Reading that Steve Davis Q&A, one bit that intrigued me was the question “How my ears opened.”
There are plenty of people out there who only know what they hear on the radio, or see on the TV. They are happy to stick with the Top 40, and more power to them. But I’m presuming most of the bods on this here site are well aware to multitudes of great (and not always great) music that has never, and never will, bother the greater public consciousness through the usual channels. So the question is, how did you find out about such material when you were growing up?
Older sibling passing on their own arcane knowledge gleaned from who-knows-where? Friends who’d found out about Group/Artist X somehow and handed it on to you? Pubs and clubs? I daresay for the UK members of this august circle, that Peel fellow may have exposed you to musics you’d never before imagined (no such equivalent where I grew up, sad to say).
Over to you…..
Mostly friends giving you a tape saying “have a listen to this”.
Beyond that one-up-manship with your mates to find the most obscure stuff, there was the “Lucky Dip” bin at the second hand record shop – 10 singles or 4 albums for £1 (all packaged together in cellophane (possibly cling film?) with only the one on top was visible, or mail order ‘bundles’ from Oldies Unlimited.
In both cases, these would be the singles or albums that had only bothered the lower reaches of the chart, or new releases with little expectation.
The hit rate wasn’t great (maybe 60/40 if I’m being generous), but there was usually something that would lead somewhere interesting.
A combination of the inkies: I began with Disc and Record Mirror as a 12 year old, courtesy precocious school chums, before a 20 year period of serial MM and NME reading. (Which I guess has continued via Q, Uncut, Mojo, Word (R.I.P.), Rock’n’Reel, Folk Roots, not all of which I still consult)
Radio was more Johnny Walker, his 2 -3 hour saturday show, first on R1 then R2. Whistle Test, Rock Goes to College, Sight & Sound In Concert, all of that. Peel I didn’t latch all that much on to.
A very competitive and geeky teenage schooldays: it was hunt the obscure from 13 – well, actually, still now. (Reading Rigid above, was this normal in the 70s or has it always been?)
My sister had some musical taste, my brother just Charlie Parker and Leonard Cohen, my parents none.
The library! In those days you could hoover up vast collections of arcane from your local library.
retro, the Hunting For The Obscure was in the 80s for me, so I guess it was always a “thing” (possibly nerdy bloke territory, but a “thing” nonetheless)
Music mags/John Peel when he came along/word of mouth. This was 1963/64 and me and my mates would attempt to out obscure each other none of that chart crap. This resulted in early educations for us in Blues/Soul/Psychedelia/Garage/Punk – yes it did exist as early as `64. Blissful times with the Cold War always casting it`s shadow.
David Bowie.
Specifically two singles: Life On Mars/Quicksand; Rock n Roll Suicide/The Man Who Sold The World, which were in the house.
I grew up in a country with no pop music radio, so early Top Of The Pops provided the jolly minstrels which would have satisfied my youthful citizen’s mind. Those two sings were my route down the rabbit hole.
Later came the mates with tapes and the music indies. But I wouldn’t have sought either without that initial push from the fella with the funny eyes…
Well those b sides are the wrong way around… But if I might elaborate. We also had singles by Slade, 10CC, Gary Glitter and even The Beatles in the house but, while I liked many of them, I wasn’t amazed by them.
In fact, mentioning the absence of pop music radio has reminded me that, from a very young age I regarded The Beatles as the “Uncle Toms” of pop, because they were the only band ever played on the light entertainment programmes along with Val Doonican, Rolf Harris and that f**king mouse with clogs on. So powerful was this belief that when I heard John Lennon’s Merry Christmas (War Is Over) – a record which I imagine those who see The Fabs as rock’s great revolutionaries probably regard as a bit twee – I was knocked over by it’s spikiness. Even so, it was another 30 years before I got around to listening to The Beatles – first impressions and all that…
Smash Hits first; remember buying the first edition. Then onto the inkies: NME, followed occasionally by Melody Maker, depending on who was on the cover.
Mixtapes from friends and of course boyfriends (the way to a girl’s heart) ; and also people bringing records into school (see threads passim).
Simultaneously and inevitably, Kid Jensen followed by Peel, both of which were religiously taped.
On to university- the influence of the much cooler, more urban kids, and through various club nights, a realisation that there was a life beyond pop and indie. 🙂
Q, Word, Mojo, Uncut.
Oh I just remembered Select! And all the flexidiscs given away.
