During the pandemic, Matt Cotten reflected on his time in Kilifi. He was finally able to return in September 2022. Here is the before and after.
Back in Kilifi
My Pop Life: Pleasant Valley Sunday – The Monkees
The Monkees couldn’t put a foot wrong for this ten-year old boy, yet to worry about small parts and auditions … yet to discover that they weren’t in fact cool, because they were manufactured and didn’t write their own songs, yet to discover that despite all that they were still brilliant.
My Pop Life: ‘The Emperor’ – Haydn
They are works that make you feel happy. There is a level of complexity in the music that your brain can grasp immediately.
My Pop Life: The Night – Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons
“I think I then immediately boxed my heart away and tightened the great padlock over my chest so that I couldn’t feel anything that would undermine or dissolve me…”
My Pop Life: All Along The Watchtower by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
“It was a terrifying record, an exhilarating record, it was everything I ever hoped to be, everything I feared, a prophet crying in the wilderness”
My Pop Life: The Carnival is Over by The Seekers
“Most of my traumatic moments, my lonely moments, my brave moments have been hidden inside my personal soundtrack. The music made it all bearable.”
My Pop Life: Help! by The Beatles
They were at the height of their power, where they would stay for another 4 years. I was at the depths of my weakness, and forever afterward lived in fear of repeating it. I built my heart’s castle wall from the mud of Selmeston village. I wouldn’t start to unravel it until I was in my mid-fifties.
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