Lost In Music

Music has been a big part of my life for a long time, I imagine its the same for everyone here given the roots of this fine enterprise.

To each to their own, but whenever I’ve met people who say that they’re not really interested in music I’m internally screaming “What is wrong with you?!?!” A particular genre or artist I can understand; there’s plenty out there that I’ve given a go but aren’t for me.

To wipe out the whole wonderful variety of recorded sound though belies the maxim that there’s something for everyone. Given its ubiquity, that even if you don’t seek it out its hard to live a life devoid of music I can’t help but think that they’re missing out and just haven’t found the right fit for them.

Since I found Tom’s #1s column my relationship with music has deepened, thrice weekly dissecting a song and coalescing my thoughts on something I may not necessarily know or remember fondly has provided a welcome new hobby. Looking back at the past made me think about the part music has played in my life and why its so important.

Given that music is everywhere and memory of early days is a bit foggy I’ve no idea what my earliest exposure was, its so omnipresent that its always been there. It was there on TV, in programmes such as Top of The Pops but particularly in TV theme tunes which were probably the first recorded songs to get my attention. It wasn’t just the themes to kids TV shows that landed either, weirdly the theme to The Fall Guy has always stuck with me.

Radio was the big one though. There are memories of Sunday mornings with the radio on. My mum would be making the traditional roast dinner, my dad either working on the car, in the garden or fixing something and I’d be playing with my toy cars running the same race over and over on a weekly cycle with the same few favourites competing for the win. It was a local station we’d have on playing golden oldies.

Maybe its too long ago that I’ve blanked out the variety but it seemed to be a narrow playlist of the same songs coming round most weeks. These four stuck in my memory and will always have that Sunday morning association, not that I hear any of them these days but that just fixes them firmly in the past:

• Manhattan Transfer – Chanson D’Amour
• Alan Price (Once of The Animals) – Jarrow Song
• Cher – Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves
• Esther & Abi Ofarim – Cinderella Rockafel

I was born in 1976 and this was the early 80s. None of the songs mentioned went further back than 1968 but they all sounded to my ears like they were from a bygone age, they were fascinating as they sounded so different from the pop music of the present. I couldn’t comprehend at the time they were recent history. Now its like a warm comfort blanket of nostalgia thinking about it.

Home was the only place we could listen to the radio as we didn’t have a radio in the car until I was a teenager, one of those things that demonstrate how even the recent past is such a foreign place. There was only one radio in the house too. We were never at the forefront of technical revolution, by the time we reached the future it had already become the past.

Same as with the car radio, I was a teenager before I got a Walkman and then a midi hi-fi that freed me to independent listening. Even the house stereo that stayed firmly in my dad’s control didn’t get upgraded to something with a tape deck til the mid 80s and a CD player until the 90s.

Music as a participatory event came about through school. Daily assemblies involved the school secretary playing piano and the whole school singing hymns. At that age, being in tune wasn’t a concern, volume was everything. I can’t imagine how bad it must have sounded to the teaching staff. I applaud their stoicism and shows of enthusiasm in the face of 100 shouting kids.

As I grew up the volume went down. Boundless enthusiasm became teenage apathy, a desire to fit in and not stand out and a growing sense that hymns and religion weren’t part of my worldview. Assemblies were now all about faking it, trying to do a convincing job of mouthing the words and not making a sound.

For four years, one hour a week of the curriculum was given over to being ‘taught’ music. In reality there was little teaching, I don’t recall much in the way of attempts to impart any knowledge about music, how to read it, any theory behind it, any history, nothing whatsoever to inspire anyone. Outside of the classroom music was everywhere, shaping our world, one of the most important topics of any breaktime conversation was what was in the pop charts.

It was an open goal with the right environment and teacher to take this youthful obsession and explain how it works and offer the chance to learn an instrument. Instead for four years it was treated as an hour off actual learning, a waste of time. The only instruments we had were Xylophones and even then there were only enough for one between two children. We’d play along tunelessly to some folk song or relic from a bygone age week in week out.

Nothing against folk music, but getting a load of 10 year olds to bang along to it for an hour a week when what they wanted was Michael Jackson or Prince or U2 wasn’t going to do anything to point us to a career in music or a sense that we could do that. None of the acts I saw on TV had a xylophone player and nothing that we were playing along with sounded like the music of the time so there was a weird disconnect that despite its cultural importance and my love for it, I didn’t see what we were doing in class as having any connection to that world. 

