Mahmoth's Music 5: A Bit of History
REM, Nightswimming, Automatic For The People, 1992
Link
As far as I can recall, some of my earliest memories are of lying in bed, waiting for the lights of my mother's car to play across the wall, the engine to growl to a stop, and the click-clatter-thunk of the door opening a few minutes later. For years, she'd been in the habit of going out with Alice, one of her best friends and mother of my best friend, Tom (alas now moved to New England and lost to me), and going for a few hours' swim at the local pool, presumably just chatting and relaxing. I was never good at getting to sleep at nights, so I'd lie in the dark, waiting for the familiar flash and sequence of sounds. And whenever I heard them, this would be the music that'd play in my mind. I didn't really listen to the lyrics, just the unusualness of the orchestration in a sea of guitar-based semi-rock, and the chorus, which was the main thing: o/' Nightswimming, deserves a quiet night o/'
Also, though I can date that memory to around the age of six, I have a few that are older, and still clear: making an arse of myself and crying my eyes out over not getting milk when my parents first took me along to look at the school where I would spend most of the next decade and a half, trying to catch minnows using a jar on a string with some bread sellotaped to the bottom, encountering computers for the first time by climbing up to my father's old Amstrad and gazing in wonder as the screen filled with a letter as I pressed my finger down on one of the buttons, and (one I'm proud of for its vintage) standing up in my cot and crying for mam, probably after a bad dream...
Anyway, enough reminiscing. Enjoy the song.