When I was six I was bought a tape for one of my Christmas presents. After Christmas Dinner I dutifully took it out of its case and put it in the tiny radio-cassette player that my parents kept for listening to classical music. Now at this point I didn’t really expect much from the tape. The only music I had listened to was my parents classical stuff, which at that age I though was a little on the dull side (I still think some of it is or bit to plinkerty-plonk for my taste, but tastes change). As I pressed play I went back to playing with whatever new toy I had been bought and then something happened. A song started playing and I think I fell in love with it. I think I did because I can’t quite remember plus it was Notorious by Duran Duran but anyway I suddenly wanted to listen to the rest of the tape and waggle my limbs in strange and ungainly ways. The Tape is now so warped from age it’s completely unlistenable but I still have it (Now 8, for anybody who cares). But this is the real telling point though, despite the fact the tape is now officially too decayed to even contemplate listening to it I still have it. I don’t have anything else from when I was six.

So I got the first buzz from music and after moving through some really quite unfashionable phases, goth being one, I still love music. For all of its bad points and despite all the times I’ve wanted to give up and turn my back on it, I still have a desire to go out and buy at least two records a week. I mean there are so many annoying things with listening to music from not being able to find a band’s album (anybody know where to a Chills or Angelica album from? Answers on a postcard please) to not being able to go and see bands because you live in a provincial town that nobody ever wants to play. The thing is though for every time something like that happens there is also a time when you cannot move until you have heard the rest of a song or you have found the best new album ever, or you’ve just got back from a gig and realise that you haven’t stopped smiling from the first chord. I tend to think that we need all the frustrating bits that come with a nice healthy addiction to music. If everything was as easy as finding a Robbie Williams record then I would have got bored with music years ago. It’s the things that make me annoyed or that get me ranting at the charts that, perversely keep me interested in music.

Anyway that brief, rather unfocused diatribe is hopefully going to lead to something. The idea is that every issue until I get bored or Andy gets bored I will try to describe a song or album that has affected my life somehow. If anybody wants to nominate a song to be dissected in public view please email the wonderful Indigo Flow with the nomination and reasons. If I like it then it may just appear in these less than hallowed pages.