Music, Martin and Me
In 1995, BBC2 broadcast the 10th Anniversary Concert of ‘Les Miserables‘ at the Albert Hall. I had just turned 14. After hearing the opening lines of Lea Salonga ’s turn as Eponine, I raced to my bedroom, returning to our living room at Concorde speed with my double-cassette-decked stereo, stabbing my microphone into the machine before pressing its latticed head to the small grid of a speaker box on our television. I statue-d there, waiting to catch Salonga’s next scene, slamming on the record button as her rendition of ‘On My Own‘ began. Her voice and that song in that moment hit my very core. I replayed and karaoke-d along to that cassette moment so much the tape eventually mangled. From my mid-teens singing started to be ‘my thing’. Outside of school and other fixed commitments, if I wasn’t listening to music, I was singing it. I sought out vocal lessons (the clarinet was unceremoniously usurped by voice); I sang in school choirs, concerts, stage productions and competition