So, it is here where I will begin to talk about my longest standing area of interest, which is Music.
My passion was heavily inspired by both my parents, and goes all the way to my Mum playing a saxophone CD boxset when I was a baby to stop me crying, or sat in traffic with my dad for 8 hours on new years eve, with Sade – Diamond Life on repeat. I think I was crying quite a bit on that occasion as well, funnily enough. From there I’ve gone on a real journey with my interest in music, learning guitar when I was young, and thoroughly enjoying the wave of fantastic indie bands we were blessed with throughout the naughties, until the classic experience of going to Uni and being exposed to dance music. This wasn’t the sort of shit that we were hearing in the commercial clubs before this point either, this was proper.
I still remember some of my earliest experiences of this being some of the best, from underground clubs in Edinburgh, to house parties in Leeds with setups which I couldn’t believe – my friends and I couldn’t get enough. From there I started building playlists of the songs I liked, I then got a turntable and speakers for my birthday and started collecting records from the labels I liked. Until eventually, I got fed up of the silence between turning records over (at afters usually), so went and bought another turntable and taught myself to mix. From there, my interest has grown beyond belief.
Music is commonly thought of as a form of art, through the way vocal and instrumental sounds are combined for beauty of form, or emotional expression, but science teaches us that sound derives from vibrations, and the frequency of which is what produces the different sounds. I constantly find myself being bewildered by the way that these vibrations come together to make me feel certain ways, especially when I’m looking at a record on a turntable. That can come from an old jazz song (such as Chet Baker – Time After Time), a soul song, (Otis Redding – Sitting on the Dock of the Bay), funk (Aquarian Dream), disco, house, punk, rock, classical, anything! I absolutely love it. A well composed song, from any genre, can make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. And I find that magical.
I’m not 100% sure on where I’m going to take this aspect of the blog, but for a lot of us, music powers us through life. Getting dressed in the morning? Stick some tunes on. On your way to work? Stick a couple of tunes on. Sat at your desk? Working on site? Doing some cooking? Yeaah stick a few tunes on. This is the case through most of our lives, to the extent where most weekends we can go out to experience this music in a different setting; bars, clubs, gigs, even good coffee shops usually have some nice music on. So I thought I’d share some thoughts on the different music I listen to in the hope that readers may enjoy it as well, because we all know there’s nothing better than finding a new track you like. During lockdown I did quite a few radio shows playing records from my collection, so I’ll be sure to link those, and I may even do a few more at some point. I’ll also likely make some playlists to go alongside posts, or link some of my current ones, which are sadly linked to my mum’s Spotify account because I starting using it before I could afford my own, lol.
Within this blog series I’m sure I’ll delve into specific songs and what I love about them, because when you really listen, there are so many details which go under the radar and make the biggest difference. I’ll also likely discuss how music and clothing intertwine and look into some of the different sub-cultures which formed as a result. But basically, I just want a place to write down all of the things which buzz round my mind when listen to music, and if any readers can take inspiration from, or relate to this, then great – because it makes music, and therefore life, so much better.
