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Encounters with civilians

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…. by civilians I mean People Who Aren’t As Into Music As We Are.

You know…. NORMAL people (grrrr).

For example, I was reminded by the recent Zappa threads of being at a social gathering a couple of years ago and saying “I wouldn’t consider myself a Zappa expert – I’ve only got about 25 of his albums”. This raised a tremendous laugh, but I didn’t mean it as a joke. I had fallen into the chasm of understanding between (as it were) Us and Them.

Any similar stories?

(here’s Bernard Struber’s excellent take on Zappa’s G -Spot Tornado to give you some thinking time)

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Comments

  1. Yesterday I had a fairly lengthy conversation with someone at work. I was genuinely amazed that she had not only heard of The Kills, but she also had an album by them. I don’t know what was more amazing – knowing a middling, obscur(ish) band, or a “norm” owning a complete in an age of spotify, itunes, et al

  2. We are still getting to know our new neighbours so their musical preferences are pretty much an unknown. I did get into a very short discussion with our downstairs neighbour on Tuesday when he stopped me in the street to tell me that he enjoyed the jazz I was playing on Monday evening. I examined his face for any hint of sarcasm, finding none I informed him it was in fact most likely Lady In Satin by Billie Holiday that he was complementing. He responded by telling me quite emphatically that much as he had enjoyed hearing it gently wafting out of our open window he didn’t think that that Billie fella much as he had enjoyed listening to him would ever supplant T’Pau in his affections.
    I may play him some Ornette Coleman tonight. That should be interesting.

  3. Stop me when you start finding this one insufferably snobby…I overheard a conversation in Fopp yesterday in which a woman who didn’t look more than forty was holding forth to the assistant about how nice it was to find a shop that sold actual CDs and how not everyone can be bothered with that downloading business. The assistant was sympathising and explaining how CD shops were dying out and any new music shops that managed to open tended to be vinyl-only these days and how Record Store Day was a symptom of the big revival of the format. The woman clearly wasn’t understanding his point and eventually chipped in “what’s vinyl?” to which the assistant could only respond with “you know. Records! Big black round things with a hole in the middle!” By the look on her face he might as well have been talking about wax cylinders or punched cards or rolls of papyrus.

  4. One Monday morning in my last job, a colleague asked me how my weekend had been. I replied that it had been a bad Saturday as my iPod died and I had to rearrange plans and go and buy another one.

    She was bemused that i. This was the only significant thing I could report about the weekend and ii. That I couldn’t wait until Monday to buy one.

    She just didn’t understand my pain: no iPod for over two days! A long commute without it! Brrrr.

    Normal people are weird.

  6. Nice post Moose. We are unspeakably spoilt to have this place. Instant accession a community that understands my peculiar needs.

    Oops! Sorry! That’s www,tranniesrus.com

  7. Watch an episode of ‘Pointless’…..

    2 out of 100 people knew in a ’60s albums’ round that the Van Morrison album A—– W—- (1968) was ‘Astral Weeks’.

    In a round of ‘Johns in song titles’ 10/100 knew ‘Ballad of John & Yoko’ was by The Beatles.

    My favourite was when two middle-aged scousers got to the final and had to name Top 40 Kinks’ singles.

    Their answers were:-
    ‘Girl, You Really Got Me’ (wrong, no ‘Girl’)
    ‘Lazy Sunday Afternoon’
    ‘Blueberry Hill’
    They didn’t win the jackpot.

  8. I use Gong as my benchmark. In the mid-80’s I actually met a bloke in a pub in Lewes who could have a conversation with me about their 70’s stuff – since then, until the Word/Afterword (1 and 2), nothing. A couple of people who professed to have heard of them, but no-one who could actually tell me they “knew” an album.

    Mind you, I have to admit that I come across plenty of artists here that I’ve never got round to listening to, so maybe I’m not as “well-listened” as I think I am.

  9. Arriving at work one morning, I was thrown the question: “Who was in Slade, apart from Noddy Holder?”
    “Dave Hill, Jim Lea and Don Powell” was the correct answer.