At home the same disconnect was apparent. Regardless of any love for music it never occurred to me that it was something I could get involved in until a lot later.

The point at which the usual childlike interest in anything and everything developed into a deep passion for music came with the onset of the teenage years. In 1989 the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays made the charts, I wasn’t sure about them initially but by the following year they were joined by the Charlatans and the louder dense sound of bands like Ride and I was drawn in.

I moved from reading Smash Hits which was all about what was in the charts to NME. At first I was intimidated by the sheer volume of bands, most of whom I’d never heard of, I remember an interview with Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine in one of the first editions I bought and thinking, “what and who the hell is this?” They looked nothing like the people in the village I was growing up in.

Combining the NME with finding the Evening Session on Radio 1, my musical education and immersement picked up speed. The names of the bands and singers started to carry some meaning as I connected the dots between them and their songs.

It also fed a line back to the past as bands would reference their influences. A lot of the music I was discovering wasn’t reflected on daytime radio or in the charts but I still kept an obsessive watch on them as well. I bought The British Book Of Hit Singles, followed by The British Book of Hit Albums. And when the singles version updated two years later: bought it all over again.

I loved all the statistics and the stories the discographies told of an acts fortunes rising and falling. I had The Beatles singles release history, chart positions and weeks in the chart memorised.

There weren’t enough statistics so I created my own, working out the average chart position for EVERY act, working out most weeks on the chart by record label amongst others. They were mammoth undertakings but I went at it with an obsessive zeal, I wanted to know everything. Still do, not just music but everything ever. An impossible goal I now realise even with Wikipedia. I had books full of my workings out, I left these behind when I left home deciding that they may bring about ridicule at university if my secret nerd past was discovered and they were eventually discarded by my parents once they’d had enough of my stuff taking up space.

I would tie myself up in knots trying to push things in favour of my favourites, for example The Beatles average chart position was adversely affected by Ain’t She Sweet which was recorded in 1961 before they had a record deal and found its way to being released by Polydor in 1964 as a cash in on their success and got to #29. I justified that it should be discounted from their average chart position on the basis it wasn’t an official release, thereby improving their average by maybe a tenth. It all helped.

One more piece of the jigsaw was finding Flipside Records. It was hidden away on the edge of Ashington town centre, one of the last shops before it became a residential road.

There was just a doorway leading upstairs to the shop, the sort of place you needed someone to tell you about, I was forced to go into Ashington most weeks with my parents as they did the grocery shopping and had no idea of its existence until a schoolfriend asked if I’d been in. Up til that point all of my music was bought from the big chainstores, HMV, Our Price and Virgin.

Now though there was this little shop that was tailored to alternative music and had friendly non-judgemental staff. What was of most interest to me was the bargain bins. There were containers full of 7 and 12 inches and CD singles whose time had come and gone that were priced from 10p to £1. It became a weekly routine that every Monday after school I’d get the bus to Ashington, and spend up to an hour going through the cast offs coming away with anything up to 20 singles at a time, paying just a few pounds.

After that it was home to listen to my haul. Some of them were songs I knew, most hadn’t troubled the charts, others I picked out based on what I’d read about them and others again because I liked the cover. If they cost 10p it wasn’t much of a risk if the record didn’t live up to the artwork.

I also discovered the joy of second hand vinyl. We’d occasionally go to the Quayside Sunday Market in Newcastle. A large weekly open air market alongside the River Tyne selling everything that you’ve never needed and plenty more besides. There were a group of 2nd hand record stalls and I dived right in. While Flipside sustained my immersement in the present these stalls fulfilled my desire to travel back in time. First objective was The Beatles, it took a while but I collected all of their albums. Not without surprises, I ended up with a Canadian release of Rubber Soul on Capitol Records rather than their UK label, Parlophone.

At that point I had no idea that the earlier albums had different track listings in North America and was greatly confused several years later reading an article about Rubber Soul which didn’t correspond with the songs I was used to hearing. As well as The Beatles there was lots of Pink Floyd, some psychedelia courtesy of the likes of Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Woodstock triple album soundtrack, Nick Drake and plenty more.

