It all started for me, when I was about 8. It was about 1983 and we'd just got a new car. A shiny red Vauxhall Cavalier 1.8 SRi (I even remember the registration now: RYE 218Y) and this car had a tape deck, our previous car, a blue Morris Marina, didn't have such luxuries. This meant that when we went on holiday, my dad would play some tapes to pass the time. Typically he would play some 50s/60s compilation thing that he got from Time Life. Nancy Sinatra, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bill Hailey and so on.

My Brother and I didn’t really have a choice in what we listened to, but as we didn’t know any better we grew to like them, a few songs started to shine out, and we would wait with eager anticipation for those songs to come around, putting up with some dross as we knew the next song would be good.

As I got older I realised that a long of the songs I liked were by one band. And then for one birthday (or perhaps Christmas) I decided I was going to by my dad that band’s greatest hits tape. (I had discovered the songs were a firm favourite of his too). At this point I had no idea about the history of the band, or anything like that. I just knew I liked the music.

So, we come forward a few more years, and a musical of this band’s story is written, and they decide to show it at the theatre nearest to where I lived (Victoria Palace Theatre). I also passed it every day on the way to school and as it was coming up to my Parents 15th wedding anniversary my brother and I decided to buy them some tickets to go and see it. They absolutely adored it, and at this point I decided to learn as much about the band as possible. The band was called (if you hadn’t already guessed it by this point) Buddy Holly and the Crickets.

I learnt about the plane trip in 1959, where 3 wonderful musicians ended their life, I learnt about Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, and I was gutted. I couldn’t believe so much talent had died on that fateful day. I also learnt that a song I had always thought had been about Elvis was in fact about these 3 artists.
Every now and then I go through periods of listening to these artists, and I must say it’s mostly Buddy Holly, as I guess that’s the artist I’ve listened to the longest.

Last year a lot of you will know that my parents died, and at several times since then I have reminded myself of the quality of these songs. A few weeks ago I was in the midst of one such session, and I thought I’d look up who originally recorded a song (I think it was not fade away) and I realised it was coming up to the 50 year anniversary of the crash.

I decided I wanted to mark this event in some way (and not like the Daily Mail in stealing one of Buddy’s Songs for an ad campaign - wankers) so I came up with a youtube playlist. It was quite hard to do, a lot of the songs have had their audio pulled by the WMG (FFS we’re talking 50 year old songs you utter bastards, really, what are you hoping to achieve here?) but I managed to do it. I hope all the links still work.

Well, I’ve said all I wanted to say, and I hope some of you take the time to listen to some of these songs, and if you were not aware of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens or The Big Bopper before, then I hope you are now, and that you’ll go away and find out more info about them.

I have created a playlist on youtube, which you can access here: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... 1E08C6DDAD