Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Rohan had a real nice one, back in the day, before mp3, before i-pod, before digital download, when the only pirated music was a vinyl album you borrowed from a friend. Funny thing, part of a component system , a brushed black metal box with smoothly recessed switches and a single knob for volume, I can’t help but think of a junkie about to get a fix as I went through the play procedures. A finger push on the eject switch would lower a drawbridge for the army of sound that was about to invade. The cassette tape was a dried out husk that apparently had no life, but it sat sweet in the mouth of the mechanism and the door pushed shut with a muted click, being halfway through it required rewinding, for that ‘best’ song at the head, heart by this stage is showing signs of adrenalin influx, a heightened sense of giddiness, just like that junk being heated in the spoon, come on I want it NOW.

The tiny wheels inside are mesmerising. The rewinding motors are a drill on half speed screaming the tape back to pole position until I can hit the play button, the needle in the vein, the lance for the ear. Glorious sounds of a piano erupt from the keflar speakers, and then Freddy’s vocal sails over the top ” I’ve done my time”…. building into the guitar infected chorus. WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS MY FRIEND. My arms are a windmill playing the lead lines as the sound vibrates through the bare wooden floor, in this day perhaps trendy, then, the after effect of a min-flood, for which the insurance paid out for this neat new Denon deck. As the music pulses the bars on the L.E.D. meter are a duck egg blue then yellow and traffic light red, possible over load up ahead.