From Aqua To Aphex Twin

I’ve toyed with the idea of starting a blog for some time.   I find it a thoroughly fascinating phenomenon, the idea of an almost open diary for anyone who has an internet connection to read and delve into.  Since the whole blogging phenomenon took off I have read many.  Some good, some bad and some merely indifferent.  People blog about everything, food, work, film, travel and countless other things.  While some merely tell the reader what sort of a day the writer has had.  As much as I love some of the aforementioned categories, for me there was really only one sensible choice as a subject area for this blog, and that is music.

To this day I’m not really sure how ‘I got into music’.  As clichéd and genuinely horrible as that turn of phrase is, in most cases there is a song, an artist or an album that alerts someone, no matter how young, how utterly fantastic music can be.  Like most children I bought some truly awful music.  Artists such as Aqua and The Cartoons spring to mind.

While some of my earliest singles were definitely questionable in terms of quality, the first album I ever purchased was (What’s The Story) Morning Glory by Oasis and retrospectively this probably was the record that first ignited something resembling a genuine passion for music.  Post Morning Glory I completely lost interest in Oasis and their egos.  However there will always be a place in my heart for the Gallagher brothers and co. because of what (What’s The Story) Morning Glory did for me as an small boy.  I was of course clueless to what much of it was actually about, the drugs references and other adult themes throughout the record went right over my head.  I just loved the music.  As soon as it was finished I merely put it on again.  And Again. And Again. 

Post Morning Glory it was not all plain sailing musically, like other children I continued to buy the odd horrible single here and there.  But thanks to Noel and Liam it wasn’t long till I was discovering other similar artists, and within a couple of years, the awful days of terrible novelty singles was a thing of the past.  Brit-Pop, then American pop-punk (Green Day, Blink, etc) before the inevitable discovery of Nirvana.  It is by no means an original musical journey, but for me it was an essential aspect of how my musical tastes were to develop in the years to come.

Nirvana’s ‘interesting’ interpretation of Smells Like Teen Spirit for Top Of The Pops in 1991.

The rest as they say is history.  As I grew up, I just wanted to hear as much music as I physically could.  My taste continued to grow and expand to include artists that I could not have possibly imagined even existed as a young lad listening to Doctor Jones by Aqua.  I became interested in hip-hop and the remarkable culture that often accompanied it.  While to begin with it was fairly mainstream stuff like Eminem and 50 Cent it wasn’t long until I wanted more and began to discover there was far more to Hip-Hop than the often mundane songs I was being spoon fed by daytime Radio 1.  To this day Phrenology by The Roots is still one of my favourite records. 

I also eventually began to be more open minded about electronic and dance music.  During my teens I was often of the opinion if it didn’t have loud guitars it wasn’t worth the time of the day.  But artists such as Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada (gradually it must be said) began to change this opinion.  Music didn’t have to merely be the typical guitar/rhythm/bass/drums combo I had spent most of youth listening to.  Music with none of the above could be equally as brilliant.

And there you have it.  My relatively straight forward journey of musical discovery.  From Aqua to Aphex Twin in seven hundred odd words.  While this post was merely an introduction into how my musical taste has grown and expanded, in the days, weeks and months to come I will use this blog to review records, gigs and to simply to write about songs, albums and artists I love.