THIS IS A JOURNEY INTO SOUND

As an 18 year old discovering Punk and all its various offshoots, the band who were the catalyst for the initial movement were the band who it took me the longest to get into. I'm talking of course about the Sex Pistols. Depending on whose account you believe, the band were brought together and masterminded by Malcolm Mclaren, a entrepreneur and clothes designer with a anarchic and provocative streak who owned a boutique on the Kings Road in Chelsea which sold clothes featuring taboo designs often based on fetishwear. For a while they were more famous for their reputation and getting kicked off record labels than their music, and the music often took a back seat - they were beaten to the punch by The Damned, who released the first UK Punk single ("New Rose")  a good month or so before the Pistols debut, "Anarchy In The Uk". It was nearly a year later on 28th October 1977 that their debut - and only - album was unleashed upon a by now suspecting publ

Bands are like friends. The really great ones stick with you, and although you may go long periods without contact, and have other friends, you always come back to one another and pick up where you left off. It's like that for me with Madness. Throughout my life i have become acquainted with, loved and fallen out of love with, liked and disliked many bands and artists, but i've always gone back to Madness. But you get older and your life, your circumstances, your relationships all change, and you find new friends that reflect those changes. As i've gotten older and found myself in a proper relationship for the first time, i've experienced new feelings, new situations, that i didn't have the emotional language to understand or explain, and i needed a new best friend to help me make sense of it all. Enter The National. An indie rock band from Ohio, they first entered my consciousness in 2005 when their third album, Alligator, became a critical - if not commercial - su

Time to listen to music (old or new) has been scarce lately, as has the time on my own to do so - listening to music has rarely been a communal thing for me - so although i've made a few more additions to the collection i've rarely had the chance to play them. There have been a few purchases from the iTunes store, downloaded directly onto my new iPod Touch, which i've been listening to at work - a few old Rock 'n' Roll compilations and a Billy Fury 2 for 1 featuring his first two albums, which i bought after seeing a Billy Fury documentary on the iPlayer. I've always had the ability to enjoy music that was made long before i was born, and the music of American diner jukeboxes has always stirred a curious nostalgia in me, a fascination for a time that i've never known. Early R'n'R, doo wop, r'n'b, all from a time that seemed more simple. I've also downloaded a huge New Romantic compilation packed full of Synthpop, Electronica, and Pop from