Like Flipside, it was a mix of bands I knew and wanted to explore more, people I’d heard maybe one song by so delved deeper and others that I’d read were essential for any music fan. Pre-internet I went through the phone book to find out where all the 2nd hand record shops in the area were so that wherever I went I could find my own little slice of heaven. Suddenly shopping with my parents wasn’t such a chore. Disinterestedly pushing the shopping trolley around the supermarket wasn’t so bad when I had a free ride to another record store as part of the deal.

It didn’t all work out. The arrogance of youth mixed with curiosity meant that when I saw Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music I snapped it up. 15 yr old JJ had read that it was one of the most ‘difficult  / worst’ albums ever and at that time the only way to find out how true this was was to buy a copy. I thought it was a sign of my musical maturity and knowledge that I was buying it, the stall holder probably thought I was a right mug and couldn’t believe his luck that he’d found someone to pay £10 to take it off his hands.

I listened to all of side 1 and a few seconds of sides 2, 3 and 4 to make sure that I had wasted my money and put it to one side forever. I didn’t bin it though, I made sure it was prominent in my collection, serving the same purpose as one of those books that sit on bookshelves to impress visitors with how intellectual the owner is even though they’ve never read it. I couldn’t admit to myself that buying it had been a mistake. Not for a few years anyway.

I was in a definite minority at school with my musical tastes. There weren’t really any  tribes in my school, there was a small but committed bunch of metal heads who really stood out but other than that it was mostly just slight variations on the same theme with a few other musical outsiders like me.

Around the age of fifteen, I started growing my hair, I wanted to look like Mark Gardener of Ride. It didn’t quite work out like that, not for another 25 years anyway. I looked terrible whereas Mark was an indie heartthrob. Seeing them on their reunion tour in 2015 turns out that time and the ageing process had finally gotten me there as we’re both now lacking in the hair department.

My 2nd hand vinyl collection and immersion in the history of rock, pop, soul and more led some at school to mark me as only liking people once they were dead. It wasn’t my fault the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Nick Drake had all checked out early leaving lean back catalogues that never got the chance to succumb to artistic lethargy.

Here’s something I’ve never told anyone but it seems appropriate given I’m in a safe space surrounded by music lovers. I’d lie on my bed listening to tunes in the evening and in my head I was making up entire discographies, musical careers and songs for myself. The songs were based on existing music, plagiarism doesn’t count if its entirely imagined. I would create adaptations of my favourite songs and daydream all the success they would bring.

I wasn’t confined by genres either, I was a bedroom Bowie where every album would involve a completely new sound and image. I went all the way back to the beginning of rock and roll too, nothing was beyond the reach of being ripped off. I had my own versions of Great Balls of Fire and Be Bop A Lula. I even set up and headlined my own imaginary festival in my village. I can’t say why I decided my village would be a good location given that hardly anyone else shared my taste in music but I think I wanted the validation and to be proved that I was right and they would all come round to my way of thinking. Even if this was all purely in my head.

The big element missing from all this was live music. Newcastle was the nearest place for live music and although it had plenty of venues it was an hour away on the bus and the last bus home left at 10pm, before any gig would finish, ruling it out as an option. The distance meant a taxi was a prohibitive option for a teenager with no income.

My first gig came about because an older member of the canoeing club I went to every Sunday morning was a huge Paul Weller fan, we’d talked about music and he knew I liked The Jam so asked if I wanted to go see Paul live at Newcastle City Hall. He sorted the tickets, drove and being of legal drinking age was able to buy me a pint. Result.

Gigs were few and far between though. Until I went to university at 18, I’d only been to three. I wrote over at Stereogum in virtual 1994 about how uni and its proximity to Manchester opened up the wonderful world of live music. Being slightly obsessive I’ve kept a list of every gig every gig I’ve been to; bands, date and venue all recorded.

The only element of the musical experience left was to try and turn it into a participatory event. I had a friend that I clicked with musically and we both tried out writing lyrics, sharing the results with each other though without any other outlet other than that. 

I finally got past the thought process that playing an instrument wasn’t something for me and for my 21st birthday asked my parents for a guitar. I came away with a Squier Stratocaster and a couple of learn to play guitar books. Turns out that it wasn’t for me. I’m not that good with my hands, DIY isn’t my thing and trying to play guitar only served to demonstrate a complete lack of co-ordination.

Many hours of practice got me nowhere, I couldn’t get past the first few pages of the tuition book. I could get my fingers in the right position to form chords but moving from one to another involved prolonged fiddling about. One of the main lessons from punk was that anyone could do it, musicianship wasn’t necessary. They never saw me struggle to move my fingers up and down the neck of a guitar with a pained look of concentration on my face.

