I got into music at 15, which seems quite late but I soon made up for it. I was soon filling my bedroom with vinyl and cassettes, then three years later CDs. Live music came later, with my first gig in December 1987 at the tender age of 18 (The Cure). I’ll cover live music separately, that’s a post all of its own. My tastes are quite wide, my favourite decade is the 80s (oddly) but my hot take is that the best year for music was 1979 (I have absolutely nothing to back this up, just a feeling). Discovering music was tricky in the last century, you relied on the radio and music papers, neither of which is ideal, but the internet has made it so much easier to discover new music (along with pretty much everything else) - a double-edged sword because while it’s great having pretty much everything ever recorded at your fingertips, it’s also overwhelming. I just want to listen to it all! Also my interest in discovering new music waned through the 21st century, I guess part of getting older (why listen to something new when there was so much great stuff from 30 or 40 years ago?).
I know that Spotify is horrible in terms of what they pay the artists (or not) but it’s invaluable for discovering new stuff. I used to listen to my Discover Weekly playlist every week and one day in 2018 a weird song called ‘Well Done’ by Idles popped up. In the same way that the Smiths on Now That’s What I Call Music 2 jumped out from the pack, so did this. A couple of months later I went to see them and I’ve seen them several times since and bought all the albums (on vinyl). I’d like to discover more new music, a couple of weeks ago I was listening to another playlist (I got out of the habit of listening to Discover Weekly every week, perhaps I’ll get back into it) and decided to add anything that jumped out to my Liked Items list. One such was ‘Seaside Sid and the Giant Squid’ by Soft Hearted Scientists, never heard of them but the song was really quirky and I loved the lyrics. This afternoon I played the song back, then played their latest album, and can see myself seeking out more… apparently it’s their eighth! I may even put my hand in my pocket but the LPs and CDs are generally super expensive. However I listen, I’m looking forward to exploring their back catalogue and finding out more about them.