why do I like the music I like?

Even though I have thousands of songs, on CDs, records, cassettes and on my iPod I do actually have favourites. And although I'm constantly seeking out new music (either brand new bands or artists, or older stuff that is 'new' to me) I tend to find that my absolute top favourite songs have remained pretty consistent for many years. Does this mean that new stuff I'm hearing isn't as good? Well no, not at all, but there was a study recently which, annoyingly, I simply cannot find now, which put forth the theory that the songs we really like in our teens are the ones that tend to leave the biggest mark. In my case this is certainly true. I wish I could find that study - I've looked in vain for the University of Spurious Factoids... anyway...

Although I love recent acquisitions such as "Way Out Of Here" by Porcupine Tree or Johnny Cash's "If You Could Read My Mind" (just two of many songs that have affected me deeply in the past year or so) my all time favourites are songs which I first heard between starting senior school and leaving University. 

So why is this, and why haven't (arguably better) songs that I've heard in the past 20 years or so had quite such an affect on me?  

Mum used to play a lot of music when I was young - I remember lots of Beatles, who I still really like. But society dictates that it's not cool to like your parents' music, and although I was never that bothered about being cool it's when you hit your teens that you start to individualise your likes and dislikes. Even subconsciously you move away from the things that your parents are into, even if you weren't especially rebellious, like me.

There was something old fashioned about the previous generation's music, a distinction that doesn't seem to apply as much today - with iTunes and the ability to download any music from any era, downloading Elvis followed by Lady Gaga really doesn't seem that odd. My iPod slots Robin Guthrie next to Roxy Music next to Roy Orbison - music that is separated by half a century, but which can be played one track after another without sounding strange. I suppose it just proves that good music is genuinely timeless. 

The stuff I started buying in 1980, David Bowie, Ultravox, Visage in the very first instances was the first music that I had actively chosen myself. This, I think, is what makes this music so special, and so memorable. It was mine, it related to me and I related to the music.  

Of course around the same time I had pocket money that could be spent on records. This also allowed me the freedom to buy whatever I wanted. This is when Iggy Pop entered my collection, records that my parents wouldn't like (and still don't to be honest...). I didn't buy Raw Power deliberately to annoy anyone, I really liked it, but I was aware that the sheer noise of the record was my secret, not to be shared with anyone else. This freedom was terribly exciting and I suppose that the music from those years is indelibly bound up with those emotions. Possibly why it sticks in the memory so well.

Another reason is that, unlike now, when I have thousands of songs at my fingertips, then every new album was obsessively poured over, every sleeve note was read and re-read, every note was listened to again and again. I even remembered all the track times of David Bowie's songs for heaven's sake. No idea why, I just remembered them all - for the record "Ziggy Stardust" is 3.23 long, as if anyone else really cares...

With just a few albums in my possession each song was proportionately more important, and was played hundreds of times. Everything I heard was new, every album, every song, every note opened new worlds, new possibilities. There's also the feeling that the music I was discovering then was somehow just right - to me this was how music was supposed to sound, explaining why music that came a generation before me and all that came after I was grown up sometimes sound a bit 'wrong'. This was my music. It wasn't the popular music that I liked either, it was just stuff that I liked, and much of it was downright weird and left field. Plus I had no musical training, so I had no way of explaining why I liked what I liked, it was just a gut reaction. Even now I can't explain that, oh here's a I-IV-I-V chord progression and there's a key change one whole tone higher for the last chorus, or various other bits of music theory and song construction, but intuitively I understand what's going on, and I know what sounds good to me. Subconsciously my brain has absorbed the bits that I like, and I excitedly recognise further combinations of really cool key changes etc, without knowing exactly what it is that I'm hearing.

The lack of portability (I didn't have a Walkman until the end of the 1980s) meant that pretty much all my listening took place in my bedroom between the two large speakers diametrically placed in opposite corners - one on top of the wardrobe, one at the foot of the bed. So many songs remind me so much of sitting at my desk or laying on my bed. It was my own private world and I loved it. And while it is marvellous having an iPod so I can take all my music anywhere at all, I wonder if this lack of a permanent 'home' for all these songs contributes to some of them lacking that emotional sense of belonging. Maybe music, just like people, needs a proper home and a nebulous bit of digital memory somehow isn't quite right.

the album I've played more than any other

I have probably played Scary Monsters And Super Creeps by David Bowie more than any other album; I know every part of every track inside out. But it’s a measure of how good this record is that I still don’t get bored of it, never skip any tracks, and get a huge amount of pleasure from it, every time I hear it.

