I was a bit of a loner as a kid. Awkward and shy, i was definitely not the athletic type. I had no interest in sport (i still don't), and i was marked out for a fair bit of bullying. I did have a couple of on/off friends, but most of the time i retreated into my bedroom, and into the family record collection - i had commandeered my Dads chunky headphones as well, so i was in my own little world - and lost myself in the music. I've always been able to appreciate music from bygone eras, something that - before the music industry realised the potential of nostalgia and started raiding the back catalogues of anyone who had ever recorded a note - was unheard of in the early 80's. And certainly unusual for someone in primary school.Of course, i listened to the Top 40 and watched Top of The Pops like any kid would, and liked what i heard. But then, as now, the notion that any music that wasn't current was somehow rubbish or irrelevant was alien to me. I loved the big, colourful glam rock sound with its thumping drums, loud but melodic guitars and terrace chants. Some of it harked back to the rock'n'roll era - simple but catchy songs, delivered with the stomp of a platform boot. There were a lot of Slade 7"s in the house - all the big hits. Some T.Rex, Suzi Quatro, Sweet, The Glitter Band. A couple of Bowies. And stuff like The Rubettes and Cockney Rebel, acts who were loosely associated with the scene. But the band that caught my young ears were Mud. Whenever there are any articles or documentaries about the Glam scene of the early 70's now, Les Gray and his cohorts are usually just a footnote, and you'd be lucky to hear anything other than their No.1 hit "Tiger Feet" or their Elvis-aping moody festive smash "Lonely This Christmas". But in their day they were a huge act, 14 top 20 hits - including 3 Number Ones - between 1973 and 1976. Part of the Chinnichap stable - writers and producers Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman - along with Suzi Quatro and Sweet, they'd been kicking around since the mid-60's but remained hitless until Chinnichap took them under their wing, and in 1973 they had their first 3 Top 20 hits: the pop glam of "Hypnosis" and "Crazy", and the more Rock'n'Roll influenced "Dynamite". Most of their hits on the RAK label were in the house, and i thought they were great. I learned to appreciate Slade, T.Rex, and Bowie as i got older. But Mud were probably my first favourite band. The idea of them being seen as naff never occurred to me. I've always held the belief that a good song is a good song, regardless of genre, age, or whether it's seen as the in thing to listen to. Rob Davis is a songwriter now, having written Number 1 hits such as Kylies' "Can't Get You Out Of My Head", Spiller "Groovejet", and Fragma "Tocas Miracle". Not bad for a bloke in flares and daft earrings.
Even if you live under a rock, the news that one of the biggest and greatest pop bands who ever existed are back! back! BACK! can't have escaped your attention. ABBA, who ruled the charts and airwaves from 1976 until their split in the early eighties, have reformed, with their first album of entirely new material since 1981s' The Visitors, and a virtual live experience to follow (basically, they had an arena built in London last year, where a "virtual ABBA" based on motion capture tech and made to look like the band at their 1979 peak will "perform" nightly, rather than put their 70-odd year old selves through the stress of touring.) The excitement and anticipation caused their new ABBA Voyage website to crash just hours after the announcement, such is the love for the quartet and their music. Two of the new songs have been put online, and they are ok: "I Still Believe In You" is a typical ABBA power ballad, a song about themselves and the bond ...
The years 1994 -96 saw the nation in a celebratory mood: British music was back in the ascendant, our film industry was providing Hollywood with some serious competition, and there was a general sense of national pride in our sportsmen and women. "Cool Britannia", as the press dubbed it, saw a positive and hopeful mood that mirrored the swinging sixties. But not everyone went along, or fitted in with this mood. Certainly not Manic Street Preachers. They'd arrived in a whirlwind of eyeliner, leopard print, rage, and political sloganeering back at the beginning of the decade, declaring themselves to be celebrating the "culture of boredom, alienation, and despair", writing cut and paste lyrics attacking consumerism, capitalism, exploitation, as well as themes of the struggles of youth, despair, and other personal subjects. Their manifesto was to sell sixteen million copies of their self-proclaimed "best rock'n'roll album ever" Generation Terrori...
As 2004 dawned, my love of music became not just a passion, but a way to fill the hole in my life left by the unexpected loss of my Mum. There were some dark nights of the soul that year, and i increasingly tried to shut myself off from the world and bury myself in the sounds of whatever i was listening to at the time. Thankfully i had my new group of friends at work to stop me from sinking, and a whole new exciting explosion of bands to pick up my mood. Since the Garage Rock revival of 2002/03, a new crop of bands had emerged to take things in different directions, influenced by similar developments following the explosion of Punk in '76/77. Post-Punk was the catch-all label for bands who took the energy of Punk and the Year Zero attitude in more individual and experimental directions, incorporating all kinds of genres into their varying sounds - Jazz, Reggae, Dub, early Electronica, Metal, Psychedelia, Disco, World Music, Krautrock, even deeply unfashionable Prog - allied ...
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