I’m still very reliant on (and grateful to) other people, particularly here, otherwise I will revert to a safe comfort zone.
Select and Vox were the gateway from Sounds, Melody Maker and NME.
My feeling was Select was more Sounds/MM, and Vox was more NME-esque.
(of the two, always preferred Select – and not just for the free cassettes that appeared on every 3rd issue)
Ah Vox! Yes!
Yes, Peel on MW radio alot of the time, fading in and out. Usually managed to tape his Festive 50 and still have almost all years from ’79 to 2003 on cassette and mini disc in the loft.
As has been said many times, not all of it was great, but most was interesting and often led on to other things.
In the early-to-mid ’60s I was influenced in a more interesting direction by hearing The Beatles, The Hollies, The Stones, The Spencer Davis Group, The Who and Motown on the radio. Prior to them, all that one heard anywhere was just a continuation of (almost-entirely-American) showbiz.
Then after that I was turned onto Stax and The Blues, John Mayall and Cream. Also folk and even a little jazz. The influence of hipper friends. And soft drugs. A good friend’s Irish dad was a big Ray Charles fan too.
Somehow I then made a sideways leap to The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, The Nice, Soft Machine, Family, Zappa, Beefheart and all that “progressive” stuff.
Ska, Bluebeat and Reggae were very much disdained, as that was Skinhead music and they were our feared enemies. I secretly quite liked some of it, so when The Wailers popped up, later on, I was there straight away. African music was a natural progression from that.
Finding John Peel and then Alexis Korner on BBC Radio 1 broadened my horizons immensely. Suddenly anything I enjoyed hearing was OK.
These days my thirst for new sounds has abated quite a bit and I don’t really go looking anymore, but I’m still open to the new when I chance upon it.
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t surrounded by music. My Dad was a jazz fanatic so I grew up listening to everything from Pops Armstrong to Trane. He used to take me to jazz gigs when I was very young and later to gigs he promoted when he managed a dancehall for a few years in the 60s.
My Sister is eleven years older than I so a battle for my musical sensibilities took place when she started buying me Chuck Berry, Stones and Beatles records. I grew up loving all of it.
As I entered my teenage years I began to explore music more and more. I started visiting folk clubs with my best mate, going to festivals and rock gigs. I became possessed by music. I remain that way. I hope I always will be.
Music mags and older mates.
A copy of Disc came through the letterbox by mistake in the early 70s – meant for a neighbour. He got it – eventually. I was drawn in by the J Edward Oliver cartoon page and remember there was some Bowie stuff too – I’d already been strangely attracted to him after the Starman TotP appearance – I think this was fairly soon after. I remember lying in bed listening to Stewpot on the radio, praying for him to play Bowie on Junior Choice. He didn’t. I turned atheist.
Earlier this evening I downloaded the NME app and have skimmed a few issues. There’s nothing there any more.
Should you wish to relive the J Edward Oliver days, pretty much the entirety of it can be found here…
http://www.jeoliver.co.uk/
thats for that @Sniffity. The lad that Disc was really meant for actually named his dog Fresco Le Rey.
The inkies and Radio 1 sessions.
And a mate who, at the age of 11, used to loan out his Yes and Iron Maiden records.
My eldest brother was into punk when I was just six. I hero-worshipped him so naturally I loved the music he was into. He taped his Sex Pistols and Stiff Little Fingers records (telling me which ones not to play in front of Mum & Dad – ‘Frigging In The Rigging’ is one track that springs to mind. I had no idea what frigging was, or rigging for that matter).
I then went through a metal phase when I was ten and big bruv discovered Black Sabbath. But his interest in music waned, replaced by the new passions of beer and girls. Mine didn’t, even when beer and boys appeared in my life, so I started going to gigs, buying the music weeklies, wanting to find out more about the amazing, fascinating, swathes of music that were out there, just out there, waiting for me to discover them.
I’m still discovering, and I never want to stop.
It’s hard to believe it now but back when it first started, Capital Radio played stuff that Radio One didn’t and I was hooked. I was 14 when it launched and Roger Scott, who was on when I got home from school, was a revelation. He was followed by Nicky Horne who played rock in the evening so you didn’t have to wait for John Peel (by which time I was normally asleep anyway!). Under the covers listening to Radio Luxembourg and (when the signal was poor) Robbie Vincent on Radio London, also widened the field of what I was exposed to so I suppose it was inevitable that I would start buying the inkies. Like many of us I expect, Disc was my gateway inkie until I progressed to the harder NME, Sounds and (not so often) Melody Maker.
