Tuesday, January 09, 2007
TTA DAY 1: Bedtime Story
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 Watch as I bare my soul! Take That appreciation week heads into full swing at IAR right about now. Ladies & Gentlemen... let me tell you a little story...
Once upon a time, in a small Country Town located in Gippsland, Australia, a young boy named Adem (that would be me, viewers) lived. He was quite young (about 10 years of age) and in Grade 4 at Primary School. At this school, people were not very aware of music that was good. In fact, most of the children listened to Country Music or Classic Rock & Roll because that was all their parents ever played around them. It was a very small country town that worshipped horses and cows over pop stars. There were two young sisters though, one who was 9 and the other 11 who, funnily enough, lived in Adem's street. They all became friends due to sharing an intense passion for a thing called pop music. They would meet at weekends and exchange pin ups from Smash Hits, TV Hits & Star! Magazine's, songword files, stickers, the lot. They'd also purchase the latest hit singles and albums on cassette (!!!) with their pocket money each week, lending the purchased goods to the other so they could "tape" a copy for themselves. Considering there were only 2 radio stations in the whole area - musically - life was surprisingly great.
One day, Adem purchased a pop compilation of songs on cassette titled "Hit Machine". It was the first in a series of pop compilations that would continue on for about 78 volumes in years to come. On this cassette was a song called "Could It Be Magic", by a boy band called Take That. It was very good, and became Adem's favourite track for the year of 1992. The two sisters down the street loved it too, and taped a copy of the song for their own listening pleasure. Adem would dance around in his room to the song, singing into a hair brush pretending he was one of the boys from Take That. His mother would always catch him jumping up and down on his bed singing very loud. In 1993, Adem was lucky enough to receive Take That's "Take That & Party" album on cassette for his birthday, a gift from his Aunty & Uncle. He would spend hours in his room listening to the tape, learning all the words and dancing to the songs. Any free time that came up, was time to listen to his cassette. For a good two months, Adem did not listen to a single Madonna or Kylie Minogue cassette. Not even his Teen Queens, Toni Pearen or Melissa Tkautz tapes!!
At the start of 1994, Adem moved back to his hometown of Geelong which - in comparison to where he had lived in Gippsland - was like New York City. For his birthday that year, the same Aunty & Uncle who'd purchased his very first Take That album the previous year bought him another one. This was called "Everything Changes". Adem's favourite songs on this album were "Babe", "Pray", and especially a song called "Relight My Fire", which had an old lady singing on it. Miming along to the boys lines, Adem would even pretend he was the old lady, dancing around to the song after school.
As High School began in the year of 1995, Adem's obsession with Take That was just as mammoth as his passion for the pop singer Madonna. Half of his bedroom was covered in pictures of Take That, the other half with Madonna. He met a girl at his school named Sonia, who was two years older than him. She loved Take That about as much as Adem did, and they formed a very special friendship. They would spend their recess & lunchtimes talking about Take That, swapping posters and listening to Take That mix tapes on their walkmans. In April, Adem was given a CD Player for his birthday by his parents. His parents had bought him 2 CDs to play on his new CD player as well, a Madonna album he did not have called "You Can Dance", and the latest Take That single, which was called "Back For Good". Adem spent two weeks listening to "Back For Good" on repeat. The repeat function was incredibly new to Adem and he took as many opportunities to use it as he possibly could. At the simple press of a button, he could hear a song he'd just heard again... he didn't even have to press rewind and look for the song himself like on cassette. It was amazing!
One month later, Take That released their brand new album, "Nobody Else". Around this time, whilst looking at a photo of Take That member Gary Barlow (who had his shirt off), Adem felt a bit funny. He realised that he had fallen in love with Gary, but was really confused because Gary was a boy and not a girl. He told Sonia about his discovery, and they would sit quietly at school talking of their true loves, Gary Barlow & Mark Owen respectively. Later on in that year, Adem realised that he thought ALL of the boys from Take That were very pretty indeed, not just Gary. It wasn't long before Adem started thinking other boys at his school were also pretty to look at. He then decided he did not fancy thinking of kissing a girl ever again, and began focusing all his attention on boys. It was all a bit scary for Adem for a while, but he knew it really was the only way to go.
