Growing up, we were a bunch of kids dancing around the lounge with the old fogies blaring their Credence, or Eagles or (shamefully, I admit this) Billy Ray’s Achy Breaky Heart. One of my earlier memories was my uncle swinging me around on his hip and then a few years later having me stand on his feet so he could teach me how to “Jive”. My cousin and I would do impromptu renditions of REM, U2 or even Cindy Lauper. For as long as I can remember, we were encouraged to enjoy music, and express ourselves through it, with it or because of it.

I remember when that very same cousin moved away to Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia as it was then known, and neither of us knew what to say to each other, and so “Ain’t no mountain high enough” from Sister Act 2 was slapped onto the hi-fi on repeat and he and I sang it out in between hugs, tear stained kisses, clenched hands to the chest and tears. Another song is “Don’t go breaking my heart” by Kiki Dee, which never fails to put a smile on my face and make me think of my mother singing it to my daughter. She even had silly little moves to go with it.

Isn’t it funny how certain things remind you of different times in your life? Some people have numbers representing memories, Britt has smells – polish makes her feel sad from boarding school days, baby powder takes her back to the day she found out she was pregnant and thought her life was over…

I have music as a reminder. Avril Lavigne’s ‘I’m with you’ takes me to a place when I was very scared, alone and at a cross roads in my life. I remember hearing the lyrics for the first time and just bawling, everything in that song epitomized my life at that time! It was as if she’d written it for me, every line, every word, every tone and syllable was exactly perfect to my emotion. Although this is just one example, I think I have a song for every important memory in my life.

I’ll be doing some reviews, shamelessly spamming you with up coming gigs of local music and generally spewing about anything that comes to mind with regards to music, so if you know of anything I might be interested in, please contact me via the comments section.

This post is an introduction to my column which will be all about my love for music. Granted, it’s probably not going to be all about “Moral” but a lot of it will be about “Fibre” and what makes a good song bloody good. Also, I’ve been complete creative freedom, and as long as I write about music I can do what I like, so don’t judge me too harshly.

Welcome to my verbal vomiting, a column with a different take on music.