Sunday 6th August

You get the feeling that Music doesn’t matter anymore.  It is merely background. On adverts, or in dramas on telly, or in lifts or Restaurants.  It tinkles along but in no way does it really matter. But Music used to matter.  Really, since the Second World War, Music had mattered.  To whole generations, and each generation created or worshipped their own music.  It was tribal, it defined us, it divided us, it became a badge of identity.  It was almost the first thing you asked a new potential partner, often in an obscure way “Have you heard the new single by …….” And pretty quickly you found out if you had ‘The Music’ in common.  I have been drawn to women who liked Leonard Cohen in the past – but it doesn’t seem to matter anymore – just like Music itself.

But what was it about Music that mattered?  After all, in my youth it was quite hard to come by.  We were too young to own a record-player, though I had a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and I used to tape every week’s Top of the Pops onto two 120 tapes, having to tape over them every 8 weeks.  We would haunt coffee-bars which had the best Juke-Boxes and really think about our three selections as we grasped our precious shilling in our hands.  I had a tiny tranny (what a pity that word means something else now) and would listen under the bedclothes to Radio Luxemburg, turning my head with the radio glued to my ear, trying to get a semi-decent signal.  Downstairs we had a Bush portable with that big dial on the front, and I knew exactly where Caroline and London were to be found.

We talked about Music at school, marveling as the Sixties unraveled at the amazing cornucopia of new sounds and styles emerging.  Every new record seemed to be pushing the boundaries.  Just look at the trajectory of the nine years the Beatles were recording for – how different “I saw her standing there” is to “Abbey Road”.

And all through the Seventies and Eighties it continued, even into the early Nineties, but by then there were too many manufactured Boy and Girl Bands, and records were becoming formulaic.

Music can still be good, in fact there are hundreds of brilliant singers and some great songs still being written.  But as you can now listen to whole albums for free on Youtube or Spotify, or download from pirate sites – none of it seems to have any real value.  Music hasn’t died, but it doesn’t really matter anymore.