Right, I’ve slacked off pretty severely on my intentions for
this blog. Was all for it at first but the reality never matches expectation. This
comes as no surprise to me, it’s like that time I used to work as a postman for
the Royal Mail. That was a funny day. What I intend this entry to address is a
question I get asked a lot, and that is just how I like listening to so much
different stuff, and where does it all come from? When talking to people about
music it sometimes surprises them how wide my knowledge is and that comes from
a desire basically, to ‘fill in the gaps’. For all I know the best song I never
heard is out there somewhere.
A friend of mine said something that made me laugh once,
regarding my love of music. On listing the various albums I was awaiting
release of, he replied ‘oh. Haven’t you GOT all the music already’? That is
actually not the worst description of my apparent aim in life, to own ALL the
music. It’s fair to say I am ‘in to it’ in a big way. And I’ve become as
tenacious as I am insatiable, there is always something new to hear and it’s
never been easier to find. And I use the term ‘new’ as in new to me- it could
just as easily be a track from the 50’s as the ‘next big thing’ picking up a
buzz on the internet.
In this day and age, restrictions of genre needn’t mean very
much at all. Sampling, collaborations, mash-ups etc have slowly corroded the
rigid boundaries and the wide availability of every type of music have made an
eclectic taste very easy to aquire. While there’s nothing wrong with sticking
very closely to one scene or other, or having a preference for one type of
music over another it just makes no sense at all to me to disregard anything
outside a certain style or period. One of these days I would like to attempt my
own version of the chart helpfully displayed below by Mr Jack Black. If you can
visualise a version of that twice as tall and three times as wide, that is what
I am ultimately hoping to achieve.
Until it exists I have to imagine it, and at the moment
there are gaps. There are links and threads I haven’t followed or discovered yet
and that’s the best way to put what drives me to explore every aspect of a
bands genetic make-up. I’m writing this to the sounds of the Diplo / Santigold
mix-tape which is useful to make a point- Santigold has 603,000 listeners on
Last.fm (
http://www.last.fm/user/david1879). ‘Stiffed’, the new-wave/punk band
she sang with before going solo have 15,000. I love their two albums, discovered with a bit
of digging while looking for more Santigold material in the wait for a new
album. Likewise The Drums, 543,000 and Jonny Pierce’s previous ‘Elkland’, 11,000.
The internet has made it possible to leave no stone unturned- no b-side or
studio out-take unheard, no side-project or pre-fame band unfound, and to me,
it’s as if i’d be failing in my duty if I didn’t do so. I reverse-engineer
bands. Who do they sound like, who else have they recorded with, who sounds
like them, it’s a stringent process that’s become second nature that most stuff
I listen to has been or will be subjected to and nothing pleases me more than
coming up with the goods.
As for where my enjoyment of music comes from in the first
place, there’s no doubt I get it from my Dad. My earliest musical memory is
hearing ‘Lola’ by The Kinks on Capital Gold, the station that I heard most
mornings throughout the early years of my life (and have continued to listen to
now), and I also remember the weekends he’d spread his record collection on the
floor and just play 45’s for hours. Little did I know then that they’d stay
with me, committed to memory, the earliest foundations upon which I’d build my
own vast library. I couldn’t have had a much more solid start either, those
boxes of vinyl containing plenty of punk, 2-tone, new-wave, the odd bit of
reggae and ska, and more than a couple of 50’s artists ‘borrowed’ from the
collections of HIS Dad. It’s a passion that’s never waned.
