Bargepole’s recent review of Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album left a bad taste in my mouth. Nothing up with the review, it’s just that I remember ordering the record from Britannia Music as young pup and have clear memories of listening to it with my Dad, one evening. We had a little portable record player and I’d put it on the kitchen table once tea and homework had been cleared away. We sat listening, my dad explaining about George Orwell, Big Brother and 1984 to me. It must have been the festive season as there was one of those multi compartmentalised dishes around with various snacks in – peanuts, those little fish shaped salty biscuit things, and Twiglets. I’m not sure if I’d had them before but I was fascinated and repulsed by the taste.
Now I can’t hear or read about Diamond Dogs without ‘tasting’ marmite nor can I eat the black stuff on toast without breaking in to a quick chorus of the Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family.
Anyone else got any sensory experiences triggered by music, or vice versa?
Diamond Dogs tastes of Twiglets
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I had my first Pot Noodle while listening to Ant Music – two life-changing experiences at once. The two things always remind me of each other.
Elsewhere I associate Speaking in Tongues with the summer holiday treat of a Kellogg’s variety pack.
In my second year at university, I went back a week early to help at the Fresher’s Week fair. I had to hand out carrier bags, each containing useful stuff including a bank account opening form, details of the local GP and dentist, a condom and a Pot Noodle. At the end of the week, we still had several huge boxes full left over and divvied them up.
I had a Pot Noodle for lunch every day for almost a year. My attempts to use up the rubber johnny supply at the same rate fell somewhat short. The two facts might be related.
“Fell somewhat short” – TMI, dude.
“Ello, darling, would you like to come and hear my LP12? What’s that smell, you say? Oh, that’ll be the Pot Noodle I had for lunch today – and every other day. Have you heard my Fiio?* Yes, I am quite dull as it happens. Oh, OK, bye then.”
(*) I made this bit up as an hilarious AW in-joke, obviously
So, not only were you ahead of your time in inventing The Pot Noodle Diet (step off, so-called Doctor Michael Moseley), you had a Fiio as well. Those chicks were just too awestruck because you was from Tha Fyoochah!
You don’t suppose there’s a link between EPNC (Excessive Pot Noodle Consumption) and Crohn’s?
Exactly my thoughts.
@Dai , big pot noodle man in your day?
Hmmm @retropath2 I remember them being a lunchtime staple when I had my first summer job at the age of 18. After that at uni my main diet became chips. Sometimes 3 times a day …
Nope, it runs (no pun intended) in the family.
Maternal great grandfather had between the wars unspecified gut trouble (unlikely to be due to WWI shrapnel in the leg), mother’s brother diagnosed with Colitis in his mid-40s, my mother’s just had a Crohn’s diagnosis at age 70, and my cousin was diagnosed with Colitis c. 1990 whilst at university.
We don’t do family BBQs any more.
Pot Noodle is not on my LOFFLEX diet sheet, though, so probably didn’t help. Did I also mention I weighed about 10 stone at the start of each term, and about 7 at the end?
I have never tried pot Noodles and never listened to Ant Music in its entirety.. Is one a prerequisite for the other?
I heard Alice Cooper’s Halo of flies in Majorca while eating a Spanish Omelette – not sure I bought the album because of the Omelette but they were both enjoyable experiences.
Ha, I once ate a halo of flies whilst listening to Spanish Omelette!
It think you mean The Spanish Omelette.
Tchuh… civilians.
Tchuh, you mix up Spanish Omelette, the suite on side 2 of the sophomore outing by The Oms, as we called them in the day, with the name of the band. Sonic chapel or what?!
Silly me! And to think I actually followed them on their Waves if Egginess tour of Wiltshire in ’78.
Followed… at a safe distance.
Kind of related…. I sometimes associate albums with books or comics I was reading at the time.
Queen’s A Night At The Opera for example, is always indelibly linked to reading Bill Sienkewicz’s comic adaptation of Moby Dick and marvelling at the artwork. (Rock on…. I was a real hit with the ladies when I was seventeen….)
Pink Floyd’s Animals reminds me of Zenith Phase Three in 2000AD.
Rattlesnakes reminds me of Martin Amis’s Success. Ride On by Christy Moore? Pickwick Papers. Sirens of Titan – London 0 Hull 4. Hurrah!
I have lots of these: Middle Eastern music from a compilation I own is playing in my head anytime I read or think about the Sherlock Holmes stories/vice versa, Pet Sematary is forever linked to FGTH’s Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Michael Nyman and a classical piece (by Scriabin, I think) is LOTR, etc.
Skiing makes me hear Olivia Newton John’s album “Totally Hot”, which is a bit ironical…
But the only food-related one that I can think of is that when I hear KC and the Sunshine Band’s “That’s the Way (I Like It)” I can taste the awful skimmed milk we’d get in the cafeteria at school in first grade.
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath tastes of Doner Kebab.
My first (attempted) band “rehearsed” every Sunday and Thursday night for 3 months. Always finishing the night with extra greasy Kebabs.
I say rehearsed, we managed a passable version of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Pretty Vacant and the Cockney Rejects Flares & Slippers.
Our attempted version of Poison Street is best left forgotten.
Someone I know once sucked on a fisherman’s friend while listening to the Village People. Now whenever he’s at a wedding disco and YMCA comes on, he goes into a reverie as that experience is evoked once more.
Sucking greedily on a Madeleine puts me in mind of Steeleye Span.
…..what?
I had a very nice Thai curry at a Rolling Stones gig in Zurich.
Yep:
Chain Reaction by Diana Ross reminds me of eating a cream/custard (think it was cream, but all I can ever find now is the custard variant) slice while watching it on Top of the Pops as a youngish lad. If I eat one now, all I can see is Ms Ross in her flowing white dress at the front of the stage.
China in Your Hand by T’Pau doesn’t remind me of a taste as much as the smell and sound of Gatwick Airport South Terminal. Our school choir sang carols there the Christmas it was a big hit (1987) and it came over the tannoy while we were getting ready. The chap I was stood with commented how much he liked it, and it just stuck.