Toward the end of 1995, something terrible happened. Robbie Williams, one of the boys from Take That, announced he was leaving the band. Adem cried for days, and barely made it to school each day. He liked Robbie a lot, and was worried that now Robbie had left, the band would break up. Unfortunately, in 1996, Take That did just that. Adem absolutely lost his shit. He would not go to school, he'd just sit in his room and cry, cry, cry. He blamed Robbie for his pain, and ripped up every picture he had of him. He continued to cry and cry, until days turned into a week, and the crying started to calm itself down. Every so often, Adem would listen to the Take That song "Never Forget" and have a little sob, in memory of the best boy band in history. Shortly after the break up, Adem vowed to never let a pop group into his heart again. Not long after that, five girls formed a pop group, they were called Spice Girls, but that's another story for another time.
Robbie Williams became a very famous pop star who, eventually, was forgiven by Adem. He collected his CDs and some of his singles, as he did Gary Barlow's, who became a moderately famous pop star for several weeks in 1997. Adem's hero, Madonna, obviously liked Gary as much as Adem did, because she wrote a song especially for him that became his second Number #1 solo single. It was a lovely song called "Love Won't Wait" that Adem loved. Years later, the demo version which Madonna had sung would surface on a place called the internet. It was incredibly shit. Sometimes (but not often), that Madonna can be a silly girl!
Ten years after Robbie left the band, the year 2005. The year which saw the after-Robbie line up of Take That - now men instead of boys - announce they were going back on tour. Adem - now 10 years older as well - was very happy, even though they weren't bothering to come to Australia. He had very good reason to be happy though, because the news that followed their tour was that there was going to be a new album recorded.
In 2006, Adem bought a DVD of the boys' greatest hits. He was very angry that the video clip for their first single "Do What You Like" was not on this DVD, because it featured all five boys lying on the floor naked whilst some lady mopped jelly into their bottoms. He was pleased, however, to see the video clips for "Could It Be Magic" and "Relight My Fire", especially so he could look at the old lady again. 2006 was the same year Adem bought Take That's first album in over 10 years, called "Beautiful World". It became his 2nd favourite album of 2006, just behind former member Robbie Williams' album, which was called "Rudebox".
At the start of 2007, obsessed with their new album, Adem headed out and purchased two of the boys' most recent DVD releases in Australia. The first was a documentary, featuring all five of the boys, called "For The Record", which had been a big hit on TV in the UK when screened over there in 2005. The second was Take That's "Ultimate Tour", the very concert they had gotten back together for the previous year. The old lady that originally sung on "Relight My Fire" also appeared on this DVD and - shockingly - was no longer an old lady, but actually a 13 year old girl. Adem sat and watched his new DVDs, filled with many emotions: Joy, happiness, sadness, hysteria... he felt like an 11 or 12 year old boy again. He told everyone of his DVDs, making everyone he knew watch them with him. Many people enjoyed watching it. Some said that they didn't but secretly, Adem knew they loved it.
Whilst the love for their music stayed the same, some things had changed, other than everyone being a bit older. There were no posters of Take That on Adem's wall anymore, and he didn't dance around in his bedroom to their songs either, but he did sing them at the top of his lungs whilst driving his car to work every morning, which made him just as happy.
He did however stay very much in love with Gary Barlow, and still finds boys very nice to look at.
THE END.
Labels: Take That
3 Comments:
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- 10:48 PM | Woodsman said...
that should so be on the reading list for Year 12s. Or perhaps a telemovie could be made...
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- 6:17 PM | eMack said...
Hehehehe!
Such a lovely story that touched us all.
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