Anna Walsh
For my school trip to Belgium in 1993, I took a small plastic bin filled with chocolate biscuits and marshmallows, several Sweater Shop jumpers, and two tapes for my Saisho walkman. One of these tapes was the UB40 version of ‘I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You’, which I was disappointed to later find was a cover, and the other was REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’.
On the bus to Kent I got talking to a good looking boy with a wedge haircut who admired my eclectic taste and told me he had the REM album and that I should buy it. Ennobled by my conversations with my new crush and with spending money burning a hole in my pocket, when we stopped off at Leicester Forest I ran straight to the tapes section and procured the acclaimed record.
I’d bought albums before, namely ‘Now 23’ and ‘The Raw & The Cooked’ by The Fine Young Cannibals, but the love I developed for REM (or possibly for Jamie from 8H, who can say) over this week was far more lasting than the dramatic weight loss that can take place in teenagers when Belgian chocolates are eaten as meal replacements (I know, I was surprised too. As I say, temporary, and probably very unhealthy too.) There’s a particular bit in ‘Man On The Moon’ that I can remember singing along to on that bus (someone’s tape must have made it to the driver’s tape deck) about “Here’s a truck stop instead of St Peter’s”) that still brings back the ridiculous exhilaration of being let loose abroad with a load of hormonal teenagers.
I’d say that this new discovery changed everything, but it didn’t. When I got back I bought an REM t-shirt but it still sat proudly alongside Barratts platforms, white jeans and a football manager’s coat (still the warmest coat I’ve ever had, that one). I still listened to Atlantic 252. Bon Jovi still made me cry at school discos. But whenever I hear a song from ‘Automatic For The People’, I’m reminded of trying to look daring by going on rollercoasters in Belgian theme parks and my first real experience of freedom in a country that sells biscuits in McDonalds.