Let me count the ways…
A small group of us at school were fans of the London American label, whereon were found all our favourites – Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, Everlys, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Duane Eddy etc etc. The NME had regular ads announcing new London releases, and we would pore over these and compare notes – ‘Anybody heard The Mountain’s High by Dick and Deedee?’ It was hard to hear the more obscure stuff on the radio, of course, although it would occasionally turn up on Radio Luxembourg. There was also a dodgy geezer round the back of the arcade in Southend who sold ex-juke box records, and he was a fairly reliable source. Sometimes, of course, if we were sufficiently enthused, one of us would go out and buy something new from a proper record shop, having listened to half a dozen contenders in the listening booth first.
I also delivered The World’s Fair on my paper round, a paper for showmen which gave a lot of space to juke boxes and records for same. It had top 100 sales and plays lists (top 100!) which were useful sources of information about all the stuff the guys on the dodgems and waltzers were playing.
Later, we discovered Radio Hilversum which played loads of US soul and r&b, though the reception was even worse than Luxembourg.
Then the epiphany, courtesy of the proverbial art teacher. He lent me a Lightnin’ Hopkins LP, Blues in My Bottle, which he’d brought back from the States. Me and my mate Ian played it to death and learnt to play along. (I can still do a passable Lightnin’ Hopkins blues lick today.) That opened the door to the whole wide world of blues, and I started to spend my Saturday earnings on Muddy, Howlin’ and Sonny Boy. At about the same time my history teacher lent me a pile of 78s of the likes of Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman and Sidney Bechet, which to my shame I never returned. Still got them, in fact.
And then the Beatles arrived…for anybody not familiar (or not old enough) with London American, here’s a random sampling of 1960’s output.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g401/mikethep/london%201960_zpsnt0rhcoy.jpg
PS for those who don’t know this maudlin Lee Hazlewood masterpiece. Bet we never heard that on the radio.
It was all high quality stuff Mike. London had the luxury of issuing American records from a multitude of small independent labels, so their catalogue was the best you could get.
Dad was a classical musician so that music was always around: hearing him rehearse, taking us to see him in concert or to the opera performances he’d be in the orchestra of during the summer months, and plenty of classical records (and the best record-player money could buy at the time).
He’d also go on tours all over the world and bring back musical souvenires in the form of jazz and folk albums.
My sisters are 14 and 16 years older than me and soon left home, leaving their old pop/rock albums behind (The Beatles, The Band, Jimi Hendrix, Desmond Dekker, Santana etc).
My brother’s seven years older but he was all set to become a classical pianist and didn’t much care for modern music, thus giving me the perfect opportunity to nick the triple LP that dad brought back for him after touring the US when I was five – a sampler called The Music People that I’ve still got. I studied it religiously (both the music and the short sleeve notes about each track), and it influenced my taste and made me discover acts I still love, like Taj Mahal and Laura Nyro for exemple (it probably influenced the way I write “sleeve notes” for my own mix CDs today as well…)
My sisters soon started to bring home boyfriends from all over the world, and they brought African and Arabic music into my life long before “world music” became a thing.
The radio was a constant companion at home, before I got my own cassette player I’d steal mum’s small transistor radio and bring it with me everywhere, listening to all of the many music shows; covering every musical genre ever invented.
Then I started to tape the pop shows and write down names of favourites in a small alphabetized notebook when I was eleven (still do, but the notebook is much larger now!)
I started buying albums of my own around that time as well I think, some influenced by that sampler (Johnny Winter’s Live album) and some by stuff I’d heard on the radio. Not that often at first (no money) but in my teenage years I’d spend an awful lot of time hanging around in record stores (and there were plenty of them) and buying stuff – and I think I was in some sort of record club before that…
My preferred method from the start was to buy stuff I’d never heard, judging them on band name, album and track names, sleeve art and then just taking a chance. You’ll discover a lot of strange things that way!
Magazines came quite late into the equation. I’d sometimes buy a Swedish pop mag, ironically called Schlager, that came with a cassette with every issue.
Then I didn’t get a regular magazine until Smash Hits (and I didn’t read that so much for the music, it was just entertaining). Then nothing for many years until the 90s when the (still much missed) magazine called pop was unmissable from first to last issue. They opened my ears to all sorts of stuff, old and new.
And now I can count on this place to subject me to all kinds of music, both awful and wonderful!