The basic tracks for Scary Monsters were recorded in a two week period in New York in the early part of 1980, then DB took a break to work on the lyrics. By April 1980 he was in London overdubbing and recording the vocals. In between early gigs with the League Of Gentlemen Robert Fripp would travel to Tony Visconti’s Good Earth studio to lay down what he later described as 'burning guitar'. It was released in September just after “Ashes To Ashes” had become Bowie’s second ever number one. Promoted by the most New Romantic of New Romantic videos (and featuring Steve Strange and other weirdly attired denizens of Strange’s Blitz Club) this was a truly magical marriage of sound and vision, and it was seeing this video on Top Of The Pops that really converted me to David Bowie. I bought Scary Monsters on cassette as I didn’t have a record player at that time. From Woolworths as I remember, at the very end of 1980, using some of my Christmas money. And I loved every track straight away - never has an album had such a huge and immediate impact on me. I have, quite obviously, never looked back… Buying that cassette is surely one of the pivotal moments of my life.

The first track features tons of tape hiss, a mad Japanese woman shouting angrily, some seriously odd singing from Bowie, Fripp’s anguished guitar and an ending that involves Fripp playing an atonal circular pattern until someone screams out 'Shut Up!' - I had no idea what was happening but I knew right away that it was, somehow, quite brilliant.

After the torment of "It's No Game" we get the lopsided chant of "Up The Hill Backwards" where DB is buried in the mass of vocals and after just two oblique verses and no obvious chorus the song dissolves into more Frippian noise. The title track follows, with Bowie's mockney voice back on show, though with a sinister, theatening edge. There is also an eerie electronic sibilence present on the sss sounds, just enough to make you shiver slightly. A propulsively catchy song, though it was no more chart friendly than "Up The Hill..." - that didn't stop RCA milking the album for all it was worth and issuing both as singles in early 1981.

The fourth track is the magnificent "Ashes To Ashes", a follow up to Bowie's first big hit, "Space Oddity". A vaguely reggaeish beat, cool synths, mysteriously obscure lyrics - the was the blueprint for all subsequent New Romantic songs. The video just capped it all beautifully. 

"Fashion" follows next, one of the sleekest and catchiest dance tracks Bowie has ever recorded. It's impossible to sit still while this song plays. Yet amongst the hard New York funk there's still space for some savage guitar from Fripp. 

Over on side two things seem a little calmer to begin with. "Teenage Wildlife" comes on like an update of the "Heroes" sound, not least in the mid paced tempo and Fripp's laser beam lead lines. There's a stunning fatalistic quality to the whole song and the the lyrics and especially the vocals themselves take it to another place altogether. As Bowie reflects on his life he finds himself being asked for advice by the new wave... although he rather sadly sees them as 'the same old thing, in brand new drag...'. One of them asks him directly, 'David what shall I do, they wait for me in the hallways?' to which he replies, rather wonderfully, 'Don't ask me, I don't know any hallways'. It's rare that Bowie ever refers to himself directly in song, and on this occasion he's deliberately distancing himself from the next wave of musicians and artists, setting himself apart once again. At just 33 he doesn't like the way he's being set up as an elder statesman to the next generation.

"Scream Like A Baby" follows, and we are back in one of David's nightmare future worlds. As with "Diamond Dogs" or "Sons Of The Silent Age" an unnamed State is persecuting anyone with individuality. It's a chilling song but presented in a remarkably cheery tune.

Tom Verlaine's "Kingdom Come" is the only cover on the record but both the sound of the recording and the lyrics themselves fit perfectly with the mood of side two - a resigned acceptance of whatever fate throws at us. Bowie's acrobatic vocals are arguably some of his finest ever. 

"Because You're Young" is desperately sad. Ostensibly addressed to his son, it becomes a lament to lost opportunities as it touches on the pain of his broken marriage. For someone who usually hides genuine emotion behind characters and play-acting the line 'She took back everything she said, and left him nearly out of his mind' is about as raw a line as Bowie has ever written, and it's hard not to cry at the conclusion as he really sings his heart out - 'a million dreams, a million scars'.

After that the second version of "It's No Game" comes as something of relief. Shorn of the manic Japanese vocals, and with Fripp reigning it in, this version restates the themes of tolerance and acceptance whilst at the same time condemning fascism and extremists. A few seconds after the song has ended we hear the sound of the tape running off the spool and flicking round and round.

