Thursday 21st November

As you must be aware from my various music blogs, I am in love with Music.  And just like that other Love, my love of music has gone through many stages.  There was that mad rush of infatuation as an 11 year old on hearing the Beatles for the first time.  This was the age of discovery, Beat Music, Surf, Soul, the Blues, Rock’n’Roll and R’n’ B, and it truly was a Golden Age.  New bands, new ideas, new trends, new technology, better recording studios; the electric guitar went from a twang to a squeal; the electric organ went from ponderous notes to the synthesizer, drum kits expanded and even went electric.

But also the song, the idea of the song changed.  From a less than three minute verse, chorus, verse chorus, bridge, verse and chorus routine it stretched out and became anything the composer wanted it to be.  Words suddenly became important, poetry became song; love was not the only acceptable subject to write about.  In short Music became an art form for the masses.

Classical music had always been an Art form, but a highly class-ridden one, as it still is.  I can remember my first Music lesson at Grammar School, the teacher was scribbling notes onto the five-lined music blackboard, and as a couple of us were obviously lost in confusion he told us it wasn’t his job to teach us to read music, we should have learnt that at our (private) schools.  All we had done was sit cross-legged in the Assembly Hall and sung along to a few folk-songs (Who is Sylvia is the only one I can remember).  Incidentally a year or so later he derided The Beatles and said no-one would remember them in five years time, whereas Schubert, Mozart etc would be revered forever.

But my love affair has deepened over the years, every now and then a new artist appeals to me, but mostly it is mining the deep seam laid down in the sixties and seventies and a few that occurred later.  I love so many Artists that even keeping up with every new release becomes a struggle.  But I try.  And although I am addicted to listening to new recordings, I have a ‘playlist’ invented long before the word was invented, where I alternate old records with a rotating rota of new stuff.

Where will it all end?  In an almighty skip I presume as my kids throw out albumafter album of stuff they have never heard of.   Hahaha