    And there’s me thinking this stuff is “common knowledge”.

    A couple of days later: “Who was in Status Quo?”

    In both cases, after giving the answer I proceeded with a potted history and discography – to little or no interest.

    “What did you do at the weekend?”
    “Went to a Record Fair”
    “Get anything?”
    “Yes Be-Bop Deluxe, Focus and a couple of Hawkwind albums”

    Blank looks

    On the plus side, I can freely quote Half Man Half Biscuit lyrics and people think I am far more thoughtful, original and erudite than I actually am.

  10. ‘What sort of music do you like?’ Is a question I often get asked at parties. It is usually closely followed by, ‘Who is Richard Thompson?’

  12. “Who do you like?”
    “If I tell you, you’ll say you’ve never heard of them”
    “Go on then”
    Says names
    pause… “Never heard of them” (Unfortunately not for comedic effect, but because they’ve never heard of them

    or other times being accused of only liking something because it’s obscure. (They’re not obscure, you haven’t heard of them that’s all.)

    • I had this conversation recently (for, I’m sure, the twelve millionth time):

      Friend: Who’s this?
      Me: Doesn’t matter.
      F: What do you mean it doesn’t matter?
      M: I mean if I tell you you won’t remember, so there’s no point.
      F: Stop being patronising. Who is it?
      M: Sufjan Stevens.
      F: Who?
      M: Sufjan Stevens.
      F: Never heard of him.
      M: I know.

      …ten minutes later…

      F: Whose this?
      M: Still the same bloke.
      F: What’s his name again?
      M: Doesn’t matter.

  13. Have sympathy. The problem is thricefold when it comes to folk music. Announcing to a messroom of Mancunian traincrew that you’re heading off to dance to Blowzabella the next day can probably only be done by those who are comfortable in their own skin (and being 6’4″ may help too.)

    That said, I certainly wouldn’t typecast all my colleagues. Some years ago I started training someone half my age. 12 weeks in a train cab is a long time if you have nothing in common. So imagine my delight when the first day threw up a common ground of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci.

  14. I’ve done this one before, but I had a prick colleague who fancied himself a music aficionado a few years back. He once spent the best part of an hour ripping the piss out of me for a) listening to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain as he walked into the office (“What’s this shit?” being his opening gambit, ever the charmer) and b) getting genuinely cross when I told him (“PAVEMENT? Fucking… PAVEMENT? Did you just make that name up? Do you only listen to bands nine people have heard of?”).

    I bridled a bit at this, given that CR, CR was a top 20 album and Pavement a well known and influential band, and said so. His rage at being told that Pavement weren’t really that niche a concern knew no bounds. He kept saying “I know my music, me, but PAVEMENT?”

    So I put some Neutral Milk Hotel on. True story.

  15. What was that thing John Peel said?

    ‘I couldn’t understand why the Fugs album wasn’t in the charts as everyone I knew had a copy, until I realised that everyone who had a copy I knew!’

    Remember, it’s not just about relatively minor acts, the average Joe knows nowt about, and this is just an example, Bob Dylan.
    Nothing, zilch, wouldn’t be able to name an album unless it was ‘Bob Dylan’, ‘Dylan’ or ‘Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits’.

    It’s fine, I know nothing about finance, cars and Harry Potter.

  16. I never presume knowledge now – it’s too depressing. A couple of years ago I took on a new job and the serious-looking sales manager, in his 50s, eventually revealed to me a deep and loving knowledge of rock and pop music. He’d not only heard of Depeche Mode but had listened to the latest album Delta Machine and had opinions about some of the tracks!

  17. The other day I found myself explaining to someone that there are two Status Quos – the one that broke up 30 years ago, and the one that has half of that one in it, and a couple of other people who have been in the band for nearly that long. I had to reassure them that no black holes or parallel universes were necessary for this to happen. The thing is I don’t even like Status Quo and I’ve never owned any of their albums.

    • This is the madness tho’, knowing loads about stuff you dislike as well as the rest, all the rest. I know shedloads more about Zappa and Gong, unable to stomach more than a portion of their vast repast. So then folk think you like the bastards. And reference you thereby.
      Can’t win.
      Listened to a Mick Grabham solo LP today. Know all about him.
      Was it good?
      Not great.

