You might remember that when you’re a self-identifying rock lad with a giant rock brain - we hadn’t heard of the word ‘nerd’ - even though you knew the jocks and normal kids took the piss out of you, secretly you believed you were the cool one and this led to some misplaced and embarrassing encounters with the opposite sex, as inevitably we all tried to impress with our knowledge, knowledge that by and large girls were completely uninterested in.
For example, I once thought my knowledge of releases on Purple Records (which I collected) would be an ideal subject to demonstrate my attractive allure. So imagine my surprise when, by the time I was onto the Stray Dog releases, the girl, who I already felt was probably bored, just said “I don’t care” and walked away.
But I was not disheartened. After my romantic success when I brought the Dave Mason single to that party. I thought I’d follow up with one of his excellent live albums. What I didn’t know and was too gauche to realise was that she had no interest in Dave Mason at all and was clearly dismayed that I did and even thought this bearded old man on the album sleeve was worthy of any attention. As usual I took the rejection a bit to heart but reasoned anyone who didn’t like Dave Mason wasn’t worth knowing.
I did eventually twig that it was a good idea not to let my passion for rock be too obvious from the start as it scared girls off. Try getting into a romantic grapple (not a Fat Grapple - a Teesside rock reference there and, may I say, exactly the kind of quip that accounted for my failure) while playing Sabbath’s Iron Man. It rarely works.
But every now and then I encountered girls who didn’t mind it at all, indeed seemed to think it made me different and unusual. I suppose it wasn't everyone who could tell you the name of every Snafu album. These girls I stayed in touch with and still do actually. Even though we might have gone out for just a few months. And here’s the thing, all of them, every one, turned out to be a really nice person, so maybe my original rock-based selection process wasn’t that bad after all.
Bet that girl still doesn’t listen to Dave Mason though and now she’s been divorced twice…Just sayin’ that’s all!
