Moments of Music

When I was 20 years old I accepted an offer to travel from Kent in the south of England to work in a small hotel in the tiny village of Plockton in the Scottish Highlands. It was September 1989 and was the first time I'd lived away from home before and it was all a bit strange and disorientating.  Thankfully I soon made friends - especially a local girl called Dawn who also worked in the hotel.  Her parents owned a number of holiday cottages in the village and she used to help out with cleaning them. One day, after our shift making toast and serving breakfast I went to help her out with cleaning one of the cottages. She put on one of her CDs - 'When The World Knows Your Name' by a rock band from Glasgow  called Deacon Blue.  I'd vaguely heard of them before, mostly for their weirdly-titled single 'Chocolate Girl' [ 'He calls her the chocolate girl / Cause he thinks she melts when he touches her / She knows she's the chocolate girl / Cause she...

In September 1989 I moved out of home for the first time and went to live in a small coastal village called Plockton in the western Highlands of Scotland to work as a waiter in a small family-run hotel.  I was twenty years old. I'd subscribed to the music magazine 'Q' a few months before in an effort to get more acquainted with new music and one month (I can't recall which) there was a review of the self-titled album by a new Australian band who had called themselves 'Martha's Vineyard'.  For some reason the review caught my attention and I bought the album - without even hearing it!  Maybe it was the album cover which intrigued me... This was the days before the Internet so I couldn't Google the band, watch promo vids on YouTube or subscribe to their Twitter account or Facebook page!  I bought the album 'blind'.  But what a wise purchase it proved to be - and one I have never regretted!  About the band Martha's Vineyard were an Aust...