Real Music

Friday 18th November

I have been incredibly lucky.  Just think; to happen to have been 12 when I first heard The Beatles.  At 12 you are just on the cusp of understanding the world, of coming to terms with it, of claiming some of it for yourself.  And The Beatles were mine, they were singing directly to me – it was real music.  I had of course heard Rock’n’Roll when I was a few years younger – but this was my parents music, and seemed to be played by old men like Bill Haley.  And it was pre-TV, so we never saw Elvis or Little Richard or Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly.  Later I went back and have appreciated their music, but back then in 1963 it was already old-fashioned.  Add to that the fact that for a few years the ‘Charts’ which we listened to every Sunday afternoon on the Light Programme were dominated by soppy songs and Doris Day and ‘I Remember You’ by Frank Ifield  – music meant nothing to me.

Then I heard ‘Please Please Me’ and the world opened up.  And ‘Wow’ the Sixties was like a cornucopia of new sounds and styles; Surf Music, Soul Music, Blues, Beatles, Stones, Yardbirds, Kinks, Spencer Davis, The Who, Small Faces, Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Doors, Simon and Garfunkel, Beach Boys, Byrds.  Every week new records, new bands, new sounds, it was so exciting.   And we were living for music; it was the centre-piece of our culture, our fashions driven by pop-stars…

The Seventies brought us Classic Rock, Prog Rock, Singer-Songwriters, Glam, Punk, New Romantics….and on and on.

But at some point the music died.  Real Music, anyway.  It all started sounding the same, no new directions.  Dance music to my ears sounded very samey.  I never got into Rap or Hip Hop or Garage or whatever they call it now.

And now we have X-factor and totally manufactured music.  The few real artists still plod on, but I doubt there will ever again be that explosion of talent and exciting new music.  I still buy new stuff, or rather new stuff by old Artists – and mostly it is okay, rarely exciting – but okay.  I’ll settle for that…

As I said I have been Incredibly lucky, and I still have to listen to real music every day, and will do until I die.