Rare Gems: 'Start With A Scratch'

This forgotten track by Sajid & Zeeshan is the perfect cure for nostalgia

SLOUGH, ENGLAND:

Why should anyone listen to Saijd & Zeeshan's Start With A Scratch? To find out why, you must do as I say. Bring out the headphones. Command YouTube to play Start With A Scratch. Soak in the bass line - that repeated E in the intro - that sends you hurtling back fifteen years. Stay there for the next five minutes as the music sends you through a portal back in time. You can thank me later.

All good music serves as a time portal, and Sajid Ghafoor's unassuming yet strong vocals nail the task, whether it is your first time hearing Start With A Scratch or your fiftieth. Presented to us in December 2011 by Peshawar duo Sajid Ghafoor and Zeeshan Parwez - going by the charming take-it-or-leave-it moniker Sajid & Zeeshan - Start With A Scratch is a track bursting at the seams with early 2000s vibes. Think The Reason by Hoobastank, or Only Hope by Switchfoot, or even Miss Misery by Missy Elliot, the soundtrack to Matt Damon's Will driving away into the sunset as the end credits roll in Good Will Hunting. For all you 2000s musical Millennial geeks who lived and breathed MTV twenty years ago, Start With A Scratch is the gift you never knew was waiting for you on YouTube.

Breaking it down

Have you still got your headphones on? Like our dear aforementioned Will Hunting driving away to find Skylar, let Sajid's voice lull you into a sense of security as you picture yourself driving along a freeway at the end of a long day. Perhaps you are fortunate enough to actually be driving along a freeway, lost in contemplation, in which case, congratulations. You've got the perfect soundtrack for your drive.

At its core, Start With A Scratch is an uncomplicated five-minute little present. It is a hallmark for good old-fashioned dependableness. Like its creators clad in simple I-am-a-banker-not-a-rockstar-outfits, here is a track that exudes simplicity and proves you don't need a glittering exterior to produce a bonafide gem. There is a simple, solid bass line. There is a keyboard playing the chord progression all soft-rock connoisseurs know and love. There are guitars - both electric and acoustic - strumming a simple pattern. There is percussion moving the song along in a sensible fashion. With Sajid's unwavering vocals never entering screeching territory, the track crescendos ever so gradually to its inevitable conclusion, not unlike Maurice Ravel's Bolero, interspersed by a bridge that meanders back to its foundation.

If you are looking for something to sing along to, prepare for disappointment. There are no earworm riffs here, and nor is there a line that will get stuck in your head for the next two weeks. However, if you are in the market for something to wash over you as you drive along an empty freeway, you could do a lot worse than Start With A Scratch. The hallmark of a driving-along-freeway playlist is that it consists of songs that are steady and reliable. You don't necessarily need to sing along. You just need to let the music embrace you as the wheels spin you along to your destination.

Why turn back time at all?

I don't always have a freeway or an empty tree-lined road at my disposal to blast my car playlist, but I have found Start With A Scratch the perfect getaway song when I need to block out the world for a bit. Sadly, due to the balance of probability and the very real chances of striking sheer awfulness, I cannot block out the world with current music. For me, turning back the clock is a necessary evil, music-wise, because any inadvertent foray into the radio ends in pain. When my children - or in the absence of children, TikTok - present the hits of today before my unwilling ears, I can assure you that my response is not, "Thank you for this treasured addition to my forever playlist." My response is more along the lines of, "I would rather listen to nails across a blackboard. Or two street cats engaged in mortal combat."

Fortunately, the YouTube algorithm is equipped with better sense than my children or the misguided souls who add a 'nightcore' soundtrack to TikTok videos. For the blissfully unaware, nightcore is apparently the accepted term for speeding up perfectly good songs - like Coldplay's Viva La Vida - to make them sound like espresso-dosed chipmunks. The modern world of music can be a truly dark place.

Understanding my pain, my YouTube algorithm came to my aid and snuck Start With A Scratch onto my playlist, and there it has found a forever home, to be revisited every few weeks until the end of time. Perhaps this newfound devotion is because I already gave away my heart to Hoobastank's The Reason some 20 years ago. The two tracks are hauntingly similar and start out in an identical fashion. However, I shan't complain, because I do not think this is outright thievery. At the end of the day, the boundary between all good music is a blurry one. Listen to a handful of early Vital Signs numbers, and you will find clear echoes of Pink Floyd. The Beatles may have never have made it big without the influence of Chuck Berry and early rock 'n roll kings. Plus as Maroon 5 can testify with Memories, nearly all Western hits today can trace their chord progression back to Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D, the original one-hit wonder of the Classical world. And with that in mind, I have one final message for Sajid & Zeeshan: thank you for bestowing us this quietly comforting little gift. In a world of mangled music, nothing could be more gratefully received.

Rare Gems is a series that revisits forgotten treasures in the world of entertainment.