      • This is it. Because of years of reading music mags I know loads of stuff about artists I don’t like, and in some cases haven’t even heard. Civilians don’t get that and I’m not sure I do either.

        • “Years of reading music mags” – yes, same here – and now I can go online and see what The Mighty Lemon Drops* look like and sound like.
          ______________
          *and countless other indie bands fetishized by the NME over the years through poor black and white photos of band members in a row looking moody through fringes, overhyped, adjective-festooned articles complete with references to all their musical influences, and of course, none of their music to hear…

          • As I read this comment I had a mental flashback to an actual black and white picture of The Mighty Lemon Drops, from the NME. I never liked them. I know a surprising amount about them.

            Similarly I was thinking about The Pastels the other day. Why, God, why? Curse you, NME.

            • It seems crazy now but there was a time when, simply by reading NME and four or five music magazines, and talking with the three or four similarly afflicted addicts at school, you knew everything about a band – where they were from, the name of the bass player, their singles (in order of release, with chart positions and B-Sides) and the label they were on – and yet you might have only heard one of their song once, on Peel.

            • The Pastels, like a lot of bands from this period, were rubbish. But i kind of liked them even though they were rubbish.

              I still think of groups like that when people say “indie”, even though to most people this now means “any group with guitars” – and it normally conjurs up images of people singing along to meaningless songs by somebody like Snow Patrol at T in the Park.

              In the old place I said this, with typical grumpiness, about somebody like Razorlight : “In my day an indie band was a bunch of people who got their clothes in Oxfam … now it’s a bunch of people with their own personal stylists”

              • Yeah, I loved a lot of bands even though they were kind of rubbish: they were still my tribe. I must have seen The Darling Buds, for example, half a dozen times, similarly The Primitives etc. etc. and before that loads of C86 chancers but it didn’t matter that they were a bit rubbish. We read about them, we knew about them, in some cases we knew where they lived . We didn’t even really love the music or know it that well apart from whatever we taped off Peel or could afford to buy.

                I love meeting other none more indie 40-somethings as we all tell the same story. I remember teaching teens when the grunge wave hit and I loved their passion for the bands, clothes and so on; I didn’t share it but I used to look at them and think ‘ah, here it all starts for you’.

                • Yup, half the appeal was that they were a bit amateurish. That love of people like Shop Assistants, The Flatmates and The Siddeleys has never gone away for me.

                  I bought my ticket to this year’s Indietracks festival this week, and so have been listening to a bunch of C86-inspired stuff (the likes of The Fireworks, Colour Me Wednesday, The Tuts, Tigercats and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart) which all still sounds great.

              • That’s fighting talk! 😉

                The Pastels, at least early in their “career”, were great – the singles up to the time of the second album still do it for me. Kurt Cobain once called them greatest band in the world, for whatever *that’s* worth.

                And if you want to meet Mr Pastel then just pop down to Monorail in Glasgow (crossover with the “knowledgeable staff in record shops” thread).

                I know full well no-one’s going to change their mind just because of what I say. But that’s maybe part of the point about this thread – if we *care* about music (generally and specifically) we feel more and more like the trainspotters of the 21st century.

                • I keep thinking of something Julie Burchill (no… wait! don’t go away!) said about 15 years about not trusting the current generation with pop music as they don’t seem to care about it the way we did. This is both bollocks and kind of true, like a lot of what JB says.

                  • Was that on a TV programme which also had her ex-hubby and Neil Tenant (and possibly Boy George) all saying variations of the same thing? That sentiment sounds sensible until I realise that whenever someone makes a special pleading for their generation, they’re probably wrong.

                    • It was when she used to have a column in the Graun on Saturdays. You might be thinking of Tony Parsnip’s “Pop is dead” programme, where he really did sound like a maungy old grandad.

                      I’ve never got through any of JB’s radio or TV appearances. That squeaky voice gives me the fear.

