When it comes to music, I’ve realised that I’ve always preferred to take the road less travelled…or at least preferred bands that have a cult or niche appeal. Now, I am not sure if shunning the popularati of the hit parade was some feeble kind of rebellion by a younger Master Lock or whether it was borne out of that accidental encounter with the NME Encyclopaedia of Rock in the school library back in 1985. I think this is why I’ve always sided with relatively obscure progressive rock bands and tried to be sniffy about other people’s more mainstream music tastes.
Anyway, I’ve always resisted artists that I’ve deemed to be too popular. A good instance of this was Nick Drake. I’d always perceived him to be the deceased champion of the upper middle classes – you know, pale vegetarian Guardian readers with a taste for angst folk. And so I’d resisted him for a long time, even though secretly in my heart I’d knew that I’d like his music a lot. And so about five years ago, I took the plunge and managed to nab a CD copy of his Fruit Tree compilation on eBay. I’ve been a fan ever since. I was just in denial.
Of course, there have been instances when I’ve championed bands who suddenly become popular and this always makes me feel very uncool. A couple of names spring to mind: Faith No More and Pulp. However, both these bands have subsequently split and so it is OK for me to embrace my fandom again. Well today, I was scouring my favourite legitimate digital music provider eMusic and I noticed that a band called Belle and Sebastian had its albums available. Now I remember back to 1996 and being blitzed by various working companions about how good this band was, but I resisted because at that time this band was too cool, too hip for me. I knew that they were from the Nick Drake school, but again I was going to resist the music. But today, it is OK for me to download this band’s music because their star is on the wane. The trendy music press is far more interested in the likes of the Artic Monkeys (who I plan to get into in about 5 years time). So I downloaded Tigermilk and had a jolly afternoon’s listening. What next? Maybe I will listen to that Elastica album now…enough time has passed, surely?
Of course, as I’ve got older, my tastes have actually got broader. There’s a lot of music I can listen to now that I wouldn’t have dreamed of listening to a decade ago. And that’s a good thing – because all music is a power for good. Though I’ve still not got the hang of gangsta rap (I prefer old skool B-Boy stuff, myself) and some country music.
Talking of country music, what happens when you play country records backwards?
You get your job back, your wife cancels the divorce and your dog returns from the grave…

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