I frequently get asked, "who do you like, who's your favourite band/artist/singer etc." (not that people really 'speak' a 'forward slash' but you get the picture!). The answer to this question always gets to me because the answer is always in flux depending on my age, outlook, mood and influences - and of course whether I've been in the right place to actually hear any of the music in the first place. There could very well be a band in Chile that would blow me away but I'm probably never going to hear them play.
When I first started to listen to music rather than just as something that was played on the radio (my very first memory was getting a tiny tranny with a tiny ear plug and listening to Tony Blackburn [UK DJ] spinning 'Nelly the Elephant') I guess it would be when i got my first cassette recorder. Remember those cassette recorders that came with the microphone? I got one for Christmas in about 1974, I was 11 and I got a cassette of a TV music show called 'Supersonic'. It was ITV's answer to Top of the Pops that was still a BBC institution on a Thursday night.
This cassette included tracks by artists 'of the day' and I guess this was my first 'Album' that I listened to that formed the basis of my musical 'taste'. This was the track listing:
Side 1
1: ANDY BOWN Supersonic
2: PILOT Magic
3: DRIFTERS Save The Last Dance For Me
4: DEAN FORD Hey My Love
5: GARY GLITTER Oh Yes You're Beautiful
6: SHADOWS Let Me Be The One
7: HOLLIES He Ain't Heavy
8: SHOWADDYWADDY Chain Gang
9: GLITTER BAND Love In The Sun
10: OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN Take Me Home Country Road
Side 2
1: BAY CITY ROLLERS Keep On Dancing
2: HOLLIES The Air That I Breathe
3: CLIFF RICHARD Take Me High
4: BARRY BLUE Hot Shot
5: MATAYO Brother
6: SWEET Action
7: SON OF A GUN Maison De L'Amour
8: HELLO Games Up
9: LINDA LEWIS Remember The Days (Of The Old School Yard)
10: SHOWADDYWADDY Hey Mister Christmas
I know! A blast from the past, right?
It was a great sampler for me to be able to say to myself, "well I don't like BCR (sorry Roller fans) or The Drifters or Showaddywaddy BUT I kinda like The Hollies, Shadows and Pilot!
Anyway my next 'watershed' was an influence from my Dad of all people! (He was into Demis Rousoss about this time so a bit of a strange one looking back at it}. He bought me a cassette called "24 carat Purple" a greatest hits of Deep Purple that he said a bloke at work liked and thought I would too! It was probably 'Yapper', eh Dad?
Anyway, this cassette was just an 'eyeopener' for me, I played it almost until the tape stretched. Within a week I new all the words, all the riffs (to air guitar to) all the drum beats (to air drum to) and I was hooked on Deep Purple - they were my first favourite band!
High School in the UK is 11 - 16 yrs old unless you stay on in sixth form until you are 18 and soon after the Deep Purple experience I went to high school and then of course got influenced by what all my friends were listening to. I had a paper round and therefore I could buy a cassette or LP about once a month and of course I got them for Christmas and birthdays, or 'record vouchers' as my parents knew they would get the selection wrong!
I made a fortunate mistake one Christmas. I was given money to get a couple of albums (read LP's) for my Christmas pressie from my Mum and walked into town and met my friend, Steve. Now, as i flipped through the albums I really knew that I wanted to get the soundtrack to 'Tommy' by The Who but as I was with Steve the album I chose sort of said something about me and I fancied myself as a bit of an 'at the edge' type of musical aficionado! So half with this in mind and half thinking well I'll get 'Tommy' with the vouchers I get after Christmas I bought an Album by a band I'd never heard much of, and it was the best 'mistake' I had ever made at that time, musically.
I brought the double album home and put the first side on my record player, plugged in my hifi headphones and lay back to have my first listen to 'The Song Remains the Same' by Led Zeppelin! WOW!
I flipped those records for the next 3 or 4 hours, missed tea, and remember just loving the way in which music that is new can transform from something that you listen to and like to something that you actually know and get inside of to the point that you tell yourself that if you could play those instruments you could probably recreate every note!
I still bought 'Tommy' after Christmas but it taught me that I really needed to widen my musical 'funnel'. I started listening to AC/DC (Dirty Deeds era), KISS (Alive 1 and 2 era), Black Sabbath (Never Say Die era) and of course my fixation of my teen years, Staus Quo!
Quo were a big thing for me when I was 14/15/16 yrs old. I appreciated and loved all the other music I was listening to but this all fell into perspective after I went to my first 'gig' at Birmingham Odeon to see Quo play live on the 'Rocking All Over the World tour' in 1977, I was 14.
I wan't now just listening to music, I was experiencing it like never before; I just had no idea that music could affect me the way that first gig did. The loudness, the showmanship, the fact that I recognised all the tracks; I felt I was a part of the experience rather than just watching and listening; it blew me away.
I was hooked on music and it's been that way ever since. I have always tried to see as many of the artists I like play live.
Quo were always big in the playlist of my musical history but as I experienced new bands and artists and genres they took a back seat a bit as new music evolved through punk and then 'New Wave' and on through the New Romantic era and out through the other side I started to realise that I liked a whole load of completely different sounding music and that started to include classical as well as even a bit of opera!