There is the sense that much of Scary Monsters is concerned with tying up the loose ends of the 1970s. "It's No Game" was first demoed in 1970 and the revised lyrics put to bed the ghosts of Bowie's Thin White Duke phase when he was falsely accused of flirting with fascist iconography. "Fashion" was developed from a 1975 song called "Jamaica"; "Scream Like A Baby" takes the tune from "I Am A Laser", a 1973 song from the unfinished Astronettes project. Add to this the way that "Ashes To Ashes" brings down the blinds on the Major Tom saga and "Because You're Young" brushes away the ashes of his marriage and it is clear that Bowie wanted to start the 1980s with a clean slate.

So strong is Scary Monsters that it has become the benchmark by which every subsequent Bowie album is marked. So many Bowie album reviews in the last 30 years have included the words 'perhaps Bowie's best since Scary Monsters...'

For me it is one of the greatest albums ever made, and certainly Bowie's greatest achievement, a collection of 10 songs linked by a mood, a vague theme of regret and remembrance balanced by an urgency and desire to move forwards. There are moments on this album that are among my very favourite musical moments ever - for example, the spine-tingling synth solo at the end of "Ashes To Ashes" is something I wish could go on for ever. It doesn't but that doesn't matter; Scary Monsters has been with me for 31 years now, and I know it will be with me for another 31 and for ever.

harold budd / cocteau twins - the moon and the melodies

It's weird how just one song can conjure up so many memories.

A chance encounter with the rather ungrammatical "Ooze Out And Away, Onehow" from The Moon And The Melodies took me right back to the house I rented in Lancaster for the autumn term 1986. After a long winded series of housing disasters three of us ended up in a lovely three storey Victorian terraced house in lofty Regents Street. A great house, with high ceilings, large rooms, a scarily dark basement and a bathroom that might well have been the original (I'm pretty sure the very clunky plumbing was).

The top storey of the house was locked up - the landlord lived there, or rather he did when he was in the country. I think he was a roadie or something like that, he certainly wasn't a responsible landlord as we were to find out. The bedrooms were all on the first floor and we drew lots for the rooms. I ended up with the biggest, across the whole of the front with two tall windows overlooking the leafy street. Kevin and Tim, both of whom I've entirely lost touch with, had rooms at the back, still decently sized though not as enormous as my room. It was about 25 feet across by perhaps 15 deep, furnished only by a ricketty wardrobe, a massive bed, a big, saggy armchair dragged upstairs from the lounge that we never bothered to use, and a tiny desk that I never found a satisfactory home for, moving it almost daily around the huge room so that it constantly faced a different direction.

Music came from my solid little Sony cassette deck and a constantly growing selection of tapes. That term I remember playing lots of Cocteau Twins, lots of Grace Jones, King Crimson and the two Cluster and Brian Eno albums which I must've just got hold of as I played them loads - I remember one night playing "Broken Head" over and over as I loved the weird wobbliness of the keyboards.

So far so good. We had friends just a few houses down the street in an identical house, though their cellar was clear and clean and perfect for some excellent parties. We settled in well, my £200 Vauxhall Viva worked just enough to get me to and from the campus and apart from reversing into a tree everything was great (I genuinely didn't see the magnificent oak behind me; I swear it must have leapt about three feet forwards).

Then the landlord vanished. He had never been around much, but he just disappeared completely. And the bills, which were all in his name (electricity and gas were all included in our rent), started to mount up. After a few weeks of increasingly red reminders dropping through the letterbox we decided to open one. Hundreds of pounds were owed, going back way before we'd moved in. A phone call to the Gas Board found them sympathetic, but not enough not to cut off the gas. The electricity company kindly let us keep the power, but they installed a meter (looking back, I'm not sure why the gas people didn't do that too, but they didn't). So with about 4 weeks of term left we had lights and power but no hot water or central heating. And it was then that having the biggest room became a problem. The lovely huge windows were very draughty, and a the wind would howl down the chimney into my impressive chunky fireplace. I froze.

I spent more time than ever in bed, keeping warm under the duvet. Tricky when it came to write essays though. I can remember working late into the night, which everyone knows is the best time to write history essays, and sometimes it was bitterly cold. One night I woke up at about 4am to watch the Australian Grand Prix, live. I dragged my little black and white portable over and perched it on the end of the bed and watched through a gap in the covers. Nigel Mansell simply had to finish in the points to win the Championship. Towards the end of a race that he'd led from the start he managed to blow a tyre along a dead straight bit of the track and put himself out of the race and the Championship. Poor Murray Walker was beside himself.