  18. The first thread I ever stared on the old place back in 2008 (I think) asked if you could name all four Beatles after I’d had a head-spinning conversation with someone who could only think of Ringo.

  19. As so often, Nick Hornby summarises this well, in the wonderful 31 Songs:

    “I’m not a Dylan fan. I’ve got Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited, obviously. And Bringing It All Back Home and Blood on the Tracks. Anyone who likes music owns those four. And I’m interested enough to have bought The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3, and that live album we now know wasn’t recorded at the Royal Albert Hall. The reviews of Time out of Mind and Love and Theft convinced me to shell out for these two, as well, although I can’t say I listen to them very often. I once asked for Biograph as a birthday present, so with that and The Bootleg Series I’ve got two Dylan boxed sets. I also, now I look, seem to own copies of World Gone Wrong, The Basement Tapes, and Good As I Been to You…And I have somehow picked up along the way Street Legal, Desire, and John Wesley Harding. Oh, and I bought Oh Mercy because is contains the lovely “Most of the Time,” which is on the High Fidelity soundtrack. There are, therefore, around twenty separate Bob Dylan CDs on my shelf; in fact I own more recordings by Dylan than by any other artist. Some people — my mother, say, who may not own twenty CDs in total — would say I am a Dylan fanatic, but I know Dylan fanatics, and they would not recognize me as one of them.”

    • “Anyone who likes music owns those four.” – I’m sorry, but that kind of attitude just annoys the feck out of me, and is probably exactly why civilians see all of us tarred with the same “abberant behaviour” brush.

  20. Much along the same lines as above.

    I went into work slightly later than normal after going to a gig the night before. This was noticed by a female colleague, who commented on this. I said I’d been to a gig.
    “Who did you see?”
    “No-one you’d have heard of”
    “I know a lot about music”
    “Maybe, but you won’t know the name”
    “Try me”
    “Neal Casal”
    “Never heard of him”

  21. We’ve had some interesting civilian types described here.

    The aggressive know-it-all who can’t bear being shown to be ignorant.

    The friend who asks about an artist who isn’t really interested.

    The person who really has very poor general knowledge about pop music in general.

    I’m sure you can think of more.

    Let’s go back to Ainsley in the pub with Gong. If you’d started that conversation with me, you wouldn’t have come too far as regards the details. Gong are on my radar. I could perhaps name one album. And I have a pal who spent a weekend in the countryside with the Girls of Gong, an intimidating group of Amazons who took a young Swedish boy and turned him into a man. But that’s another story…

    The point I want to make though, is that, despite not knowing much, I, and I suspect many of you, would be genuinely interested to learn more. There’s no shame to not knowing everything about every artist that is mentioned on this website. Lack of knowledge is fine . Saying: “Never heard of them, they must be bloody obscure”,( with the implication, that they can’t possibly be interesting) isn’t.

  22. Any love here for Swell Maps? My boss was very polite when she got to listen to them when it was my turn to drive!

    My colleagues have got used to my strange taste in music, I now apologise if something arrives at work by someone they’ve heard of as they feel let down.

    There are only 2 types of music, that you love and that you hate, but an awful lot of people look down on music they haven’t heard of.

    • I know I keep coming back to Zappa, but he nailed this in his book when he talked about the fact that the majority of people who listen to music want something comforting and familiar. What shocks me is that even young people are like this these days. The last time I heard the top ten it sounded like it could have come from the mid- or even early-90s.

      As KFD implies, a lack of curiosity is the most depressing thing you can come across – in music or in life generally.

  23. Amen to all this. Most of the music I like isn’t even popular here, and I’m indifferent about many of the AW faves. Add in being a guitarist and the number of people I can enthuse about the things I’m passionate about I can count on the fingers on one hand.

