POPFESSIONS

Douglas Burgess

It was 1991 and, for the first time, I was allowed to buy any tape I wanted from Woolworths in Sheerness. I was in a state of excitement and fear, mostly because I had no idea how to choose a record. I didn’t know what I wanted, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get my parents to give me five entire pounds to get something I wanted. So…

I knew I liked Dire Straits, but not Dad’s Julia Fordham records. I knew I liked Status Quo, but not my Mum’s Chris De Burgh tapes. And I knew I liked the video for ‘Losing My Religion’ by REM. That was to be it. I found Out Of Time on the shelf and said that I’d made up my mind. My Mum handed over the money, I grabbed the tape, took it home and put it in the hi-fi.

It was terrible. I hated it. It sounded nothing like what I’d expected it to. There were all these other songs full of weird noises and boring words! Clunking boingings, hollering men and an entire thing with no singing at all! I was distraught. My first go at buying music, my first chance to look cool, and I’d made a balls-up of it. It was only when Mum found me crying in front of the stereo that she told me about this thing called a ‘receipt’ and this other concept of ‘exchanging’ that my heart lifted.

Back in Woolies, I found what I’d been looking for all along. The Simpsons Sing The Blues. I loved those yellow guys, and because of that our Vauxhall Carlton spent the rest of the year ringing to the sounds of ‘Deep, Deep Trouble’, ‘Look At All Those Idiots’ and, most of all, ‘Do The Bartman’. It was bliss. 

I know every word of that album to this day. Maybe I should be ashamed of swapping one of the Nineties’ great albums for a novelty knock-off from a cartoon family soon to jump the shark. But I’m not.