I liked, and started to use, the word 'eclectic' when people asked what I liked. I was listening to the Four Seasons (not classically challenging now, but then......), The Clash, The Smiths, Rush, Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen as well as The Cure and a whole slew of heavy metal and rock bands.
Every now and again I obsess a bit over one band or artist depending on my mood and based on whether I am about to see them in concert or have seen them etc. and also if they have anything new 'out'.
My first obsession was probably Bruce Springsteen. Simon Morgan (who is the drummer in Suede) used to take the piss out of me religiously for this obsession but it never matters when you get these bouts, they are unstoppable and inexplicably rational to the subject of them. *I have never name dropped Simon before, strange that he crops up......anyway.....
I was about to see Bruce at a gig in Leeds, Roundhay Park I think and I really only knew Born in the USA so I decided I needed to hear more than just the 'Borns' ( ....To Run and in the USA)....Off I went to the record store and got every album he made.....
Greetings from Asbury Park, Born to Run, Darkness on the edge of town, The River and Nebraska...played them non-stop. My favourite? Oh, yes I loved The River and Candy's Room and Cadillac Ranch and so on but the album that I really LOVED was the one most people dismiss as not that great: Nebraska.
I'm not the only one who likes this album but I'm in the minority and I soon realised that my favourite music is always the music liked by the minority. I think it's the feeling that maybe I 'get' it and I like to think that most others don't.... so it's almost like a more personal experience for me when I like an artist or an album that isn't mainstream or loved by the masses.
Don't get me wrong I still love the Rolling Stones....seen them many times but they are not a personal music experience for me like, say, Julian Cope is.
Ah, Julian, one of my more aggressive obsessions! I've never stalked someone before but in 1995 Mar and I took a visiting friend to Avebury on the premise of seeing the stone circle and maybe checking out an old pub and surrounding buildings etc. Really, in my mind, it was an excuse to possibly, remotely possibly, in a pigs might fly way, 'bump' into Julian - as he lived locally and frequented Avebury a lot.
Mar and our visitor were interested in the gift shop way past my limited attention span so I stepped outside and as I walked around the next corner who did I see sat outside the 'Stones' veggie restaurant but Julian and Dorian!
It was was of those sharp intake of breath moments and my instincts just kicked in and marched straight up to them and introduced myself, went and fetched Mar and had a nice chat for half an hour or so. I remember asking dorky questions intended to demonstrate to him that I 'knew' his music and I still cringe a bit to this day. We got guest passes to a gig in Cambridge (we'd already seen him twice on the 20 Mothers tour but another time wasn't going to be sniffed at) and our friend went too!
Now Julian can get a bit 'out there' even for my taste in music and I have to say I have NOT listened to his 30 minute Odin chants! Recently I have not been such an avid listener and some of the recent Blood Donor stuff isn't for me.
In the realm of Jehovakill and Peggy Suicide and 20 Mothers, Julian was my favourite artist for a good 15 years and is still a top 5 favourite to this day.
I've had less aggressive strains of obsessions over the years; John Mellencamp, Rush, Thin Lizzy, Massive Attack, Portishead, The Smiths, The Human League (!!), The Jam but I feel a new aggressive obsession coming on and have done for a few years now......
I started noticing this artist later in her career than I should of but I think it was more down to the way in which she was marketed and promoted than me hearing and dismissing her.
It wasn't until I got back from Canada in 1995 that I started to catch her on shows and on the radio, she started while I was away from the UK so I didn't witness her debut or anything.
When I first heard "Down by the Water" it was like, uh, oh, yes, I like this sound, I'm liking it a lot and so it went with some of the more accessible tracks she wrote and recorded; Rid of Me, C'Mon Billy, You said something, This is Love, This wicked tongue...... I sort of liked some of her stuff and there was some quirkier stuff that was a bit beyond me but I was happy with my level of knowing and listening to PJ Harvey and then I thought it all went a bit 'south' with White Chalk in 2007, I just didn't 'get' the album at all and thought that my collection of 20 or so songs that exist on my playlist would be it. How wrong was I?
This past few weeks saw the release of "Let England Shake" - it's an album with a 'crust'; first listen and it's 'ok', maybe even 'not really my thing ok' but after the second third and fourth playing it becomes obvious, after you break though the cust, that this album is a classic, genius, out there and even a bit 'what the fuck is that'......but ultimately it's brilliant.
If you don't know the music of PJ Harvey it's not the album to introduce yourself to her with but if, like me, you've been on the fence but falling slowly to her side of it and like most of what you hear then this album seems to pull ALL of her work together to such an extent that I went back and started listening to the tracks I wasn't so keen on the first time around and ...... WOW! This is the start of a new obsession for sure.
Let England Shake is by far the best album she has written and recorded and I just can't listen to anything else but PJ at the moment, I'm sure it'll pass in a year or so but the best birthday present I could get today would be to learn that she is touring North America in the next year or so and I can hear, experience and be apart of an event where this amazing artist plays her songs, just for me and the minority!
My name is Chris, I'm 48 and my favourite artist is PJ Harvey!
Have a great day.