  24. It’s not that bad, I can’t say I’ve ever had any really annoying reactions to my obsession with music from people who don’t share that obsession. Usually people are very positive and curious to hear more about it if that topic comes up in conversation, and they are more likely to look ashamed as they confess their own lack of knowledge and interest.
    So the most annoying reaction to finding out about my love for music must be when my boss-to-be was asking me for my opinion on the awful tracks he had produced and co-written, whenever he had worked a shift with me and gave me a lift home in his car; stereo blasting out sub-standard wannabe radio-hits of staggeringly poor quality.
    Trying to come up with polite versions of my opinions of them got increasingly difficult…I’d start by saying “this isn’t really my kind of music…” and cling to whatever grain of OK-ness I could find; “His voice is much better than I expected it to be” (said about a D-list celeb “singing” some ghastly dancefloor non-botherer).
    Thankfully he gave up his crap music career when he became my boss…but then again, he became my boss…hmmm. Perhaps I should have encouraged his musical dreams more! 😉

  25. Did anyone see that programme on BBC 2 last night about collectors?

    One guy had 75,000 CDs housed in six flats (this was in London!), employed four people to curate them, spent £150 each day on new stuff via the mail and…..erm…..admitted he never really listened to any of them, preferring the radio instead!

  26. So true about the hi-fi crowd. And, honestly, quite a lot of soi-disant music fanatics don’t like music as much as they’d like us to think, too. Often, those vast collections are just that: collections. The collector impulse is very male of a certain type, and a certain type of record collector is more interested in the having and the cataloguing than the listening. (The £150-a-day bloke above is an extreme, but I know a good few people who are all about the size and the knowledge (hur hur) but have zero understanding of or emotional response to music.)

    Records are odd, because – like church – they were a shelter for the socially awkward and provided a way of boosting certain kids’ self-esteem. Pop is “cool”, and so having the insanely detailed inside track on something cool made up for the knowledge of one’s own terminal uncoolness. It was a social way in. I think that’s probably at least true of many of us (it is for me); I suppose where I part company with some of the guys I know is that I no longer get any social self-validation from music. It’s just music. It doesn’t say anything about me and I no longer wear my music geekiness as a badge of honour. Certain People I Know have – I suspect – more invested in the cultural meaning of their fandom than in the actual sounds the records make.

    • “I no longer get any social self-validation from music. It’s just music. It doesn’t say anything about me and I no longer wear my music geekiness as a badge of honour”

      I’ve missed you.

    • I’m afraid I do fall into the geek category and I will sometimes collect records that I won’t necessarily listen to. The artefact is important to me. Which is why I can’t really get my head around things like downloads. It’s silly I know. But I like the music to have an essential ‘thingyness’ to it. I have become an antique collector.

      • I don’t see anything wrong in that and don’t see why musical appreciation has to follow some kind of prescribed set of rules to justify its authenticity. There is infinite variety in the musical experience. Right now, as I write this, I’m listening on headphones to Gong’s Gazeuse. I’m enjoying it but I’m not really giving it my full attention. What classifies as an appropriate and requisite emotional response? Who decides? Should I be sent to the back of the class?

      • I’ve heard this more regularly referred to as being a nerd, and it’s usually about obsession, whether that’s Star Trek, comics, Dungeons and Dragons, music…..whatever. Seems to hold water for me.

    • Sorry to disappoint you, Eddie.

      Several AWers once owned The Rock Machine Turns You On. The second track was Can’t be so bad by the Grape. So they’ve been on our radar a while.

      • Serendipity! Hearing the original having listened to a cover for 30 years, knowing it was a cover, assuming the Skip Spence band were probably not as good as the crack session players around Anton Fier and Bill Laswell. Obviously.

        Here’s a track from the same record. The guitar players are Richard Thompson and Jody Harris

        Golden Palominos (who sit next to Gong’s Gazeuse in my collection).

        BTW I’ve also got really a lot of Zappa without claiming to be an expert and I’ve got a terrific high end stereo with no attendant affect on my love of music. Good thread, Moose.

    • I know what you mean. I don’t know anybody who’s heard of them either. Fancy a drink? Actually I don’t really want to discuss Moby Grape with anybody, I’m quite happy to listen to them when the mood takes me and leave it at that.

