ALL ALONE IN BEDSIT LAND.....

As 1998 wore on and i changed jobs again, i decided i needed my own place. I was never going to afford a flat or house on my wages, so i found a bedsit near the centre of town. At £55 a week, it wasn't exactly a penthouse, and there was no central heating, but it suited me fine: one room, with a separate bathroom (there was a guy living upstairs), and a kitchen downstairs. Plenty of privacy, and no-one to complain about how loud my music was! And i needed the space to play more music, especially now i was receiving free cds through the post to review in my music column in the local paper. I'd been writing it for a few months now, and managed to persuade a few indie labels to send me some promotional stuff - Beggars Banquet, XL, Wall Of Sound, and a couple of others whose names escape me. It certainly helped as i now had less money to spend on music. Cds that came free with the many music magazines i read were a bonus too, and the sadly now defunct Melody Maker was one weekly who championed new bands in every issue. Not many of them were long-lived, but names like Chicks, One Lady Owner, and The New Electrics still stick in my memory. I'd gotten into some quite odd stuff that year, such as Add N To (X), a quirky electronic band who used a lot of analogue synths and retro sci-fi/horror/fetishistic imagery, and i remember reviewing their second album On The Wires Of Our Nerves. The NME had a series of live shows on telly at the time, showcasing a wide array of bands, which was connected to their yearly BRATS awards. Watching those shows in my bedsit was quite an education, even if i didn't like all the acts shown. Mansun, Ultrasound, Mercury Rev, and Idlewild were all featured, bands who i loved. Mercury Rev had a sound that was somehow nostalgic and otherworldy, a strange cinematic soundscape of guitars, keyboards, flutes, bowed saws, strings and brass that created a weird Disney-esque feel, and their album Deserters Songs was a huge critical and commercial success that year. It's a definite headphones in the dark album, and a personal favourite.

Idlewild were an indie band from Edinburgh whose melodic, edgy noise rock sound owed as much to Pavement and R.E.M as it did to hardcore bands like Fugazi and Sonic Youth. Their chaotic live performances were once described as the sound of "a flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs", and after seeing them on the Brats shows, i picked up their mini-album, Captain. Six songs and just a touch under 20 minutes long, it was an invigorating blast of crunchy, fast and loud guitars and the urgent vocals of Roddy Woomble which alternated between tuneful singing and throat shredding screaming. Their sound and approach to songwriting mellowed over time, but this introduction to the band was a short, sharp shock. I've personally never been a fan of "growling" music - heavy/death/thrash metal and the like - or vocalists who only scream, growl and grunt, but when such noises are a small but intergral part of the sound it can give the songs a exciting jolt, and i'd put Roddy up there with Pixies' Frank Black and System Of A Downs' Serj Tankian. Idlewild released their first full-length album - Hope Is Important - later that year, and it showed the band edging towards a less chaotic sound whilst still retaining the fire of the earlier songs. The singles from the album also gave them their first chart entries, each one more successful than the last until "When I Argue I See Shapes" became their first Top 40 entry. The charts were becoming less relevant to me, but i still liked to see my bands do well!

One of my favourite bands at the time - Mansun - released their second album that Autumn. SIX was about as different from their debut album the year before as it was possible to get, and really set them apart from their peers. A prog rock opus, full of songs with multiple parts and time changes, musical and vocal effects, and songs referencing such broad subject matter as Taoism, religion, gender identity, the futility of rock stardom, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, conspiracy theories and consumerism, to create a miserabilist epic. It was one of a few albums over the late 90's that redefined and broadened not only my tastes but also the way i thought about music. Alternative and indie music still had quite a grip on the tastes of the nation though, and a band such as Mansun could produce hit singles from a wilfully uncommercial album, the lead-off single "Legacy" becoming one of their biggest hits.

Alone in bedsit land, working nights in a petrol station dealing with drunks, druggies and dickheads, music became even more important to me. I would occasionally have a night out, either locally or at the indie disco at Rock City in town, but i generally led a solitary life at the time.  But i was happy to stay cocooned in tunes.