Music
Music and Me
We used to be best friends. What happened?
A lack of interest, the onset of middle age, an mild attitude of disdain toward new things, a lack of access to shows (lately due to pandemic and before that, geographic location), the lack of the desire required to keep up as the years tick on, and the end of the record store ritual. All these things. But hold on, let’s back up to a time when music was everywhere in my world.
The story starts with my mother pumping music at my sister and I from a young age. She’d sit us facing each other, one ear to a speaker and the album cover between the two of us to fight over. Abba, Neil Diamond, the Seekers, Roger Whittaker, the Grease Soundtrack, the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack. A real mish mash, alright, and It all set the tone for what was to come.
I started making my own music decisions in 1983, which was one hell of a year to come into the game: Prince, David Bowie, Billy Idol, Culture Club, Michael Jackson, Tears for Fears and Duran Duran all put out some of their best work that year. Music was listened to on one of 3 radio stations that played that sort of music in the city in which I lived. Tape recorders were always ready to get another song onto a blank cassette tape. The first LP I ever bought was The Police Synchronicity. I still have it. And it’s still a great album.
In the years following, our local hero introduced my longest serving friend and I to a whole different genre, direct from England. Our sheltered suburban ears had never heard the likes of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, New Order, or hell, even Falco. Did we already know at the time that these discoveries changed everything? Maybe, but the reasons behind this guy’s knowledge of and access to this stuff never quite added up for me. He was about as English as I am.
Right around then, I purchased my own stereo system which prompted the starting of a collection of tapes. Eurythmics Revenge and Paul Simon Graceland were my first two. The latter you can still hum along with when it comes on, the former is all but forgotten, except by the most ardent Annie Lennox enthusiasts.
The mid 1980s, then, was already a mix of all sorts of things when it came to music. Yet it got even more strange. You couldn’t be a white suburban male teenager in a Vancouver bedroom community and not come into contact with similarly described people who were into Van Halen, Motley Crue, Rush, Bon Jovi and even more darkly, Metallica and Guns and Roses. Disaffected youth, playing music their parents hated. Before you say anything (and you know who you are), it could not be escaped. It was everywhere. More mish mash to add to the whole sonic mix.
And only now do I mention the Stadium Rawk of U2, INXS, Simple Minds, the Cult. Gigantic bands that made gigantic albums and went on gigantic tours and played to gigantic audiences, perhaps with a slightly more intelligent message than those mentioned in the previous paragraphs, or so one wanted to believe. Around the same time, my sister started buying music too: the Waterboys, the Cure, and World Party balanced things out, but the mish mash continued.
Later in the 1980s, I was pushed by my swimming coach, a mentor figure, in a different direction again — Bruce Springsteen, Dire Straits and Lou Reed. My music education was rounding out and a school week in Grade 12 was not complete without a missed afternoon English class, in favour of a trip to the record store. No one was the wiser and I had new music in my hands. A win all around. In hindsight, probably just a win for me.
Somewhere just after the turn of that decade, improvements in technology conspired to make these tape things obsolete. I remember taking about 300 of them to one of those music exchange places and getting $100 for my efforts. Not exactly a profit, based on what I must have spent. I just wanted them to find happy homes.
Then it was 1991 and high school was over. Now I could really show my discernment and knowledge of the world — important when entering the rare air of university — by the type of music I was listening to, only now on my portable CD player. Arriving on cue were the Clash, Billy Bragg, Social Distortion, Jane’s Addiction, the Pixies.
Happening simultaneously was the grunge explosion from Seattle and the Britpop explosion from Manchester in the UK. The time period was where the similarities ended. The Manchester thing morphed into a more marketing friendly Britpop era. The Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets and Happy Mondays came first. Then Morrissey, James, the Charlatans, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin (maybe the last one was only me). Then Oasis, Blur and the Verve. Then the Catherine Wheel and Placebo. And then it all ended — bloated, overblown and collapsing under its own weight in both cities. For many of these bands, if they are still alive they are planning their 30th anniversary tours so that they can cash in one more time in their dotage and finally call it quits.
But I kept up. The move from cassette was seamless and the first ones I purchased were Morrissey Vauxhall and I and Crowded House Woodface. I’d come a long way, I told myself.
The point is, life was about music. It surrounded me. I think about the act of searching out the music that spoke to me. Reading reviews, anticipating releases, going to the record store for a particular artist, but walking out with 2 or 3 more. Unwrapping the cassette, the CD and listening to it. All of it, start to finish and in that order. And if it was good, getting another one by that artist. Now it’s on Spotify and, I find, that exchange, that exploration is gone. There is no album art to peruse, there are no liner notes to pore over, there are no printed lyrics to decode. Yes, I know all of those things are online. But it’s not the same, is it?
The key events of life were about music. And shows. Endless shows. Life revolved around who was coming to town next. It started with Sting in 1988 at BC Place Stadium in Vancouver and then REM and then Midnight Oil. These were followed by the Who and the Rolling Stones, separately, but all in one year. They were old already then. They were moments, or a few hours, in the presence of greatness, with other people who felt the same way I did. That was the whole point.
Into the 2000s, and the prospect of shows abroad in other cities, other countries. Choosing where to travel and then looking up concert listings and finding Placebo in Barcelona or Morrissey in Lima or the Psychedelic Furs in Seattle or Primal Scream in Mexico City or Peter Hook and the Light in Buenos Aires or Depeche Mode in Bogota, Kasabian in Naples — you get the point — at the same time you were going to be there. Music festivals in cities you wanted to go to, with a smattering of bands you wanted to see. Then planning travel around shows and music festivals. Sziget in Budapest, Roskilde in Copenhagen, Fuji Rock in Tokyo, Corona Capital in Mexico City.
It was all about music, all the time, an obsession.
And then I turned 30. And it didn’t exactly stop, not all at once anyway. Technology did continue to move on and now the collection of 400 CD’s I had went the way of their cassette predecessors. I once more moved with it and since then, by the miracle of technology, I have been given access to more music via streaming services than I could ever know what to do with and yet I listen less. Why is that? I think maybe it’s too easy, having it all instantly at your fingertips. I think maybe it’s not the music, rather the ritual surrounding it that I miss most.
The entry into middle age had something to do with it, though that was a while ago now. Happens to everyone, doesn’t it? Nothing is as good anymore as when you were younger. For various reasons, my desire to immerse myself in new music just gradually faded. Yeah, I’d get into Museor Band of Horses or Delays or the National — they were new, but they were not really doing anything particularly new. LCD Soundsystem, on the other hand, now that was something new. Yes, when my favourites from the 90s put out new music, it had my attention — Morrissey, New Order, Echo and the Bunnymen, James, the Charlatans, Manic Street Preachers. But aside from them, I’m not really interested. Even with them, I’m not really interested in going too deep anymore either, for fear of being disappointed when I find out that they are not how I want to remember them, that they are a shadow of their former selves. Or…maybe I’ve got that backwards. Maybe they’ve stayed the same, and it’s me that has changed.
So what to do about this state of affairs? It’s really quite simple and it can be applied to many facets of life: accept that none of how you remember it is coming back and just put some music on. Every chance you get. I listened to the new Richard Ashcroft album of old, repurposed songs the other day and was moved to write a review. That was all it took. He hasn’t stopped making noise at my place since. The music, as it turns out, is back.
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