Bands of Gold

2005-12-21T22:45:00.000Z

There have been periods in my life when I have completely forgotten how much I love music. Sometimes I think that I must have spent much of my life working, watching the television, reading books and staring into space - all of it whilst not listening to any music whatsoever. How did this happen? I grew up desperate to play a musical instrument, or to have a part of the exhilarating world of music. I was gigging by the age of 15, and in recording studios before I was 18.

Somewhere along the way, I lost the plot. I stopped playing the drums, stopped going to see bands, and stopped buying albums. Then, at the start of this year, I got involved in an almost legal shoutcasting thing, and it has all come back to me. The sheer, visceral thrill of listening to a great song for the first time, or discovering that a band whose name has been bouncing around in the back of my subconscience for many years were listening to after all. I trawl through the MP3 blog, quietly accumulating a peculiar record collection of whatever I come across. I can almost combine it with my frankly unnecessary knowledge of old television programmes. One evening a couple of weeks ago I had the most unaccountable urge to listen to the theme tune to "Sportsnight", so I had a look online and, several minutes later, there it was. It was, of course, as good as I remembered. God bless the internet. And here it is.

I was sitting in this very room, on this very duvet, this morning, when I, apropos of nothing much, put on a song called "Faded Glamour", by a band called Animals That Swim. I listened to it with my eyes shut and, by the end of it (and, might I add, much to my surprise), a tear had rolled down my cheek. Today, therefore, I have been trawling through my MP3 collection and listened to a large selection of songs that I had all but forgotten about. Bands like Teenage Fanclub and Dinosaur Jr., who I felt defined me so perfectly that I was, for many years, incapable of understanding anybody who didn't appreciate them. As you can probably imagine, I felt very pious at the time, though I have to admit that, looking back, the only thing it did was narrow my friendships to a band of similarly geeky music fetishists. It has taken me years to recover.

Of course, I'm older now and, strangely, I've become much more open-minded in this respect. Ten years ago, I'd have probably left the room when "Super Sharp Shooter" by The Ganja Kru came on, but nowadays I'm more than happy to listen to it, mouth agape, head swaying side from side like a dandelion in the wind. I don't think I'd have given "Jump" by Van Halen much of a chance, either, but I'm listening to it and having to almost restrain myself from stooping typing in order to play air keyboard. I sometimes wonder if Eddie Van Halen is aware of this unexpected offshoot of his musical career.

Funny, really. You're supposed to get more narrow-minded as you get older.

200percent

Bands of Gold