Songs of life No 5

After art college I returned to live in London, sharing a dank and fungus-filled house in West Norwood, (mentioned in songs of life No 4, I think). Needing to escape the house and West Norwood generally, we would explore musically-more interesting regions and clubs of London - The Fridge in Brixton, a place in Camden I can't now remember the name of but where I saw Alien Sex Fiend play, The Hundred club and Ronnie Scotts amongst others. One night we ended up in a pub in Holborn (now sadly gone) and stumbled across a smokey room crammed with people dancing to what I discovered later to be Salsa.
How had I got to be twenty or so without ever being aware of such nerve-tingling, heart-heating music: Salsa, Mambo, Rumba . . . That was it: I scoured second-hand shops for any record with a cover of someone in a ruffly shirt holding clave sticks, and concocted new tapes to play on photo shoots, in my Morris Traveller and anywhere else really.
How to choose one song? Impossible, but here is the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz singing one of my favourites. And what a great piece of film - the guy on the left, and his ears . . . fantastic!

Songs of Life: No 4

After art college I lived in a grimy house-share with dry rot infestations (and three other ex art college students) and a loo that froze in the winter. Probably to counteract the damp and filth, much time was spent watching (on terrible, early VHS) 1950s Hollywood musicals where everything was colour-heightened: sugar pinks, sky blue and the whiter than white-ness of Gene Kelly's teeth.
I had soundtrack tapes of Some Like it Hot, Danny Kaye films and of course Singing in the Rain in my Morris Traveler; played alternately with Underworld, Ravel and Salsa (had just discovered the wonders of Latin music in a bar in Holborn.)
All the gloom of stomping back from the dole office in Streatham could be wafted away by a few minutes of watching this piece of candy-floss choreography; and, after I finally nailed a job as a stylist assistant I would inflict my tapes on art directors and photographers at the various studios - made a change from the Eagles and J.J Cale.
On my desert island, I would finally have the time to learn the Charleston, and perhaps tap dancing if there happened to be a few flat rocks - with this playing in my mind.