I always say that for all their strictness in certain aspects of my life, growing up, my parents were definitely the coolest parents ever when it came to the books I read or the music I listened to. Some could argue part of that coolness may have been a bit of cluelessness, but I can tell you that even though by mid elementary school my English surpassed theirs from a vocabulary standpoint, and they never asked to look at anything I was reading or listening to (although typical demands to turn it down or off were still heard!), they certainly were no fools and I've no doubt that anything that did 'escape' notice was not because they missed it or misunderstood it.
Even I have to admit, I was a bit of an oddity when it came to what I read and what I listened to. I know the fact that I read things far too mature for my age was almost entirely due to growing up with a sister eight years older than I, who was a voracious reader herself, and who never, ever treated me as a 'little' sister when it came to books (and a lot of other things, to be honest). I am not so sure about the music; I knew an awful lot about music that my sister and her peers liked and grown up with, and quite a bit of my parents, too, which in itself led to some interesting exposure, given their affinity for both Persian and British/European music, and with the latter heavily influenced by their perception as a foreigner in England versus a native. Then there was the whole period back home, where any music was good music, so great was the demand and desire for something new, which meant anything from decades old records to the most recent via black market, from the crappiest 80s music to classics in rock and anything in between. In between the family influence in general and the social constraints influence back home, there was my own personal taste which appears to have had no rhyme or reason beyond my old standby of knowing what I liked when I heard it.
***
1982 was a big year for me. Not only did I turn double digits that year, I also had my first taste of racially provoked bullying. The two may seem somewhat unrelated, but the truth is, I started listening to a lot of music on the radio (and Top of the Pops!, of course), recording songs I liked on to blank tapes and then listening to them over and over again, while reading books, sitting on top of the double bed in my parents' room (which I shared with my mom during the week, while my dad worked in another city). In other words, a prequel to teenage angst. The special birthday came into play because, for the first time, I was allowed to use some of my birthday money to buy anything I wanted, my own choice with no adult input (well, within reason). The whole family bet on books. They lost the bet, when I came home with my very first albums and singles chosen and purchased entirely by me.
I already knew the singles and albums I wanted. For a few months, I'd fixated on three favorite songs to the point that I had created my own what is now referred to as a mashup and had perfected the moves and grooves (all choreographed by me, of course) that went along with it. The 'sequence' as it were, would begin thus with my mashed chorus, before I'd break out into a 30 second sample of each song, and then come to the chorus. Lather, rinse, repeat:
Now I know I've got to (dun dun)
Run away I've got to
Stay away I've go to...
Run, run, run, run, run, run, run away
Awaaaaaaay...oh
Run to the hiiiiiiills (bam baram bam bam baram bam bam)
Run for your li-iife
Yes, that would be Tainted Love, Psycho Killer, and Run to the Hills, that were in my top five favorites for the months leading up to my birthday.
So I ended up with the single for the first song, and the complete albums that had the second two (The Name of This Band is Talking Heads and The Number of the Beast). To round it off, I picked up the singles for my two other top five songs--one of which had just been released that month and which I will always think of as my birthday song for that year-- and came home thinking no birthday could ever beat that one. I don't think any birthday every did.
You know, I'd hang out with my ten year old self, even now.
***
Tainted Love - Soft Cell
Psycho Killer - Talking Heads
Run to the Hills - Iron Maiden
(Note the drums. Awesome headbanging music! Also, see next song/note)
Don't Go - Yazoo
(Note that after seeing Alison Moyet, I was torn between wanting short hair to copy her, and wanting to keep my long hair so I could headbang with the best of them. Go ahead, laugh--I think a ten year old, skinny Iranian headbanger is pretty funny, too.)
Golden Brown -The Stranglers
(When I got around to buying an album of theirs, I was surprised--pleasantly--to find out that this was not exactly representative of their sound. In fact, they'd been regarded as anarchist as The Sex Pistols not too many years before this came out. It made me love them even more.)