Hi Locust, what record player did your Dad have? I’m a big fan of the German brand Dual and it would be interesting to hear what brand a classical musician would go for in the heyday of vinyl.
Hi @goodfella , as you’re a Dual fan I thought you might like to see this pic of my Dad’s HS 34, which he gave me a few years ago. He bought it either 1969 or ’70 when stationed in Berlin with the RAF. It finally conked out a coupled of years ago but I got it refurbished last year and it sounds as great as ever. For the purposes of this thread it’s a hugely important object for me, an absolutely key part of my early musical life.
Oops, here’s the pic!
http://i1350.photobucket.com/albums/p773/minibreakfast/DSCN0054_zpsywcbeqgy.jpg
OK, I give up. What’s the LP MB?
Ah, the mighty JC is stumped! It’s the 12″ single of Slave to the Rhythm.
Ah, I KNEW it was a ZTT record but was thinking it was an LP. Bugger!
I’m surprised you didn’t spot the bottom edge of the sleeve, on top.
Oh, yeah. How did I miss that?
It’s a thing of beauty @minibreakfast
My experience of these idler drive players is that they thrive on being played as much as you can. When they’re put into storage they usually require a major service to get running again.
Do you use it as a multi-player? You would need the correct spindle of course.
There’s this spindle, but I never saw my dad or anyone else make use of it. Aside from slotting into the center hole*, I’ve no idea how to get it to work.
http://i1350.photobucket.com/albums/p773/minibreakfast/DSCN0013_zps9e86t0zs.jpg
*hello @MoosetheMooche
Or rather, @moose-the-mooche
(Can we get this predictive username thingummy fixed?)
Getting this to work is very easy.
You point it at baddies and a laser shoots out the top and kills them.
*thwack*
@minibreakfast I have just zoomed into your photo and seen the longer spindle for multiplay. There was a time when record snobs would shun record changers for fear of the records getting damaged as they came into contact with each other. What happens in actual fact is that only the labels touch leaving the grooves unharmed. These Duals really do run like clockwork.
Sorry mini I replied to myself without waiting for yours… Ok. Definitely the correct spindle. Just remove the small spindle that’s currently in use and insert the longer one aligning the little key you see near the tip with the gap on the turntable’s centre hole. Once pushed down turn clockwise. This locks it in place and engages the multiplay function. You can then stack a few records on the spindle (up to 6 in theory) and press start. Let me know if it works!
Ah! I’d got as far as slotting it in before, but hadn’t done the clockwise turn. Will give it a try with some 45s later. Thanks!
(I still have the original manual somewhere, perhaps I should take a look at it!)
It’s a genius mechanism. I have a few of these Duals and not all of them work in multiplay for whatever reason. It’s really only a novelty but great fun to watch and handy for playing a handful of singles I find.
I’ll let you know how I get on! Thanks again, you’ve been most helpful.
@goodfella Well that was easy! I had to push the spindle down harder than I was initially comfortable with (was worried I might break it), but it worked like a dream! Sorry about the camera wobble, but I make no apologies for the record chosen:
I had to push the spindle down harder than I was initially comfortable with… but it worked like a dream!
Well, let this be a lesson to you.
I couldn’t help but think of you when I typed that, Moosey.
@goodfella, sorry but I can’t remember the name of it right now.
He left it with us when my parents split up and I ended up getting it as my own, using it until the summer of 1982. Then I went to England to spend the summer and my brother more or less moved in back home, using my stereo day and night.
If you knew my brother you’d know that he can break anything he gets his hands on (and if he doesn’t break it, he’ll lose it) so unsurprisingly when I came back home (with a stack of new records that I hadn’t been able to play for a month) my stereo was dead.
I tried to get someone to fix it for me, but having no money and a mum who’d agree to buying me a new cheap stereo but not to finance a reparation of “that old garbage” I had to give up.
And a year later, when I wasn’t looking, she threw it out!
I have saved the old manuals, but they can be anywhere, really. I’m not very organized unfortunately!
The record player was really heavy and you could set the speed for 33, 45 or 78. It didn’t have a fold-up lid, so you’d have to put a loose plastic cover over it between use.
Then there was a separate big thingamajig with all of the knobs etc (you can probably tell I’m not a sound technician…sorry, I’ve no idea what those are called) and I think they may have been two different brands, but I’m pretty sure they were both German.
I’d know them if I saw a picture of them…
The photos above looks nothing like the one we had, they don’t look old enough.
