THIS IS A JOURNEY INTO SOUND

As the year comes to a close, the natural instinct is to look back and take stock of the last 12 months - the highs and lows, gains and losses - and the media world goes into overdrive with endless lists of "best" songs, films, books, tv moments etc. With that in mind, i'm going to attempt my own review of the last year in music without resorting to lists or charts, just my own personal likes and views. I'm not sure if anyone actually reads this blog, but if you do, please feel free to comment with your own opinions! One thing that seemed to define the world of music this year is the Grim Reapers' seemingly endless cull of legendary, iconic, and well-loved musicians. Now, people die all the time and famous folk are no exception, but when the year began with the passing of David Bowie, the public and the media picked up on every death with a hysterical fervour, as if God was having some sort of cull. Bowies' death from cancer just days after the release of wh...

There are hundreds of Christmas albums out there, by artists of all genres and eras, and of varying quality - i love reggae, but i don't want to hear festive classics performed in a laid-back Caribbean style -, but i think that most music lovers agree on one thing: A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector is the best Christmas album ever made. You'd need to have a heart of stone not to be swept up in the joyful harmonies and Spectors' trademark Wall Of Sound mono production, with its layers of multiple instrumentation. I've always thought that sound had a festive feel to it already, but with added sleighbells and chimes it sounds like tinsel, turkey and Christmas trees. Taking perennial favourites such as "White Christmas", "Frosty The Snowman", "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town", "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer", and having artists from the Spector stable perform them - The Crystals, The Ronnettes, Darlene Love, Bob B....

One of the irrefutable truths about Christmas is that it is a bit naff, cheesy, sentimental, and certainly not something that can be dressed up as "cool" or trendy. But that is also its appeal: it's a time of certainty in an uncertain world, a time of comfort. Obviously that isn't true for everyone, and it is the duty of those who have to do something to help those who don't. But generally speaking, it is a time when we take comfort in traditions, whether they be religious, cultural, familial, or personal. And one of those traditions, love it or hate it, is the Christmas song. In this age of crass commercialism, i can understand people getting sick of hearing them, especially when every shop is playing them from mid-November (earlier in some cases), but for all that, i love Christmas songs. And when i say that, i use the term to encompass pop songs, hymns and carols, folk standards, classical and orchestral pieces, and everything in between. The only exceptions ar...

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 the calendar flipped over into 1999, the last year of the millennium (actually, 2000 was officially the last year, as a thousand years must pass, and there wasn't a year zero), and i was feeling pretty lonely in my bedsit, and really not enjoying night shifts on my own. The only thing that kept me going was music, and writing my Review section for the local newspaper, so they stopped printing it without any warning, it was a bit of a knock. So i plunged even deeper into my ever-growing record collection. The mainstream music scene had by now been almost swamped by identikit dance music, boy bands, stage school singers, and middle of the road crap. There was so much of it i found myself starting to like some of it - i had the two latest NOW albums - which was a disturbing development! I needed a jolt out of this, and it came in the form of a surprise No. 1 hit by U.S Punk band The Offspring. They had been one of the bands who were my introduction to Punk back in '94/95, but...

As i've written elsewhere in this blog, although it was increasingly easy as i grew up to get hold of older music, finding out about the artists was difficult. In a time before i had access to the internet, information about music from previous eras was either gleaned from the pages of magazines like Record Collector, or through older friends and acquaintances. In the mid 90's a satellite station named UK GOLD started broadcasting complete episodes of Top Of The Pops from the early 80's, and i was immediately grabbed by the Synthpop and electronic music - Human League, Depeche Mode, OMD and the like - and over the following years i picked up a few greatest hits and best of's, some having been introduced to me by older workmates. I was vaguely aware that some of these bands had more of a story than just a collection of shiny pop hits, especially The Human League, whose "Being Boiled" stood out a mile from the rest of their Greatest Hits album, almost sounding l...

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...