  28. I loved reading about bands in the inkies, Smash Hits and Q. As others have said, this gave me quite detailed knowledge of bands without hearing their music. After a while, I felt I could sniff out record label bullshit when a band came across as rather over-exposed. Birdland, Menswe@r, Gay Dad, Flowered Up! – I’m talking bout YOU (and many more besides).

    Thing is, the 2015 equivalents can be promoted to death and everyone thinks they’re the latest sensation that’s sweeping the nation. The bands mentioned above didn’t make an impact on the singles chart, which made me think that there was a certain amount of people power.

  29. @eddie-g – don’t get me wrong, I like the “thing” in some ways too, but I wouldn’t describe myself as a collector. I recently bought a record player, not for the audiobollocks reasons but because putting a record on is a nice ritual and has an element of conscious effort to it which I like. And there’s certainly no denying that LPs are lovely things to have around. But the overwhelming majority of my not-crazily-huge store of music recordings is 320 MP3.

    (Although clearly, if a “civilian” saw my iTunes list, he or she would find it hilarious that I don’t consider it huge.)

  30. @martin-hairnet Oh dear, I wasn’t saying that. Sorry. There’s no level of response that’s correct or otherwise, that’s kind of my whole point. I was just observing that lots of collector behaviour is often not really connected with appreciation of the thing being collected. I don’t think that’s wrong, it’s horses for courses, and of course it’s a spectrum and a mix.

    • Hey no worries Bob. I think a lot of folks who obsess about Hi-Fi are, perhaps, approaching it more from an electrical engineering perspective, rather than a music culture one. But the two can overlap. I seem to remember reading an article about Elton John, an avid music collector, and real music fan, and his 50,000 quid turntable or something. I don’t see anything wrong in wanting to hear the music as close to what the artist originally intended as possible. Many artists often obsess about the tiny details and subtle nuances.

  31. *stands up in small church basement *

    My name is DogFacedBoy and I collect records. Sometimes I listen alone abd sometimes in the company of consenting men and women. Occasionally I have argued about quality of different vinyl pressings. A mono copy of Otis Blue i picked up in a charity shop recently had such a deep and wonderful bass sound it gave me the horn. I love music and have a disposable income not taken up by alcohol, tobacco or children.

    I AM A NERD, HEAR ME ROAR!

    *sits down to slight applause and knowing looks of fellow sufferers*

  33. Me, I’m lucky (ahem) enough to live in Hastings, recently described as “the most musically sophisticated town in Britain” by someone-or-other in the media. Admittedly it also has one of the biggest drink/drugs/mental health problems in the region.

    Virtually all my friends are ludicrously passionate about music, to the point where I even feel a little weird because I only listen to things for fun, or because they sound real purdy, or whatever. Music for me is now almost entirely about emotional context, to the point where I’d rather listen to a friend’s feminist indie-punk duo (yes, I know) than some band that can, y’know, play a bit.

    I go pretty regularly to a local Vinyl Night in the back room of a pub, so most of my musical experiences at the moment consist of shouting along to Eddie and the Hotrods while drunk (or whatever).

    PS. one of my female friends proves beyond doubt that women can like Little Feat. Just chucking that in.

  34. Luckily for me, most of my conversations at work are about whether Liquid Swords is better than Only Built For Cuban Linx* and the like. That and taking the mick out of prog. I may not be rich, but I’m happy.

    *it is

  35. Recently one of my work colleagues started a conversation about music by saying, ‘Billy Joel – did he ever write a bad song?’ I was about to go into a disquisition about how his anodyne but sometimes attractive melodies were sometimes vastly improved by his ability to write a wonderfully clever bridge, but that on the whole I considered him a showbiz mediocrity. Luckily at that moment I was called into a meeting. One fewer bridge burned….

  38. I got The Who Brunswick era 7″ box set in today. Nice paper thin sleeves, push out centres, the correct original mono mixes – half speed cut at Abbey Road.

    Plus I will play them all later pretending to be Pete Townsend doing my best arm whirling riffola.

    Love the artefact, love the music – it is possible to do both

    • I have a disposable income, but some of it is taken up with alcohol, tobacco and children (and the rest of it seems to be going into the pocket of my local garage (Bloody Car!)).
      As a result, I haven’t got that yet.
      So, my position is:
      covet the artefact, love the music, and feel massive pangs of jealousy.

