What the Caked Crusader chose to bake to this week (19 April 2008)

This is my 100th post! I wasn’t sure I’d ever get this far but here I am and still going strong!

Back in 1985 the Caked Crusader was a mere 12 year old strip of a girl whose only concern was whether her trigonometry homework was done (it was – I was a girly swot). Then along came Go West and suddenly the world became a different place. I can still clearly picture my school locker, the inside of which was plastered with A4 posters of Go West (but really only Peter Cox – the singer) torn from magazines such as “No.1” and “Just 17” - magazines both consigned to the dustbin of the past and a more innocent age - and snorting with derision at others’ lockers containing pictures of A-Ha, Curiosity Killed the Cat and Wet Wet Wet.

Everyone has a strong recollection of their first crush and mine was definitely Peter Cox – I can still remember waiting for November to come around as that was the “hottest” picture on my Go West calendar; embarrassingly, I can recall the picture too – black t-shirt, crossed arms, slightly moody stare...sigh! Luckily my friend and I got to see them play at the Hammersmith Odeon – I think the venue has changed names at least three times since then! God this is making me feel old...

Anyway, that’s the scene setting done. Recently I’ve been putting lots of my old CDs onto my MP3 player and realised that I didn’t have any of the Go West albums on CD as my mania was back in the days of cassette. Thankfully, Amazon provided the necessary CDs and Go West are now happily ensconced on my MP3 player. I’m glad to say the hits such as “We close our eyes”, “Don’t look down”, “Call me”, “Faithfull” and “The king of wishful thinking” sound as upbeat and poppy as ever. Strange that pop music is so “of its time” yet great pop songs never really age.

However, this tale is not a totally happy wander down memory lane. I checked out some of the old videos which are available on Youtube. Let’s just say that what seemed like a butch doom-hunk to my young eyes seems a rather different prospect now......oh well, they say you should never go back!