Anyway, that song, the strangely titled "Ooze Out And Away, Onehow". It's from an album recorded by the brilliant Californian pianist Harold Budd in conjunction with Scottish ethearalists Cocteau Twins (who aren't twins, and there's three of them). I was already a big fan of both Budd (especially his groundbreaking ambient records with Brian Eno) and the Twins so this collaboration was perfect for me. The eight tracks that comprise The Moon And The Melodies are divided cleanly into four songs and four instrumentals, with the songs beginning and ending each side of the record (remember them?). The album was released on 10 November 1986 so I must've had a good month in which I played that chilly echoey music to death, in my chilly echoey room. The songs are basically gentler Cocteau Twins songs, with the drum programmes turned down a bit. Budd's atmospheric keyboards are to the fore where they compete with Robin Guthrie's equally atmospheric guitar. The instrumentals are more Budd, but with added synths, swirly guitar effects and sometimes a saxophone so faint that you wonder if you've imagined it.

Despite the clear cut division of labour the whole album works extremely well as a whole album, and without exception every track is superb. Harold Budd reused "Memory Gongs" on his own album, the excellent Lovely Thunder (released around the same time as TMATM. For no obvious reason he retitled the piece "Flowered Knife Shadows" which is a rather silly title, though secretly I'm rather impressed by the sheer pretentiousness of it. Some of the other track titles derive from earlier Cocteau's songs - "Ooze Out And Away, Onehow" actually comes from a line in a song on Head Over Heels. 

It's also the final song on TMATM and begins imperceptibly, building halfway through with the introduction of the drums. Elizabeth Fraser's vocals are magnificent; no idea what she's singing as usual, but it doesn't matter as the sound of her voice is far more important that the meaning. Every track gives off a glacial feel, every track is imbued with winter itself creating images of chilly fog and ice on branches... I played it over and over; the album was the soundtrack to those chilly nights as I tried to write essays at my itinerant little desk, or as I sat in the huge armchair drinking extremely cheap wine (hey, we were students) while candles lit the room and dribbled multicoloured rivulets of wax down the old wine bottles I used as candlesticks (really, how much more student-y can you get?).

At the end of that term the University took pity on us and found us all rooms back on campus after Christmas, so we were back in the warm, and with hot water once again!

Sometimes that all seems such a long time ago, but then I hear something like The Moon And The Melodies and it all comes back again. It's a record that is absolutely right for a house in which you could see your breath indoors. 

it's immaterial

It’s Immaterial. Anyone remember them?

A duo who made a handful of singles and only two albums – the first in 1986 Life’s Hard And Then You Die, followed four years later by their masterpiece, Song. Then – nothing.

John Campbell, a Mancunian, formed the band with some Liverpudlian friends in 1980. One of the early members was Henry Priestman, who later formed The Christians. Jarvis Whitehead joined the band in 1982 and a small number of well received, but commercially unsuccessful singles ensued. (One of these, the faintly loopy "A Giant Raft (In The Philippines)" seems to have been issued again and again - the band must have thought it was good, but still no-one bought it...) By 1984 the band was down to just Campbell and Whitehead, but a John Peel session that year revealed a newfound determination, and some cracking new songs. With his very dry wit and laconic delivery Campbell's new songs amusingly celebrated the mundane and the ordinary and transformed them into something heroic.

And then they had a hit single! The sombre yet oddly jolly "Driving Away From Home" slipped into the top twenty in early 1986, an infectiously catchy road movie for the ears, set in the industrial north of England and surely the only song in the world to sing the praises of motoring on the M62... It's Immaterial entered the glitzy world of Top Of The Pops, videos and pop stardom with their customary reticence and slightly bemused embarrassment. A follow up single, "Ed's Funky Diner", was not as successful but paved the way for their first album Life's Hard And Then You Die. Although perhaps none of the songs are quite as quirkily moody as "Driving..." the album still contains a wealth of invention and darkly catchy melodies. It’s as if The Blue Nile has been given a minor injection of funk, mixed with the dry social commentary of the Pet Shop Boys, topped by with some gorgeous harmonies courtesy of members of The Christians - the album is nothing less than delightful.

And then they vanished until 1990 when the album Song just appeared – with no fanfare, no publicity, no promotion. The accompanying single "Heaven Knows" did receive a little airplay, but was strangely released some months after the album (although it did contain a couple of non-album tracks as b-sides).

The critics loved it but hardly anyone bought either single or album, which was a terrible shame as Song is 50 minutes of handcrafted perfection. Calum Malcolm produces - he was also responsible for The Blue Nile’s contemporaneous Hats, (a truly stunning record with which Song compares very favourably). The similarities are strong – the wistful aching vocals, the minor key balladry, the simple yet catchy keyboard led songs, the way many tunes build from near-silence to a passionate heart-rending conclusion, yet all achieved with seemingly little effort or the usual rock / pop bluster. These two albums inhabit their own worlds. They have little or nothing in common with the prevailing musical trends of the late 1980’s. The subject matter is often banal – the trials and tribulations of everyday suburban life – work, the kids, holidays, attempts to move house - but dealt with in such a surprisingly emotional way.