As well as lacking the ability to co-ordinate my hand movements I also realised I have a tin ear. I couldn’t tell if the guitar was in or out of tune. Which wasn’t the biggest issue I faced but it didn’t help. In fact I’ve grown to learn that my musical limitations are many. Musical theory is a wasteland to me. I love music with a passion but I can’t apply any theory to what I like, can’t explain what the sounds that I hear are doing and why that works. Even something simple like a 4/4 beat; now that I can read an explanation of and understand it but can I listen to a song and recognise it? No.

I like to think I’m reasonably intelligent but its a complete blind spot for me. I remain an enthusiastic amateur, bereft of talent, unable to interpret or put basic concepts into practice but loving the fruits of others labours nonetheless. I’ve accepted my limitations, my attempts to learn to play became more intermittent until the guitar became more of an ornament.

I’m aware that it wasn’t the greatest guitar in the world but it was still a thing of beauty to me visually and for what it represented; all those years of teenage daydreaming and the actuality of all the music that I loved. It sat there for many a year before I finally sold it on.

With no chance of rock and roll immortality the only option left was the written word. That I could do, though not always in line with editorial policy. A friend set up a fanzine to promote local music that evolved over time into a fairly professional looking free monthly magazine. They were flooded with demos and self released singles, EPs and albums of varying quality and I was tasked with reviewing them along with live reviews and features when the inspiration took me. As a vehicle to promote the local music scene positivity was encouraged. Criticism was frowned upon, something which I struggled with.

I totally agree in theory with a policy of focusing on the positives and avoiding anything discouraging. In practice though I really wanted to say what I thought and sometimes they really weren’t good. Having done this for a few years I was really struggling with ways of finding new things to say about yet another indie band whose rehashing of their influences far outweighed originality.

There was some great stuff in there as well that it was easy to shower effusive praise on but eventually the less promising offerings took their toll on me and I had to leave it behind. The impulse to write about music left me for a decade or so until I discovered the #1s and found I wanted to join the community, have my say and reinvigorated a desire to set down my thoughts in writing.

Through adulthood my relationship with music has deepened and matured. Things that I heard as a teenager and dismissed out of hand I’ve grown to appreciate. Getting past the dictates of what is cool and the tribalism and wanting to be part of something bigger than myself has given way to not caring what the genre is or how its perceived. All I’m interested in is the reaction it provokes in me.

I don’t know that anything quite matches the visceral thrill I had as a teenager of finding that next great band and that amazing new singer and investing myself in having everything they created and knowing all there was to know about them. I do still find excitement and inspiration when I hear something new and that moves me though. I’ve seen those studies that say people stop listening to new music, one said at 27 and another at 33.

Based on friends and family I’ve heard say those disparaging remarks, that it all sounds the same these days I’d have to agree there’s something in the studies but it doesn’t have to be that way. I do hark back to the nostalgia of days gone by when listening to music but I still want more as well, still want to find acts I’ve never heard before. I love the discovery of songs from the past that I’m not familiar with and love the discovery of what’s coming through. I think there’s more people of the same mindset as well. Going to gigs through uni and into my 20s it seemed rare to see ‘older’ attendees but now I’m in my mid 40s there’s normally a mix of the young and the more mature gig goer.

Having a 10 year old daughter keeps me in touch with what is going on in the more mainstream world of pop. In the car we listen to Radio 1, the main station for this and I generally like what I hear. I’m definitely not the intended audience but who needs to conform to age and genre based marketing ideals? My daughter meanwhile is pretty scathing about what I listen to. She’s got that sureness of youth that she can apply a blanket policy that all of dad’s music is awful without needing to give it a chance.

When she was little I did allow myself to think that perhaps we could bond over music and I could be a cool dad introducing her to new and unusual sounds outside of what the usual playground favourites. Images of skipping together through meadows of wildflowers to a soundtrack of St Vincent, Cate Le Bon and Perfume Genius have given way to the reality of my child going for the well worn trope of rebelling against her parents tastes. Fair enough, I did the same and we collaborate in other ways like driving Mrs J to the brink of insanity with our combined idiocy so its all good.

Just like Sister Sledge, I remain lost in music, I might be caught in a trap but there’s no turning back cos it makes me feel so alive. Couldn’t have put it better myself and wouldn’t have it any other way.  

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