THIS IS A JOURNEY INTO SOUND

I began 1998 quite bored with my job, and determined to get out. Whilst i kept a look out for alternative employment, music - as always - provided an escape from the daily grind. The charts were slowly being dominated by pop fluff - boy bands, girl bands, crap dance remakes of 70's songs, dance music (not decent stuff, but the sort of shite aimed squarely at Saturday night townies and their "disco dollies"), bland soul artists, R'n'B, and boring MOR Radio 2 bands like The Corrs, Lighthouse Family, and Savage Garden. The execrable music of Steps and Robbie Williams were inexplicably huge, and alternative /indie music's influence on the mainstream was on the wane. Bands and music that would have spent weeks in the Top 40 just a year before would be out of the hit parade in a matter of just 3 or 4 weeks. There was one exception that year, though. Catatonia, an indie band who had only scraped the bottom reaches of the Top 40 previously, would turn out to be one o

Record labels aren't just businesses, or just a channel between musicians and the public. They're an identity, an aesthetic, and an iconic part of the mythology of music. Motown, Stax, Virgin, Island, Columbia, Blue Beat, Postcard - all names that will instantly bring to mind the artists signed to them, and the eras and genres associated. Thinking back to my introduction to music as a kid, the paper label in the middle of the 7" single was just as interesting to me as the music itself. The record company logo, the artwork (if there was any), the information about the artist and song too. Delving through my parents collection (mainly my Dads), certain labels became attached to certain types of music. The Bell and Rak record labels are forever attached to Glam Rock, the former being the home of the now disgraced king of glam, Gary Glitter, as well as his backing group, The Glitter Band, who had several big hits on their own, whilst the Mickie Most-owned RAK, with i

Joy Division - Substance (1977 - 1980) In early 1995, i was watching an episode of Sounds Of The Seventies - one featuring Punk and New Wave bands, music which i was still discovering - when something very different made me sit up straight, something that stood out from the buzzsaw guitars and anarchic lyrics. I'd heard of the varied, experimental and creative period that followed Punk, dubbed Post-Punk by the music press, but i'd heard very little of it. Years later, there would be a host of bands influenced by this amazingly diverse era of music, but in the mid-90's it was barely mentioned. I'd also been made aware of the band that would become 80's electronic indie giants New Order, but not heard a single note. So when footage of Joy Division appeared on my tv screen i had no preconceptions about their sound. A performance of their 1979 debut single "Transmission", from a show called Something Else, a youth-oriented tv series.Four serious young

By the end of 1997, the scene that the music press dubbed Britpop was dead. Some might say Oasis killed it with their self-indulgent and overblown Be Here Now album, recorded in a blizzard of drugs and egotism. "Girl Power" was now the word on everyone's lips, due to the chart conquering Spice Girls, and their more urban counterparts All Saints, both of whom i will admit were quite good at what they did: big pop tunes and soul/r'n'b-infused pop respectively. Add to this the increasing amount of boybands, dance music, and r'n'b/hip-hop/gangsta rap from across the pond, and the charts were starting to look quite lonely for indie music. It wasn't all bad: Blur had shaken off their Kinksian/Mod stylings and returned with an album of alternative lo-fi indie influenced by American bands like Pavement, mainly at the urging of guitarist Graham Coxon, who hadn't been happy with the direction the band were going in, especially after the Benny Hill tomfooler

As a kid, one of the bands that stood out in my Dads record collection were Squeeze. Three singles -"Cool For Cats", "Up The Junction", and "Another Nail In My Heart" -, none of which i actually understood until years later, but still enjoyed listening to. I'd heard a couple of their other songs on the radio too, but these three 7"s were generally all i knew of them. Until 1987 that is. They'd split up in the early 80's but got back together after a couple of years, and in the summer of that year they were suddenly back in the Top 20, and on Top Of The Pops, so i was quite interested to see them. "Hourglass" was a big hit here and in the States, thanks to the quirky video being on high rotation on MTV, and i really liked it. My Mum bought me the album it came from - Babylon And On - probably as much for her to listen to, and i remember being transfixed by it.  As an 11 year old i the adult themes in the lyrics were still a bit