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.
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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.
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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 future thoughts 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....
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Because I love the nerdery of music - getting stuck in under the bonnet of the songs. While I have broadened my musical taste considerably over the decades, I have always struggled with the 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 left with much of substance.
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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.
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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.
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James G
April 2022
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