As usual, I was in a grey place a few weeks back.
As usual, I was in a grey place.
My music listening has nearly disintegrated to zero during the years of me playing piano versions: one supplants the other. There is immediate satisfaction to be had in creating music, and – as important (remember Marshall McLuhan, “the medium is the message”) – being able to share the songs, scant minutes after. Of course, I realise my preference for silence and my inability to socialise or call up people is a mark of ongoing debilitating depression. (God, I hate that WordPress does not carry a spellcheck.) Occasionally, I will try and lift myself out of it – no one is on your side, except yourself, that is the lesson I want to teach my children (but not nastily): no one will do fuck all for you if you don’t do fuck all for yourself – why should they?
Listening to myself singing to the void does not count.
Occasionally, I will listen to my iPhone with the dial set to ‘random’. Occasionally. It was a few weeks back, and the air was dank, grey. I’d been half-listening to songs on random on my new headphones (not ear buds). I am reasonably good at recognising songs that I have heard before but then a painful, torturously human lament coloured by plaintive harmonies and punctuated percusion, seasick and slightly delirious, came onto my speakers and I was momentarily thrown. Throwing Muses, I thought to myself? No. Clearly not. So I promised myself that if I could identify the band without cheating in the next 30 seconds, I would start writing about music again.
Thirty seconds in, I started laughing my fucking ass off. The only band I’ve written about since my exile from Brisbane in 2015. The Guardian, NME, Loud And Quiet, Brighton Dome… oh whatever, have endlessly quoted and requoted a review I wrote of a Porridge Radio show I saw for 40 fucking seconds at the Albert that year. (The NME even quoted me in their headline on their front page.) Before I quit playing live, I played live alongside Dana in various incarnations far more than anyone. Else.
Of course, it was Porridge fucking Radio. The one article of value I’ve written in a decade, come back to taunt me. Read, and weep.
I watched 40 seconds of the greatest band. I pretended I had watched 40 minutes when I spoke to them later because hell it’s embarrassing to have watched 40 seconds of the greatest band just as the “thank you’s” kick in and then enthuse to the band how wonderful you think they are and can they play a show with you in Worthing in November, please please please. I asked the promoter too. It is my new way of mating. See 40 seconds of the greatest band and then turn on the 54-year-old charm. Someone had whispered “Raincoats” downstairs and I scorned and they looked embarrassed too, because they were downstairs and so if it was true why were they there and if it was not true why were they saying it, and so I took the steps three at a bound only to discover 40 seconds of the greatest band, and not only was it both true and not true but it was wonderment, magic, sparky nervous magic. Whispering as if it was an orchestra, and so special. I am a git, frankly. 40 seconds I watched, and 40 minutes was there for the taking like a manifesto: the key to the newest treasure chest was in my hands and I failed to turn the lock until just so close to being so late. WHAT ELSE HAVE I MISSED IN MY MANIA?
Read not my words. Read my words and weep for my future. Read not my words, and listen. Five or six of them on stage (I did not have time to count) and they were in the groove, lost in music. Caught in (a) trap. More intimate than the sexual act (not that that is saying too much, really). A call to hugs for the lost and flighty. Ivor Cutler distilled through an alternative lens and alternative reality. Marine Girls re-imagined by a generation that has their own beachcombers. A cosmic love-bomb. Psychedelic whispering. I took all of this from 40 seconds, easy. I have that ability. So lonesome, so awkward. So beautiful. I relived the 40 seconds over and over in my head for weeks afterwards. It feels like weeks since I last felt their touch. (It is days.) You will not understand. You will understand.
Love.
This is yours, if you just stop talking and listen.
This was the song. Fuckers. Leave me alone.
How NOT to write about music 