, clubs and front rooms. It was just down the hill from George's place.

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 10:17 (twenty-two years ago)

"It was just down the hill from George's place."

Yes, that's definitely Henley!

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 10:38 (twenty-two years ago)

I like that Fern Kinney song a lot!

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 11:15 (twenty-two years ago)

But it was a guy's song, it just sounds feeble as a girls song...

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 11:19 (twenty-two years ago)

There's this false memory of writers talking about "classics" that were criticised at the time. Take the Pixies: a fuss was made about Surfer Rosa, and then the next three albums were panned. Now they are all taken to be classics. I liked them then, I like them now. "Trompe Le Monde" was very harshly panned indeed - but it holds up to the others.

― Bunged Out (Jake Proudlock), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 11:50 (twenty-two years ago)

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