What's it all about?
"There's a cat in my alleyway,
Dreaming of birds that are blue,
Sometimes girl when I'm lonely,
This is how I think about you."
(Love Goes On - The Go Betweens)
My earliest memories of music are from around four or five, with my mum playing me lots of stuff from the 60's, including a lot by those loveable mop-tops, the Beatles. Yes, especially a lot by the Beatles - you might think she had a thing for one of them!?
My dad is a bit of a luddite though. He is really into country stuff like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and the like - but he couldn't work the record or cassette player (it was the 70's and 80's you know), so it was my mum's stuff I got most familiar with.
At around five, I found my first love - the Beach Boys - I had their '20 Golden Greats' on vinyl and I pretty much played that one to death.
When I was about fifteen, it finally sank in that I probably wasn't going to be a rock star (despite what the image to the right might otherwise suggest). I loved my music, I mean, really, really loved my music - but if you weren't in a band, that was pretty much as far as a career in music was concerned.
Wasn't it?
If only careers advice had existed in the late 1980's! I could have thought about music journalism, dj'ing, studio engineer, tour crew, or hundred's of other jobs related to music - but none of those occurred to me and I ploughed a different furrow. It has only been more recently, as I start to discuss their potential futures with my teenage children, that I stopped to wonder what might have been? And so, here I am, writing a music website with some of my thoughts and ideas and music facts - hopefully lots of facts....
I love the nerdery of music - getting stuck in under the bonnet (hood) of the songs. While I have broadened my musical taste considerably over the decades, I have always struggled with more cheesy genres. I love a good hook, catchy melody or chugging riff, but for me, I like to get down to the drum patterns, layered guitars, sliding bass notes. With a cheesy song, once you blow away the powder puff (or cheese puff, to keep this analogy going) of the catchy melody, you aren't always left with much substance.
The decades have gone by and the genres have grown; new wave, punk, post-punk, indie rock, Americana, synth pop, folk-rock, and so on.
Music still gives me that thrill and that sense of awe - just like listening to the Beach Boys or Big Country all those years ago.
James G
April 2022