Last Sunday I felt I had revisited a vast chunk of my life through music.
Elton John;The Nation's Favourite Song on TV One had me stuck with a Cheshire cat grin, feelings and heaving sighs of nostalgia which all culminated in an overall sense of joyous music rapture.
Though there
were few surprises in the song selection, Rocket Man, Candle in the Wind and Don't Go Breaking My Heart and Yellow Brick Road, I was in a very happy place.
My memories of many of the songs had me remembering my children as babies,
the often cramped houses we'd lived in, old and dear friends and of course the old hometown.
Wellington, Lambton Quay, the Terrace, the Downtown Club, the Quincy Conserve Band, Petone Beach ... it all came flooding back.
I remembered an aunt (I thought she was old), she was probably about 42, gyrating in my living room to Crocodile Rock with reckless abandon.
The stories behind some of these, touted as "the greatest songs ever written", was as relevant now as they certainly were then.
To learn that the haunting song Daniel was an anti-Vietnam song really staggered me. Gave Boy George a start too. He had decided it was a gay anthem which of course he'd preferred.
