Twelve

Bagging Area is twelve years old today, a blog that started out as being something I thought I'd try for a year is now only one year short of being a teenager. There aren't many songs with the number twelve or 12 in the title. There are obviously hundreds/ thousands of 12" mixes or versions but that seemed like cheating. The best is this one from Bob Dylan, the opening song on 1966's Blonde On Blonde...

Rainy Day Women #12 & 35

I saw Bob Dylan once, part of his Never Ending Tour, at Manchester Arena (then called Nynex). I'd struggle to tell you exactly which year it was but the internet tells me it was 9th May 2002- the setlist from that gig looks familiar. More familiar than some of the songs on the night some of which were well under way before they became recognisable. I know that's all become part of the fun of a latter day Dylan gig but it does lead to some head scratching moments and then laughter as you suddenly realise 'oh, it's  Visions Of Johanna!'. On the night we saw him he finished his set with Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 and it was one of the songs which was identifiable fairly instantly. 

Some brief 'research' into the number twelve reveals that it is significant numerologically- it represents perfection or completion and cosmic order. It crops up in mythology, religion and the zodiac. There are twelve months and twelve lunar cycles. Twelve is also the number of years for a full cycle of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system and one of the brightest in our sky. The Jupiter 4 is a vintage Roland synthesizer and gave a name and a sound to this Sharon Van Etten song, a dark, moody, obsessive love song written on the distinctive synth. 

Jupiter 4

And with those two songs we're off into 2022. More stuff incoming no doubt. 

Seventeen

I was watching episode seven of the second series of Sex Education (it's on Netflix, brief synopsis- Otis is in 6th form, Mum is a sex therapist, his friends come to him for sex advice despite Otis' own lack of experience in that department. In series one he is often bailed out by his friends Eric and Maeve). The penultimate episode of series two centres around the fall out from a party at Otis' house and particularly the group of girls who form a bond in detention. At the end of the episode the six girls board a bus and a song began playing over the fade to the credits which sounded ace- I didn't think I knew it but at the same time it sounded familiar. The problem with Netflix is that the next episode starts automatically in about twelve seconds which leads to rapid scrabbling for the remote to stop it, if it's too late to go straight into the next one (which it was). This meant turning the song off. A little Googling the day after and it turns out it was this...



I saw Sharon Van Etten's name all over the end of year lists, both magazines and blogs, and never went any further but this song is going to push me to do that. Seventeen has a proper emotional heft, capable of giving you a bit of bump and stopping you in your tracks (you meaning me I guess), there's something about the rising chords and Sharon's voice that goes hits the bullseye. The 80s production is what must have sounded familiar to me. I never thought that a song that seems to reference mid- 80s Springsteen would appeal to me so much. In the song Sharon addresses her seventeen year old self and her freedom/ naivety, wanting to warn her about what lies ahead and the poor decisions she'll make but still knowing that she has to go through it all. She also gets pissed off with her younger self who she thinks wouldn't fully like her as she is now, would think she's lost it or sold out or something similar. One of the lines goes 'I used to be free/ I used to be seventeen' and judging by the comments on Youtube it seems that the line and the sentiment affects those much older than that and those around that age equally. I'm eleven years older than Sharon, turn fifty in a few months, and this song definitely nails a feeling, a sense of the loss of youth and the pain of looking back. That's the literal definition of nostalgia isn't it? Nostalgia usually evokes a sentimental looking back, feelings of wistfulness, the rosy glow of the past. But it's literal translation involves looking back with feelings of sadness, of something lost and gone. I don't want to be a person who's nostalgic for being seventeen- there are other 'better' ages to be nostalgic about, it's an age where you're still not fully sure of yourself in a lot of ways, I certainly wasn't, and an age where you know so little despite being so sure you know so much- but this song really does push all those buttons.

The fresh faced kid in the photograph is me, aged seventeen, on holiday in southern Scotland in the summer of 1987. Fucking nostalgia eh?