10th April 2011 G:B:16

Back to usual business after setting up my Audiophiles page and participating in the brilliant Masterpieces website. I figured after a couple of weeks break it was time to get back on with Choose My Music.

As always please try and share this site when are where you can. Thanks to you guys this site continues to grow and I have got in contact with some great musical obsessive types. I'd like to keep that going. So if you would be kind enough to let people know about this site then I would be most grateful.

So Choose My Music today was selected by Jeanette Leech who, amongst other things, is a published author with the book 'Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid & Psychedelic Folk'. You can follow her on twitter here

Jeanette chose the combination G:B:14 which lead me to...

The Stranglers - The Collection

Ahhh the last day of school. What a happy time, spending the last few hours with the people you have hung out with for the last 5 years. Taking the opportunity to say thanks to the Teachers who have helped you develop and grow.

Not for me.....

On the last day of school I found myself sitting in the same room as my good friend Jamie Baker.

"Have you heard who's in Birmingham at lunchtime?" he asked me. "The Stranglers are doing an in-store at HMV. Want to go?"

Birmingham was about a 40 minute direct train ride and we figured that we could hang out at school and walk out just after morning break and be there in plenty of time. And this is exactly what we did. 

It was a rather odd decision to take to be honest. I was never really a Stranglers fan. They were always lumped in with Punk music but never quite fit into what my own personal definition of punk was. To be honest, that hasn't really changed over the years.

Of course The Stranglers we met was not the original line up with Paul Roberts replacing Hugh Cornwell on vocals and I think it was fair to say that the 1990's were not a kind period for the band.

I remember distinctly Jamie and I spent the ensuing train journey home sniggering about how fat 'Jet Black' was and why a man of his age would still be signing autographs using his pseudonym - oddly it is still a topic of discussion whenever we speak 18 years later.

This is a rather unusual collection released by EMI in 1997. It contains music from 1978 through to 1982 so it misses Peaches and Something Better Change while Nice N Sleazy is a notable omission which fits into the time period. For reason I cannot understand the sleeve notes for the CD spends more time talking about the songs that are missing from this hodge podge collection as opposed to the ones that made it on to the album. 

You may be asking yourself why I even own this album. Well the truth is that my Dad turned up with it at my house sometime in 2001. I didn't ask for it and I don't think I have ever even discussed The Stranglers with him - he just said he bought it for me. It has rarely been played since.

I guess the one redeeming feature is that the album does contain the rather excellent cover of 'Walk On By' - but considering that track is first, the rest of the CD is a bit of a hard slog.

Record Store Day

Influenced by my good friend Simon Jones blog post about Record Store Day I have been thinking about events that are due to take place up and down the country on April 16th and how my music consumption has changed over recent years. But first a little bit of background...

I have always had what many Radio 1 listeners might call an odd taste in music. Personally I would like to call it adventurous. Where this has come from I have no idea. As a teenager I had many friends who made significant impact on my music selections and their influence could perhaps be seen throughout my collection today. 

I still remember the exact location David Mudie (who was known as Mod) played me Sparklehorse's Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot at a house party sometime around 1996 and introducing me to Mega City Four while we were studying the Baroque era during GCSE Music. 

Jamie Baker (Jim) was the first person who played me Suede, Supergrass, Green Day, The Newcranes, Shed 7, Spiritualized and Blur among many others. 

Simon Hay introduced me to the world of Carter USM, 10,000 Maniacs and rather oddly for a 14 year old Jethro Tull and I will always remember when Mike Hartley playing me Rancid's "And Out Come The Wolves" album while driving his Dad's car round Lichfield.

All of these took place well before I had even commenced the early days of my working life.

From 1998 (a year or so after studying Music Business in Glasgow) I started working in Music retail. This started off in the rather non cool music department of WH Smith in Birmingham where I would get told off for playing Beck and Feeder - this lead me to chance upon a job at Tower Records.

Tower was perhaps one of the best jobs I have ever had, all of the staff were of similar age but with totally varied music tastes, here I was introduced to At The Drive In, Kid Koala, Television, Gram Parsons and so much Punk and Reggae I was made buyer for both departments.

