This is a memory map covering my ‘formative years’ I suppose you would call them (1973 – 1993). I found it quite difficult at first to determine exactly how to approach the task of mapping my early music memories. In retrospect it now seems obvious, but it only started to work when I learnt to be guided just by what more immediately presented itself as a memory. This was overwhelmingly focused around live music performance; in particular those that involved significant or memorable journeys. In most cases what I found to be memorable were little snippets of details related to specific gigs, but not necessarily the performance or performer. In some cases the gigs remembered weren’t even ones I particularly enjoyed. For example, seeing Mari Wilson in Folkestone in 1983 (or thereabouts). The gig was terrible (well I thought so anyway; this was an aspect of the early 80s mod revival that did little for me), but what I remember is the journey there and back from Whitstable (on a very slow Vespa 50cc).

The other pattern that started to emerge (again, in hindsight, entirely obvious) was the geographical clusters of music memory. I’ve represented these by a triangle for Kent (where I grew up) which overlaps with a circle representing London. The overlapping is important because, whereas journeys had hitherto been mainly to Canterbury or Folkestone to see gigs, around 1983/4 I made regularly trips with friends to the capital for gigs, but also for major music events such as the GLC festivals of which there were many (until Thatcher pulled the plug on London local government in 1986), and the Notting Hill Carnival. The overlapping also represents a time of transition as, by 1986, I had moved to London and a whole new world of music and live performance opened itself up to me. Geographically, the left-hand side of the map is sort of ‘off the map’ insofar as this represents another key period, and hence another ‘space’ of musical memory. But in terms of what is most dense and memorable musically it is the years from the late 1970s to early 90s that seem particularly suggestive cartographically. Of course, what is represented on the map is only a small selection of what could otherwise be included if time and space permitted.