She Sells Sanctuary – The Cult

-

She Sells Sanctuary – The Cult


So I was in my late teens, managed to basically ignore all the current 1980s music and was looking to expand my musical horizons past the record collection of my parents that I had been listening to through my teenage years. Along comes Indie music.
I was out shopping in Woolworths in Hornchurch, one Saturday afternoon in 1993. Woolworth’s was one of them shops you could buy basically anything and they had just expanded into selling records and cassettes in this small store. I picked up this cassette, basically because the cover was yellow and looked really cool. It was a complication album called "Suddenly Loaded", it had all the best Indie songs from that era spread over it's two sides. Trouble being I hardly knew any of the songs or artists, apart from one Radiohead song. Now knowing me it was probably on special offer, I took it home and stuck it in my stack system. Side A was inspiring and then I had to take out the cassette and flip it over to side B, this was before auto reverse had been added to tape decks. Anyway the first song came on, it sounded like I’d not put the cassette into the player properly as it was all echoing guitar and warped, then suddenly the drums kicked in and I had found another life anthem. What a tune, didn’t even get to the second song, just rewound it and did it all again.
I knew nothing more of this band The Cult, I’ve looked them up for posting here and it seems they were quite successful. This track came out in 1985 and didn't even bother the top 10, but for this one tune I thank The Cult and say they helped me on my journey. Never really understood the lyrics at the time and couldn’t make out the words, but I thought this noise was immense. Looking up the lyrics for this blog, I was surprised how little content there is to them and it's more of a chant than a story. But all that doesn't matter if it connected with you at time.
I've been looking up the running order of that album and other huge tunes of note on there were :
I had a big period of my life that this music spoke for me and it was the perfect continuation of the guitar bands from my parents music.

Favourite lyric : And the fire in your eyes keeps me alive / Inside her you'll find sanctuary


Location: Rayleigh, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wherever You Will Go – The Calling

-
Image
    Wherever You Will Go – The Calling  No idea where this one came from, total American power ballad, it's well chessey but I love it. I'm a sucker for sentimental songs like this, all about always being with the one you love. But it's not really a happy song, apparently it was written about a husband who had lost his wife of over 50 years. The songwriter, Aaron Kamin , was at his grandmother's best friends funeral and the idea for the song came to him. How the husband who was left behind would have followed his beloved if only he could have. Can he now exist without her? The words almost say that they would come back to haunt you if that was possible, love that strong can't be broken. The need to be together is so strong. But like all good songs, you can take it's message in so many different ways. Also most listeners don't delve to deep into the meanings of songs, they just catch onto the suggested obvious tone of the chorus. The general understanding of
Read more

I Am, I Feel – Alisha's Attic

-
Image
  I Am, I Feel – Alisha's Attic I remember this one from 1996, it came back to my mind yesterday as I was on a songwriting course co-hosted by Shelly McErlaine (born Poole), one half of Alisha's Attic . The group was a duo made up of Sheely and her sister Karen Poole , who happen to come from close to where I grew up in East Essex, UK. They have a famous father, Brian Poole who had a band called Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, they had major success in the 1960s. Shelly is married to Ally McErlaine , from the band Texas , they now have an country band together called Red Sky July along with Charity Hair. Shelly is now a songwriter/producer/talent scout and is an amazing person to listen to about how to craft a song. It seems she has worked with so many huge names, but the biggest thing that came across was her absolute love of music. The song itself is a sorry tale of how a man is taking a girl he's with totally for granted. The lyrics are a very clever reply to how he
Read more

Running Bear – Johnny Preston

-
Image
    Running Bear – Johnny Preston I love this song. It's another one from my childhood, it sounds like a kids song, lots of chanting and takes a bit of imagination to get what's going on. It's actually a love song about two Indian's from different warring tribes, they're not allowed to be together.  This is a proper story song, loads of words, total tongue twister. Songs like this were big in the 50's, it's not an obvious setting to write a song about, I guess Westerns were very popular around the time and Cowboys and Indians were a real hit with the public. All sounding very exotic to us over here in the U.K. anything that shouted American was fantasy. Even as a kid listening to this song as a 45 single on a record player 30 years later, it really caught my ear. It was like listening to a bedtime story in three minutes. Running Bear is a cool Indian name, it gives such a strong image of a powerful fast huge guy and Little White Dove gives the impression of
Read more