I then was offered a chance to run my own record shop and moved to work for Andy's Records in Ipswich - where the rather excellent Dan Keeble got me to look beyond the surf era Beach Boys while I inflicted all kinds of Reggae into his ears

I then went and worked as a Manager for Music Zone and started to realise that the music industry was facing big problems and personally I started to realise that working in a record shop was really no different to working in Tesco - albeit with much more interesting produce. I left the industry, never to return.

During my years doing other things I have witnessed Tower, Andy's, Music Zone vanish. Most towns are now left with the option of buying from the Top 20 at their local Asda or from the hugely reduced music range now being held by HMV as their emphasis focuses more on DVD, Blu Ray, Ipod accessories and T-Shirts. In my town the only voice you hear now belongs to His Masters.

As sad as the gradual decline of Record Shops has been, looking through my collection of albums I have perhaps had more access to music than I have had before. I have always took advice from my friends and people I trust musically to help me navigate the waters. The explosion of the internet has done exactly that.

Pandora started it all for me back in 2006 when, through the use of a made up US Zip code I was opened up to a whole new world of music discovery - Pela and Micah P Hinson were just two of the artists that were induced into my collection - then along came Last Fm, Spotify, Mflow, Myspace, Amazon's recommendation service, BBC 6 Music, and of course Twitter. 

All of these help me discover music on an almost daily basis - the entire internet is now my record shop and you folks reading this are my Mod's, Jim's, Hay's and Hartley's as bands, songs and albums are shared, commented on and even purchase at quick lightning speed. Potentially I could suggest a band to you now and you could own their latest album in the time it takes you to make a cup of tea.

When I think of all the musical possibilities I feel conflicted. I love record shops - I always have done ever since I pestered my Mum at around 4 years old to buy me my first record but at the same time I also know that there isn't a record shop on earth that could supply me with the music I have discovered over the years - sure I could go into a record store an order the latest Pokey LaFarge album but I am sure that due to distribution and minimum order levels, it would take weeks to arrive and cost me twice as much as I paid for it to buy it direct online.

Don't get me wrong, I love record shops dearly. They are truly wondrous places where good things happen and Record Store Day is something we should all embrace and cherish, but due to lack of music buying options over recent years I have also grown to live without them. It makes me feel sad and a little guilty yet my music purchasing has not suffered as a result - it has grown more than I could ever imagine. 

But I do miss going into a record shop, I miss the rummaging - hours lost flicking through endless racks of CDs and glorious vinyl - the anticipation of the walk home, purchase in hand is much more satisfying than the anticipation of the Postman dropping your latest buy onto your doormat - and all of these are a millions times more wonderful than downloading what is essentially code from a website.

Support you local Record Store Day at http://www.recordstoreday.co.uk/

4th March 2011 3:2:15

Chances are this may or may not be the only post for Choose My Music today.

After being given 8 weeks redundancy notice at work yesterday I am obviously not 100%behind getting anything constructive done. My plan for this site was to try and do one post per week but this is already my 3rd with a couple of days spare.

Anyway, 3:2:15 was picked by Adele Mitchell. A lady who, judging by her tweets, has the perfect twitter combination of loving good music and supporting a great
football team...she was bound to pick a cracker.

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots



As with most people The Flaming Lips came into my life during the release of their previous album The Soft Bulletin which many would point to as their first real critical and commercial success - but it was Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots which really broke them in the UK and was also the album which truly made me a fan.

I can honestly say that on its release in 2002 I had never heard anything like it, and outside of the Flaming Lips I have heard nothing that matches it since.

An unusual concoction of acoustic and digital musical instruments fills a landscape which holds so much depth the album since been released in digital 5.1 surround sound.

The LP is likely to be recognised by the more popular tracks such as Flight Test, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt.1 and Do You Realize?? which all stand out as songs in their own right. But they also fit nicely into the whole body of work - blending in to the album and creating a fantastic opera for the modern age.

If you don't own this album then you should buy it....if you already have it then why not listen to it today..and if you do...why not try and find the secret message in somewhere within the CD packaging.

I finally got to see The Flaming Lips live in 2009 in Birmingham and it was by far one of the greatest gigs I have ever seen. Glorious us every aspect...I have never seen a band that treats their shows like one big party.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc1syUFmGwU&feature=related]

While doing some background fact checking, I also found out a rather brilliant hip hop album was released called Yoshimi Battles The Hip Hop Robots - so that's something for me to check out while I wait for the offers of a new job to come rolling in.