@Locust Thanks for the info, that’s a sad story but probably typical in most households when one or more of the kids get hold of expensive electronic gear! If the name comes to you let me know cheers.
My Dad.
Buddy Holly. Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. . Kenny Everett’s Worst Record Show Ever.
Dire Straits ‘Making Movies’. Bruce Springsteen ‘Born to Run’. Richard Thompson – and therefore Fairport and so much more.
He’s been the springboard to music, and when I lived in the UK, he was my gig buddy. I’m thinking about doing Cropredy in ’17 with him
Nme/radio luxembourg 208/Peel
Over time, nme/peel
Radio 1, TOTP and the charts until autumn ’76. Then I went to big school. There was a noticeboard covered in hand-scrawled notes on torn foolscap. They said mysterious things like ‘Tull Aqualung 50p’ or ‘ELP Salad £1″. It would say ‘Keef in 4C’ at the bottom. Bigger boys had long hair, bad skin, stinky afghan coats and bags with obscure runes stencilled on them, and whatever it was they were offering I knew I didn’t want it.
But soon the cryptic messages changed. “Scratch, Buzzcocks’ ‘Anarchy / Submission Pistols’. There was a chap in 2R who could get you anything you wanted. (he said he had a connection to the record companies, but it turned out he was just boosting them from Smith’s.) Once you got to know the vendor, you were in the gang and your hair and trousers were never the same again. After that it was, as Paul says above, NME, 208 and Peel.
Was always surrounded by music, but mine was a house of makers rather than listeners. I mean, obviously music was listened to, but being part of it was more of a thing than consuming it.
Then my sister’s Now albums and our joint purchase of Hunting High And Low when I was 7. That was when I started knowing who I was listening to: Morten and Mags and Pal and what they did in the band.
Then it was Queen, and very swiftly afterwards Guns N Roses. I was probably 9 when I first heard of them and 10 when I actually heard Appetite For Destruction. By that time I knew all about Axl and Slash and Izzy and Duff and Steven, and maybe the sound they actually made might’ve been in danger of disappointing after all that abstract theorising. But of course Appetite is incapable of disappointing anyone with functioning ears, so it was fine. That’s when I was really IN. Down the pop rabbit hole.
Saturday morning TV was a big one for me, especially the Chart Show, with it’s Indie chart every three weeks or so, full of bands I’d never heard of. Plus I’m sure I saw both blur and the Inspiral Carpets (big bands for 13 year old me) on a show called Eggs and Baker (hosted, of course, by Cheryl Baker).
Add to that older friends and siblings, the Evening Session on Radio 1, and the usual mags – Vox and Select being my favourites.
I also trod many of the pathways mentioned above – Disc then Melody Maker then NME. That was from early 70s to mid 80s. Then Q, Mojo & Uncut.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned Alan Freeman’s Saturday Afternoon show. There was also a period, pre Fluff, that Top Gear was broadcast on a Saturday afternoon. Many Saturday afternoons were spent doing my homework while listening to them – I can still recall Freeman playing Rory Gallagher’s Daughter Of The Everglades from his Blueprint album and thinking it was so brilliant that I had to go into Chester (to Impact Records for any Cestrians who remember it) to buy it.
Birmingham University led me to being introduced to bands like Little Feat and Steely Dan that I’d not come across before.
@minibreakfast (for some reason I can’t reply to your last post). Anyway…looks like it’s working perfectly! Works with albums as well btw. I never tire of seeing the changer in operation – the records drop as if on a cushion of air ☺
@goodfella Yeah I think there’s a limit to the number of replies, as they get too skinny.
Agree about watching the changer in action, it’s a thing of beauty.
Older brothers listened to Yes, Led Zep, The Who, Floyd and all that stuff. I didn’t like that at all and preferred the pop music delivered on TOTP, Saturday Scene, Lift Off with Ayesha, Supersonic and Get it Together. They earnestly watched the Old Grey Whistle Test, which was on too late for me in those days.
In my world view of the time, these were two separate and distinct worlds. Another brother only listened to classical music. As he moved into teenage years, he started to gather up some decent records and this is when things started to get exciting. What I like about him is that he mistreated his records – chucked them on the floor of his pit of a bedroom. So he was perfectly fine with me nicking his records from time to time. He introduced me to Philip Glass, Eno, Bowie, The Residents, Gang of Four and Siouxsie. A bit later on he also picked up The Normal’s Warm Leatherette/TVOD – a record that set me on my way.
