Last night I went into HMV to buy a CD for my Mum. I hardly ever buy CDs any more, which means I hardly ever go into record shops. And it struck me that something that had once been very important to me had slipped away, without me ever consciously choosing to give it up. Only last week I was chatting to a friend, a Manchester lad, and we were laughing at our separate-yet-shared memories of pilgrimages into town as youngsters, him fare dodging his way from the south of the city and me gazing through the window of my train from the north, to the very same record shops and music venues, how we queued in the rain to be part of the audience for the very same gigs and nights out, yet somehow we managed not to meet until several years later.
It's a long time ago now, this time when music was the most important thing in my life, the thing that sat alongside 'boys' and 'various forms of intoxication' as my teenage preoccupations, pushing school work into a poor fourth place. It's long enough ago for me to mean vinyl eps by obscure bands with ridiculous names. I loved the drama of eagerly searching the racks for tunes that had grabbed my attention, they might be classics that older, more knowing ears had directed me towards, or new bands I'd heard thanks to John Peel at 2am when I was supposed to be writing an essay. One thing they weren't though, were chart acts (though I loved some of those too, I rarely bought them) because it was like being part of a secret society, it was underground and most importantly it was ours, belonging only to the few who shared the passion. Most of my classmates neither knew nor cared and were yet to experience the thrill that live music could deliver, and my parents remained completely baffled.
I'd sit gazing at the gatefold sleeve on the way home, remembering the songs in my head as best I could as I willed the train to hurry past the abandoned factories and shabby terraced streets of Moston, urging it to at last give up the city, to let me find my way home so I could hear the first few chords emerge from the speakers and weave their intoxicating magic on my brain.
I carried on like that for years, right through Uni and afterwards, for a while I had a boyfriend who ran a record shop and one of the few good things I can say about him is he had an excellent music collection! I bought hundreds of eps and albums over the years and saw countless bands play live - some of whom vanished into obscurity but others I saw early in their careers later went on to become huge (Nirvana, Oasis.) I've been to all the major festivals (even had an 'artist' pass for Glastonbury one year which I'm sure was a hoot but I really don't remember!)
Music isn't the priority it once was for me, my husband and children have probably taken that title, I had a 4 year self enforced break from all things gig related whilst I had babies and toddlers but it's still bloody important to me, I still check the gig listings every few weeks to see what's coming up and can truthfully say I'd happily brave the infamous Glastonbury toilets every year.
