Cecilia's story
Remembering my childhood is like looking through a kaleidoscope of memories; the hot summers in France spent lying on the scorched grass in the garden, and windy walks in Cornwall holding my Mother’s hand. As the memories shift into one another, the only residing factor is sound. The sound of waves, my Father’s laughter over the noise of the record player, the sound of my childhood slowly escaping my clutches. The familial crackle of the needle hitting vinyl, as Astral Weeks fills the air.
Summer for me means family, and family means music. I suppose the song that sticks with me most is Going Up The Country by Canned Heat. It makes me think of long car journeys, the hot heavy breath of the dog on my neck, and my Mother singing in the front seat.
It was the summer of 2001 that I really discovered my music. I’d been brought up on a diet of Marlena Shaw and Otis Redding and I thought I knew music, until I heard Canned Heat and I suppose my little ears just liked what they heard because it’s been a favourite ever since.Years later, lying in Ruskin Park with my sturdy Walkman by my side, it was always this song that would bring me back to those hazy summers of sleepy afternoons and the faded grandeur of the French Riviera. When I think of summer, I cannot help but hum; music is heat and life and love.
Later on as I grew up summer became about escapism and relief from the monotony of an inner London school where music meant Spice Girls not Lou Reed. Those summer holidays were a chance to remember what it was like to be me again, not an awkward 13 year old who chose Proust over play-dates. The summer of 2009 I was 15, and I fell in love. The fact that he was 3 times my age and happened to be dead didn’t matter; George Harrison was my world for 8 weeks and nothing but nothing could tear me away from All Things Must Pass. Music helped me grow up during those blistering summers of my youth; it provided not just the soundtrack to an uncertain adolescence but the guidebook to surviving life. It connected me to something outside myself, something I couldn’t bare to be without.
Cecilia's Top 5
Canned Heat - Going Up The Country
Van Morrison - It’s All Over Now Baby Blue
George Harrison - All Things Must Pass
It’s a Beautiful Day - White Bird
Francoise Hardy - Le Temps De L’Amour










