How Did I Miss This?

There's no logic behind the music you (or at least I) listen to. A friend tried to explain football to me once and why he supports Yeovil Town. I still don't get football, but I do get the feeling that you were meant to discover a team, or band, and follow them through thick & thin. This loyalty, borne of the hope that this is album is where they will find the spark again has been misplaced more than once. I went on buying Santana's albums long after it became obvious he didn't have another Moonflower to offer for instance.

But then there is the music that passes you by at the time and you only pick up on thirty or more years later; like Magazine.

I heard 'Shot by Both Sides' when John Peel played it, I watched them on Old Grey Whistle Test but the rest of their career came and went without me giving a second glance. Given that I liked a lot of bands from a similar part of the musical forest I don't know why. Then just a couple of months ago I saw their performance at the Electric Prom in 2009 on You Tube.This one in fact...

... and a few weeks later I have the excellent compilation 'Touch & Go', A BBC In Concert from 1978 and just downloaded today, 'Real Life and Thereafter' from the 2009 reunion tour.

The synth line in 'Definitive Gaze', Songs like 'Give Me Everything', Surely these would have struck the same chord then as they have now. I listen to a lot of music now that I was listening too in 1979/80 still and I must have heard them on the radio so why did I not pick up on this at the time? I had 30 years, I could have gone to the 2009 tour. What blinded me to the obvious quality of Howard Devoto's lyrics or Barry Adamson's bass playing for all this time? Who knows, anyway, found it now.

The question of course is what else is out there to find?  Artists I still don't get although I know I "should" like them include Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones and Leonard Cohen. At least with these I have tried, I have listened to their albums, looked for the point of entry that will connect me the millions who clearly hear something I don't.

That of course is the point of music, it is the intensely personal reaction to music, (or football) which makes the journey and the exploration worthwhile, and fills up the iPod with something to suit any mood or emotion.

Let's see what's out there...