Younger readers may not be aware that back in the dim and distant past – basically when I was much younger – people used to pay for the music they listened to. There being no internet and very few postal outlets for products, us music fans would visit what we called Record Shops, now known as Record Stores. We had a choice. We could buy LPs (long players) with lots of songs on a product 12 inches across made out of vinyl or singles, a 7 inch product, normally with an A side or a B side and we’d play them on a record player, or if we were especially rich a Music Centre. Now, most people listen to the music via streaming, paying fractions of a penny to listen to their favourite artists and the artists themselves received tiny fractions of fractions for their work. I am afraid to say that I still buy my music via downloading or even CDs (ask your parents, kids), partly I suspect because I like to own a copy, usually a physical copy, of a record.
I am not the right person to ask about trends in music since I inevitably follow the wrong ones. Once the decline in vinyl records set in, I knew for sure that cassette tapes were the future and accumulated boxes of them. Later, I then noticed that CDs were the future and ended up buying my third versions of the same albums. Now that streaming is the preferred method of ‘buying’ music, I am still locked in the past and feel so much better for it.
Until I discovered girls, my biggest thrill in life was listening to singles (please, no jokes about 7 inchers). BBC Radio 1 was the only station for young people – the only legal British radio station, actually – and it introduced me to the obsession that survives to this day. Unfortunately, my mum who raised me as a lone parent was very poor so getting a new single was A Big Thing, usually a Christmas present alongside an LP. Think Meet The Monkees by The Monkees (obvs) and She Loves You by The Beatles. For most of my childhood, my collection of records hovered around single figures in actual numbers. Hearing a new single was exciting beyond words.
I have very little recollection of any of my miserable childhood – I am sorry, but it really was – except when it comes to music. One morning in 1967, my mum sat me down in front of our enormous radiogram because something very exciting was about to happen. A new single by The Beatles. Then, with no introduction, the song started: “You say, “Yes”, I say, “No”. You say, “Stop” and I say, “Go, go, go “Oh no”. You say, “Goodbye” and I say, “Hello”. OMG, as we didn’t say back in the swinging sixties. I must have that record. “Please, mum. Please.” I never did. Selfish in the extreme, mum decided it was more important that I was able to eat. I had to wait until 1973 when I had scraped together my pocket money and other money I had squirreled away in my Midlands Bank account to buy the Blue Album, 1967/1970, which included all the Beatles hits (and more) from – you’d never guess – 1967 to 1970, which included Hello Goodbye.
By 1973, I had assembled a bigger collection of music because of my financial acumen. I’d ask for cash for birthdays and Christmas and spent all of it on singles and LPs. In 1972, I remember the excitement I felt when T. Rex announced a new single: Telegram Sam.
I had a teenage crush on Marc Bolan. I don’t think it was a sexual thing, although I don’t much care if it was. I loved his music, his cheeky smile, his twinkling eyes and his corkscrew hair. At school, you were either in the T. Rex group or Slade camp (not sure if camp is the right word to use), the latter attracting the more rufty-tufty types. Bolan’s bonkers dreamy lyrics were part of the fun. The simple riff that started the song dragged me in and wouldn’t let go. “I must have that record. “Please, mum. Please.” This time, my begging was rewarded. One evening, she arrived home from work, 10 to 11 hours after she first left it, brandishing a copy of Telegram Song. I played it and played and played it. It obviously wasn’t the best song of all time, but try telling me that back in 1972.
By the mid to late seventies, I was able to buy my own music and I was now into album music, usually played by American rock bands but the eighties was the decade the music died for me. Ghastly electronic dross, drum machines and hideous clothing. I didn’t just stop buying singles and albums, I lost interest in music altogether. It took a while to regain that interest but when I did, the obsession was deeper than ever. And everything was changing. People now streamed music rather than bought hard copies and there were a myriad of radio stations. People seemed to listen to playlists assembled by themselves or by streaming companies rather than albums. I did, and still do, the same thing but I also love to listen to an album from beginning to end. While I have now a vast collection of music from multiple genres, I am getting back into singles again.
In recent weeks, I have bought UFO by UFOs, a French supergroup comprising French house duo Braxe + Falcon and the band Phoenix, Refresh by Sébastien Tellier and Home by Mac DeMarco, songs I heard on the radio and then paid 99p apiece for. Yes, I know I could stream them for next to nothing, but I like artists to get paid for their music. And do you know what? Even though I wasn’t having to visit a record shop, the act of just buying the download, which becomes mine for life, gave me the same thrill as buying anything else in HMV or wherever.
None of this is to say that I am anywhere near the modern world of music. I do not have the first idea what’s in the singles charts, never mind what’s top, but I am buying singles again. Some even have a B side (again, ask your parents, kids). But then, historically and quite rightly, the pop charts are for young people, not for old codgers like me. Excitingly, I now have that frisson that comes from hearing new music again, just as with Hello Goodbye and Telegram Sam.
Better still, I now know that new music is just music you haven’t heard before. There is far more music in the world than I will have time to listen to before I shuffle off my mortal coil, so excuse me while I get started. There’s a new Say She She album coming out tomorrow, don’t you know?
