Old Music: Massive Attack - Protection

There’s a school of thought (which I partly subscribe to) that the ‘be the first to post / premiere a song or album then immediately move on to something else’ culture of new music blogging actually devalues music. Not just in financial terms, but in a wider sense. The argument is that if a website is constantly creating mini-events out of each of its multitude of premieres, telling you that every track it features is the greatest or most special thing you’ll hear this day, week or month, then all it achieves is reducing the concept of being great or special to something that is pretty empty. We end up with hundreds of mini-greats rather than a few giant ones.

Maybe that’s how things are these days, but I’m not sure if it’s a good idea. How do you think your girlfriend / boyfriend / husband or wife would feel if you told them that they were just one of many wonderful / great people you loved? I like to think of my relationship with music as being the same - that there are just a small handful of truly great records - and probably a lot of good, very good or average ones.

But the trouble is that, as both a fan and a blogger, I get excited about a lot of music. I can’t help it. I hear something new and it hits me. POW! My first thoughts are this is …..wait for it……great! And then I post it on this blog and sometimes (OK, quite often) get over excited about it. It’s like the first rush of romance all over again.

But, now and then when I look back at past posts I wonder to myself "what on earth was I thinking?" Although to be fair most of the time I still think the music I've featured has merit. OK maybe not always great, but at least very good.

And this is the other point. I go back to this stuff. Sometimes as a blogger it becomes too easy to just listen to the latest shiny new thing and not spend time with that which we already love. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve started doing the occasional post about old music. I think it’s important to highlight those really important long-termers. It might just draw someone’s attention to something that they hadn’t heard before and that’s certainly one of the main reasons why most music bloggers write.

So here’s something I want you to listen to - especially if you've never heard it before. This song is like my girlfriend. A very important constant in my life. A song I return to without sometimes even realising it’s importance. It is in my opinion, truly great. 

Massive Attack - Protection