      Still going to do Pete Townsend windmill impressions tonight, just to a vinyl copies of My Generation and A Quick One

  39. Yes, that was the plot in one of the episodes.
    He drank too much scrumpy, lost his bearings, ended up going round and round (cue Cropedy joke here…..).
    Didn’t the soldiers at Pippin Fort have to rescue him?

  40. To be perfectly honest, in ref to the OP, if someone told me they had 25 Zappa albums and didn’t consider themselves an expert, I would have a) understood completely and b) also laughed out loud. Snorting might have been appropriate too.
    Although my friends think it’s hilarious what I can drag out of my memory banks, use me in pub quizzes for music triv, and tried to dob me in at the Spicks and Specks live gig, I still know my limitations. I was right too – the first deep-cut Joy Division question completely nixed me.

  41. Mmm. I don’t doubt that Hastings is very ‘literate’ musically compared to many places, i.e. the number of people really into music. But possibly not as broad a range of music as some other towns. Hastings is, after all, a town with a 98% white population.

      • White people certainly do buy or listen to more than one type, but I very much doubt, for example, that many folk in Hastings listen to much of the Asian music popular elsewhere in the country. And they I rather suspect the vinyl listening nights are focussed on a rather narrower range of music. I am, however, more than happy for someone to disprove my theory that a town where 95% of people are white British won’t necessarily have wider tastes than towns with a more cosmopolitan cross-section of people.

        • I’m not too sure I’d expect a black guy in London to own, say, a couple of John Renbourn albums, The Beatles, some pysch, Krautrock, John Barry AND a load of Jamaican music.

          I would expect a considerable percentage on this forum, presumably largely white, to own them all! Might, of course, be completely wrong, but the black artists in that bit in Mojo near the beginning of the mag, nearly always choose 100% black artists.

        • (to Ernie):
          Yes, you may be right about the white-people thing, though I’d hesitate to assume too much; after all, I’m one of the 2% that aren’t. As are a other people on this site, a couple of whom I’ve met before at Mingles; neither were predictable in their tastes, and I think that’s a good thing.

          As for the “musically sophisticated” thing, it made me burst out laughing when I read it, and I certainly don’t take it too seriously. But there’s certainly a truckload of music being played and heard in this town, plus plenty of fans of various stripes.

          You’re mostly right about the Vinyl Night though – lots of Northern Soul, Garage Rock, etc etc. But also the odd thing that isn’t. Plus, there was the “Agadoo Incident”. But you don’t need to know about that.

  42. But how would “real” people understand the concept of this site?
    “Yeah, sorry, I’m a bit tired today. I went to bed early but then I read a blog for an hour about having 25 Frank Zappa LPs not making you a fan, the Pastels and the hip-hop dub bhangra scene in Hastings.”
    What’s an LP?

  43. I am married to a civilian and it’s interesting seeing the world from her perspective. She does not give the remotest of shits who it’s by. It seems such a peaceful way to be.

    We once went to see a film, set in the 80s, and a Depeche Mode song came on. After about 10 seconds, she leans across and whispers “Depeche Mode!” and I say “Ahh…yes you’re right!” as if it had passed me by. In reality I had identified the song within a second – and all of the other trashy 80s pop numbers that came up.

  44. I haven’t actually talked – you know, verbally, face to face, in “real” time – about music to anybody for at least ten years. My wife, like most Thais, has never heard of the Beatles, Dylan, Elvis Presley, or Moby Grape. This is hugely refreshing. I don’t really want to share music opinions with other people for two reasons: 1) other people are invariably ignorant sods whose opinions I diskard uterly, and B) my own opinions are well past their sell-by date and are of scant interest to me either. I’m happy enjoying what I’ve always enjoyed, look forward to new releases by geriatrics I’ve been listening to for up to five decades, and I’ve given up hoping that New Music By Young People is going to have anything new to say to me.

    I have only seventy-nine Zappa albums in my iTunes.

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