Early Musical Memories

Being rocked to sleep by my Nona while she sang Italian folk songs in the kind of tremulous, almost baritone vibrato that would keep most other kids awake.

My mother singing and whistling bits of opera, movie tunes, radio hits of the thirties and forties and what she calls "cowby songs" - and thankfully as I write this in the autumn of 2006 she's still joyfully breaching other people's peace in this fashion, sometimes accompanying herself on an ancient Neopolitan mandolin and sometimes I'm inclined to join in.
Finding myself laughing hysterically as the only response to the frankly frightening volume of a pipe band marching up Bank Street. I like a street whose name describes its function: Station Brae, Castle Street, Brown Walk...

Watching the tapping of a winkle-picker shoe to an unremembered jukebox tune below the formica table-top in a cafe. As it's only the tapping shoe that I remember, I always imagine the shoe would be attached to a guy that looked exactly like Gene Vincent at his black leather-clad peak. It's my first recollection of someone moving to music. A small expression of potential! Best guess at the tune would be either Telstar or Peter Gunn - something with a twangy guitar, something formative.
 
Basil

 
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Tenement detail by Alice Duncan