Song contains some beautifully elegant songs – the opening "New Brighton" sets the scene, led by delicate keyboards and a robust but unobtrusive drum programme and a weary and melancholic mood conjuring up an air of remembrance and regret. "Heaven Knows" offers gentle encouragement 'it's gonna be alright' over a wistful backing. "Life On The Hill" is more solid, with insistent programming creating an understated funky rhythm, but in general the album lives in a  world of rain, small Northern towns and people who may wish to escape the mundanity of their lives, but can't but really escape their surroundings or their pasts,

No further It's Immaterial records ever emerged. A third album, House For Sale, was recorded and apparently finished in 1992, but it has never been released. John Campbell was told by various labels that they would not issue the record as it was 'too dark'. In 2010 a couple of tracks leaked onto the internet - far from being dark, these songs reveal themselves as a continuation of the themes and sound of Song; melancholy and introspective yes, but not really 'dark'.

What they did after this is a complete mystery to me. Neither Campbell or Whitehead appear to have formed other bands, or recorded any other songs. It's a terrible shame as It's Immaterial created some extremely clever and memorable songs, and Song in particular is so very lovely and clearly the product of two very talented musicians. 

explorers

After Roxy Music fell apart at the end of the 1983 USA tour Bryan Ferry embarked upon years of solo work, overdubbing slowly and painstakingly. 

His Roxy colleagues, Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay, preferred a more traditional band environment and stuck together as The Explorers. Recruiting a friend of Andy's, James Wraith, as a vocalist, the trio recorded their self-titled album during 1984 with the assistance of Phil and Andy's stellar musician friends - variously, Jerry Marotta or Steve Gadd on drums, Tony Levin or Alan Spenner on bass, and Guy Fletcher or Paul Carrack on keyboards.

The Explorers recorded just two albums; the debut was issued in 1985, but the follow up, recorded that year was not released until 1988 under the hugely underwhelming title Manzanera and Mackay.

Frankly these are not the greatest albums ever made. And they generally aren't a patch on the classic Roxy records. But approached with a fresh ear, and few expectations both albums reveal some truly excellent songs, beautifully played.

The first album is the best, with a number of tracks that are arguably equal to some great Roxy songs. The opening "Ship Of Fools" is a slowburning overture, with some characteristically robust guitar work from PM. The faster, pop songs which make up the rest of side one are perhaps a little weak, though all have some neat twists and are still leagues ahead of many other mid 1980s pop songs. It's side two that really cements this album's reputation. Beautiful oboe from Andy permeates "Prussian Blue", and imbues it with a passion and emotion that is quite unexpected. "Two Worlds Apart" and "Robert Louis Stevenson" are superb, very catchy, grown up, elegantly crafted songs. And the closing "You Go Up In Smoke" is a lovely late night ballad.

On the CD the dance version of "Falling For Nightlife" is a dubious bonus, containing some of the worst excesses of 1985 remix technology. Lots of stuttering and pretend scratching (see Paul Hardcastle's "N N N Nineteen" for the blueprint), some hugely amplified drums and some silly early attempts at sampled voices. However, despite all this it's actually terrific fun. (And it must be the only song to include Eddy Grant, Moody Blue Justin Hayward and 10cc's Eric Stewart all on backing vocals).

The second album begins strongly with the excellent "Black Gang Chine", which contains a lovely descending chiming guitar motif and some of James Wraith's best vocals - James was constantly accused of being a Ferry copyist. I simply cannot hear any evidence of this - sloppy and lazy journalists perpetuated this error however. His voice and mannerisms are closer to that of Andy Bell of Erasure in my opinion, though in general he's simply a competent but sadly unremarkable singer. He carries the songs well, but there's not quite enough emotional pull in his voice, in my opinion. No idea what he's doing now. Anyway the rest of the album is strong, but for the most part there are no other stand out tracks. Which is maybe why it took a few years to be released, not on Virgin like the first record, but on Manzanera's Expression label. A few out-takes from the second album sessions surfaced on the Complete Explorers compilation issued a few years ago - one is sung by Andy’s friend Dennis Waterman (a chugging version of "Not Fade Away"), and another by Leo Sayer, a friend of Phil’s since Leo got his first exposure as Roxy's support act in 1974. Thankfully neither are as dreadful as you might think. Sayer, in particular has an excellent voice; it's a pity he doesn't record better material.

Hmm, pondering the worth of Leo Sayer's songs, a rather bizarre note to end on…