Has your high street been credit crunched?
Old rockers will remember the Bo Diddley classic “Who do you love”, his signature one-chord piece with the cryptic intro line “I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire, use a cobra snake for a neck tie”. The critics have always been divided over the most famous and longest cover of the song featuring on the classic album Happy Trails, by Quicksilver Messenger Service, the 60s American west coast band. Their rendition of the song has 2 chords (maybe more) and an excuse for a 25 minute tour de force – of inventive and fluid duelling electric guitars or forgettable psychedelic excess, depending on your viewpoint. I was born too late, but it makes you nostalgic all the same.
Our collective sentimentality for the past, for a tune or a period or a place is pretty powerful. Nostalgia is comforting unlike melancholia, but what if the very thing we are nostalgic for has only just recently disappeared from right under our nose – because we didn’t love it enough? The pace at which history is being made seems only to increase and it easy to be distracted by the new, even it ain’t that good.
So here’s a challenge: if there’s something truly distinctive and local to your Dunbar (and district) shopping experience, that you don’t want lost to the ravages of the internet or bland chain store offerings, send us your review over on the TotallyLocallyDunbar Who do you love / Hidden Gem page.
If we think it is any good and it has a great totally locally twist (your review and the reviewed), and we can track down a suitable alluring illustration to accompany it, we’ll publish it. New entrants are welcome – we’re not against progress or even competition.
Nostalgia is not a medical affliction, so we cannot treat it, but we can all do our bit to do more of our shop locally.
