Take Your Mind Back - I Don't Know When

I didn't think it was possible. But finally, after over 20 years...

I have found the Lost Song!!!

The genesis of the story: when I was very little and we lived in Sydney in the early 1980s, we always seemed to go on long car journeys on the weekend, and so I heard an awful lot of radio. There was one song in particular I was very fond of, that got alot of air play at the time. I didn't know anything about it, other than it was a lush, piano-heavy piece. I didn't know any of the words (I was barely more than a toddler at the time) and apparently my father didn't have it on any of his records (no CDs in 1982!). Eventually, it dropped off regular radio play, and I forgot all about it for twenty years. But it must have remained in some corner of my sub-concious.

Fast forward to early 2003...I'd been to lunch with a couple of co workers, and in the car on the way back to the office, the song came on the radio. I recognised it straight away, but unfortunatley they were chatting loudly, so I still couldn't make out any lyrics, nor the DJ announcing what the song was. And as they'd just treated me to lunch at Scratchleys, I really didn't feel I could say "Pipe down, I want to hear what this song is!"

Maybe I should have, because since then, finding the lost song has become an obsession. A nearly impossible one, as I didn't know who performed it, the title, or the words. None the less, I've run literally hundreds of song lyrics searches for what I thought the words might have been, and listened to an awful lot of hits and memories radio. Knowing that the song must've been released circa 1981/2, I've barely ever missed a radio stations "Cold Thirty" from that era.

No luck. And I'd basically resigned myself to the thought that I could well die without ever knowing what the Lost Song was.

Until Saturday evening. I was just listening to the local hits n' memories radio station because I was waiting for the news, when I heard those distinctive opening bars...I started shaking, unable to believe my search was at an end. In a further stroke of luck, there was a blank tape ready to go in the stereo, so I hit "record"...and now the song is mine till the tape wears out. Anyway, finally aware of the words, I ran a search that worked...and now I finally know that the song is "Real Men" by Joe Jackson (I can't believe I didn't recognise his distictive voice earlier!). And now I can buy the MP3. Somehow. I don't know how.

The song isn't as great as I remembered but I think it's still pretty good. And shows that even as a small child, I had good taste AND an awareness of gay issues (well, not really. Like I said I didn't know the words then).

Anyway, there's four points to be learnt from this:

1. Never give up on lost causes, a solution may come along when you least expect it;

2. Toddlers were much better off in years gone by listening to real music, before the days of kiddie bands;

3. Never promise your readers four points when you can't think of a fourth, and

4.

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