This was the year I discovered Kate Bush. I remember hearing this weird voice and watching this even weirder dancing one morning on Noel Edmund's Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. I was quite surprised that my dad, normally a Maria Callas fan, liked her voice and I soon got into it too and bought her first album, The Kick Inside. At the time, I just had a top-loading mono cassette player and my dad wouldn't let me or my brother anywhere near his hi-fi, and of course tapes didn't come with the words. I loved Kate Bush's voice, but couldn't understand a word of what she was going on about, so I wrote to EMI and asked them to send me the lyrics, but they wouldn't. Bastards.
Second year at CGS. We did the opera Amahl and the Night Visitors at Christmas. I was Amahl, natch. My music teacher was worried my balls might drop before we got to the performances and he thought strenuous exercise might accelerate the process, so he managed to get me off games and PE for the whole Autumn term, yey! After the school performaces I got roped into two performances in Christchurch in Oxford when their Amahl's voice broke. Halfway through the second performance my balls did indeed drop and I sounded like Jimmy Savile (that sound he makes before he says "owzabout that then guys and gals." This was my first ever (and one of my last) paid gigs, I got a whole £5, which I spent on Kate Bush's new album Lionheart.
Shortly after Christmas, I discovered what my right hand was really for.
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