This version here ends suddenly but the original finishes with the beeeep that used to come on after closedown.
An attitude to life that believes if you give, you shall receive tenfold. Lend out your vinyl at school and you shall borrow other people’s weird shit. Create mixtapes for friends likewise. Nowadays, it’s a case of risking singing new stuff to the folk club and relishing listening in return.
Also, you can’t get away from being prepared to spend money and take risks. If I spend money on a dud, that’s OK, because I found two gems at the same time. I could have played safe all the time with mainstream recommendations, but boy would I have missed out.
Cheshire cat – Re. your final paragraph, there.
Amen to that, brother. Amen to that.
Damn right Cheshire!
But thanks to Spotify, the Tube, Wikipedia etc, I suspect that nowadays far fewer pigs are bought in a poke.
For our generation the problem was getting hold of rare sounds to listen to. The kids today are spoilt for choice and probably don’t know where to begin.
Grew up in a house full of my parents’ music. Lots of Dylan, Flying Burrito Bros, Elvis Costello, Travelling Wilburys, Bob Marley and so on and so on. No older siblings, but lots of vinyl lying about the place, and the occasional tale from Dad of having bunked off school to see the Byrds and meet Gram Parsons. Also went to a hippy dippy Primary School where assemblies involved massed singalongs to the Beatles, Don McLean and Ralph McTell. Music was everywhere around me, but I wouldn’t say it was all that important to me.
Hit about 11 or 12 and discovered De La Soul and Guns N Roses. The latter were the first band I really got into with my mates. Then came Nirvana, who were a huge deal from very early on. Then a Doors phase, no doubt provoked by the release of the Oliver Stone movie.
Somewhere around the age of 14 or 15, a very good mate of mine came to visit for a few days and brought with him four cassette tapes, with an album on each side and labelled in orange highlighter pen. I can’t recall all the albums, but they definitely included The Blue Album by Weezer, Homegrown by Dodgy, the first Baby Chaos Album, Dookie by Green Day and Pisces Iscariot by Smashing Pumpkins. Said friend also introduced me to Nine Inch Nails, Ride, and all sorts of other goodies. These days, he listens to nothing but bleepy, glitchy electronic music, and is my guide to that. Looking back, those cassette tapes were some sort of awakening, and we gradually transitioned from the ritual trips to the comic shop we’d been making together since we were 8 or 9 years old to trips to Our Price and (if we were lucky) HMV.
Bought Siamese Dream some time in early 94, when I’d have been about 15, and it was an absolutely seismic album in my world. Loved it on first listen, and have loved it more with every subsequent listen. Discovered the Wu Tang later that year, along with DJ Shadow, and all sorts of trip hop acts. Was off on my own by this point; most of my schoolmates were die-hard Jamiroquai fans. Went off on a big drum & bass excursion, which then blossomed into a broader love of what we now call “electronic” music, and dabbled with the Britpop thing and the scene built on darker drugs which eventually shadowed it.
Somewhere along the line, I started buying the music mags, initially to discover new bands, and later to fill in the blanks as to what had gone before. Listened to a lot of “old” at uni (it was a pretty depressing time on the new music front – late 90s), which felt a bit like getting a classical education and lead to some wonderfully incongruous afternoon listening sessions; there’s nothing quite like hearing Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow and Fear of a Black Planet for the first time via back-to-back listens. Finally, finally embraced Dylan after years of moaning about the voice. Was absolutely blown away by the Velvet Underground. Realised that not every Brooooce album sounds like Born in the USA.
Spent my twenties and thirties mining the same seams deeper and deeper, and occasionally getting a massive buzz off some new scene (post-rock and grime, being the most notable). The switch from record shops and physical formats to Spotify and streaming has killed a lot of the joy in it all for me, if I’m honest. Every now and then I hear something which gives me an enormous rush of adrenaline or emotion, but a lot of the time I find music quite boring, and the proclamations of genius massively overcooked.
Stopped buying the mags when Word went under; I feel like I’ve heard all the great Rock stories now, and they don’t benefit from endless retellings. As my kids get older I’m sort of bracing myself for them to assume control of the family stereo – they’ll get the same upbringing I did (my eldest listened to “School” by Nirvana the other day, loved it once she’d had the lyrics explained, and spent the school run this morning bellowing “NO RECESS” at the top of her lungs), and then – just as I did – they’ll either find their own stuff to listen to or go do something else with their time. Either works for me.