Chasing The Light Fantastic

By Paul Morris

As a teenager in the Black Country area, growing up in the sixties was full of strange and wonderful experiences, ranging from supporting a football team whose varying fortunes were never matched by the constant support of thousands of steadfast fans, to a musical backdrop that began with bland 'Moon and June' crooners, ending up with psychedelia and progressive rock. It was a decade of adventure, exploration, revolution and definitely growing up fast. It was also a time when some things were not so immediately accessible as now and needed biding your time for. Teenagers relied on generous relatives and godparents to supply the record tokens to buy LPs or they would take Saturday jobs or paper rounds to supplement their weekly pocket money. Nations were going into space and families going abroad for their holidays. Television could now be watched in colour and BBC radio changed from the staid Light and Third programmes to Radios 1, 2 and 3, with the Home service becoming Radio 4.This semi-biographical novel, 'Chasing the Light Fantastic', recounts those late adolescent years, where football and pop music just seemed more important than life itself and when attending an all-boys grammar school may have been excellent for your education, and consequently getting on in life, but left most lads spluttering at the prospect of even talking to a girl, never mind asking her out for a date.However, there was one important thing that was accessible to teenagers at that time, music - and dancing - at youth clubs, right across the town of Wolverhampton, from Codsall to Wednesfield, Tettenhall to Warstones. On most Saturday evenings, the music was provided by musicians, teenagers themselves, who had dreams of becoming the next Beatles, Stones or Kinks. Some went on to find fame and fortune, others didn't, but they were all very talented entertainers who could dispense the hits of the day to youngsters just out to enjoy themselves.This novel celebrates those bands from that era who provided so much joy and pleasure. The now commonplace maxim 'If you can remember the 1960s, then you weren't really there' rings hollow with me. I was definitely there and my memories are still pretty crystal clear, particularly regarding the wonderful diversity of music on offer in that eclectic decade. Some might say 'Nostalgia isn't what it used to be' and they could be right. There is plenty of nostalgia in this novel. Enjoy it for what it is - fond memories of originality, fun, pleasure and the delights that come from family, friends and growing up in a decade when so much seemed imaginable, especially when you had such a brilliant musical soundtrack to accompanied it.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1088696228
• ISBN13: 9781088696224
• Release Date: January 2020
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.8" x 5.1"