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This morning it was announced that Survivor frontman Jimi Jamison has passed away. While the sad news passed around the office, 'I'm Always Here' was played surreptitiously from a speaker. Immediately I was transported to a terrible time in my life.
Between 2006-2009 I attended UEA, Norwich where every Saturday all the students would head to the LCR, a nightclub on campus where a warm VK was £1, a snakebite was £2 and a triple vodka Red Bull was £3. There was usually a fancy dress theme, ranging from beachwear, to pyjamas, to school uniform. The soundtrack primarily consisted of the Black Eyed Peas. It was, by any reasonable measure, an atrocious night out.
But the crowning glory of every single night was the finale. Without fail as the second to last song the DJ would drop The Killers' 'Mr. Brightside', prompting a mass drunken singalong.
With the crowd hyped up into a meathead fury, it was now time for the big guns, the closing track to end all closing tracks: Survivor's 'I'm Always Here'. Without fail, every time this happened, people would take their shirts off and then begin spinning round their heads in gleeful ecstacy.
By contrast I would be downtrodden, standing by the dancefloor, nursing a snakebite, feeling the soggy sweaty chest four or five other chaps sliding against me. Every single Saturday for three years of my life 'I'm Always Here' soundtracked this ordeal. What makes it worse is that from a quick trawl of Youtube, it appears I was not alone and similar scenes took place in universities across the country.
Mr Jamison I will remember you for the good times. Just not these ones.
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