4. Fast Car – Tracy Chapman (1988)

 This is one of the great songs and from one of the great albums. The thing about Tracy Chapman’s album ‘Tracy Chapman’ is that it is absolutely perfect and like so few albums a ‘whole’ entity. There is no waste, there is no song on that album that is only just ‘okay’. Every single track is a masterpiece and each one takes you on a journey from start to the finish. From ‘Talkin’ Bout A Revolution’, through ‘Fast Car’, listening to the horror of ‘Behind The Wall’, looking at yourself and your conspicuous consumption in ‘Mountains O’ Things’, the things we would all do ‘For My Lover’ and finally the big one ‘Why?’

I first heard it when I was twenty and living in Leicester, it was the summer and I was a member of the Haymarket Youth Theatre in Leicester  run at the time by Tim Supple who is now a successful director at the National. We used to have our rehearsals in a big old warehouse in Short Street, where the stage was marked out with tape on the ground floor,  and the other floors housed additional rehearsal space and props and costumes. It was a magical place and many friends were made there. It seems odd now but at the time we were allowed to do our own rehearsals completely unsupervised and as the building was so old and so dusty and so creepy and had an internal lift which was something like a metal cage where you could see the inner workings and had to slide the heavy concertina doors together before it would move, it was an ideal place to play hide and seek and better still ‘sardines!’  Needless to say we did this a lot!

‘Tracy Chapman’ was the album of the summer and we listened to it in the car and on the stereo (when ghostly voices weren’t interrupting the music or making the tape recorder stop working – but that’s another story) at Short Street.

One summer night I was in my room listening to it and the telephone rang. A keen lover of all things telephonic I had installed a lovely shiny red telephone in my room and it rang and flashed a red light as well. My best friend wanted to know if I wanted to go to London that night on the spur of the moment and so I packed a few things and he came to pick me up in his dad’s car. We listened to ‘Tracy Chapman’ as we drove to London, went to Southgate, picked up a couple of his friends and went to Ronnie Scott’s! Three things about that evening I will never forget:

1.     The fact that the trip was just so spontaneous and exciting and ridiculous -we left at about 8.00pm!

2.     The fact that my friend drove to the West End and parked outside Ronnie Scott’s in the biggest car I had ever seen! It was a massive seven seater Peugeot estate!

3.     Listening to one of the greatest albums of all time when it was new and fresh and dangerous and inspiring.

Now listen to the song…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl6yilkU1LI