That Was The Music That Made Me

For 42 weeks in 2011 on a Monday morning Breaking More Waves has carried a feature called Music That Made Me. The concept for these posts was a reaction against an arguably unhealthy throwaway culture, something which music blogs help perpetuate with their constant strive to find the new, often preferring to move towards the next buzz artist rather than relishing any quality time with music they already know. Songs these days seem to be all too quickly forgotten. The posts were autobiographical, showing influences and describing experiences.

The songs described weren’t necessarily the best or greatest, in fact some of them were pretty awful. It certainly wasn't a 'favourite songs of all time' list. Nor were the songs chosen to demonstrate some sort of all-rounded musical eclecticism in taste; they were just a list of tracks that at some point in life created an emotion or a memory. They also opened the curtains a little on some of the more personal aspects of this music blogger’s life.

Ironically having spent 42 weeks wallowing in nostalgia the conclusion that arose from the posts was that irrespective of the rights or wrongs of constantly striving to find the new, it’s what we feel most passionate and motivated about.

So this final post draws a line under the past. We’re raising our glass to the future.

Here’s a full list of the 42 songs we featured in Music That Made Me, some classic ones, some terrible ones, some you may have never heard of. Click on the relevant link if you want to hear or read more about any of the tracks and the memories behind them.

Sundays – Monochrome

James – She’s A Star

Broadcast – The Book Lovers

Howard Jones – What Is Love

Portishead – Roads

OMD – Maid of Orleans (The Waltz Joan of Arc)

Herve Vilard – Reviens

David Gray – Please Forgive Me

Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode

Tindersticks – Travelling Light

Goodbye Mr Mackenzie – The Rattler

The Cure – Lullaby

Blue Roses – Doubtful Comforts

Underworld – Born Slippy

The Wombles – Remember You’re A Womble

Lone Justice – I Found Love

Kraftwerk – The Robots

Neil Diamond – I Am I Said

Thousand Yard Stare – Buttermouth

Manic Street Preachers – A Design For Life

Pulp – Common People

Propaganda – Duel / Jewel

U2 – C’mon Everybody

Jim Jiminee – Hey Day

Astronaut – Three

Carter USM – Sheriff Fatman

Stornoway – Zorbing

Jean Michel Jarre – Oxygene 4

Pixies – Debaser

The Cardigans – Sick & Tired

Aphex Twin – On

Peter, Paul & Mary – Puff the Magic Dragon

Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights

Suede – Animal Nitrate

King – Love & Pride

George Michael – Careless Whisper

Bentley Rhythm Ace – Bentley’s Gonna Sort You Out

Curtis Mayfield – Move On Up

The Unthanks – The Testimony of Patience Kershaw

Ellie Goulding – Starry Eyed

Nicola Roberts – Beat Of My Drum

Music That Made Me #42 - Nicola Roberts - Beat Of My Drum

Over the last 42 weeks I’ve featured blog posts written in the first person that nostalgically remind me of some of the past musical glories from my life. Some of the songs I chose haven’t been played or even thought about for years, it was only when writing this series and exploring the dim cobweb filled corridors of my brain that the songs were remembered. Some of them I will probably never choose to play again. They stood for a moment, a memory, a person, a place, or a feeling and then they were gone. Some however will stick around like lasting friends.

So what have I learnt through writing these posts? Apart from realising that I have woeful taste in music sometimes, (like ex-partners, the songs seemed outrageously good at the time) I’ve also learnt that looking back at the past is fun once in a while, but it doesn’t excite me in the same way that the present or future does. Like a relationship, what keeps me alive, what raises the spirits, is not resting on the past. The past forms a foundation, but for the relationship to grow and develop it has to evolve, change and offer up new possibilities and passions. Otherwise it becomes stale and tired, lacking the zest and the sparkle that is out there.

There are 42 posts in this series. The reason for this? I am 42 years old. Yet, even now, when I hear a new piece of music that moves me I get a rush of excitement just the same as when I was still 16. It’s why I write this blog – to share some of the music that gives me that rush.

This series may be called Music That Made Me, but what is really important to me is the music that is making me, right here right now.

It’s why this final post features a song from this year. It's a song that isn't cool, isn't critically acclaimed, but it fits perfectly with my world. There’s a place for nostalgia and many my age trade on it. However, after 42 posts of Music That Made Me, I’ve had enough of it. Let’s learn from the past, but let’s move forward as well, with quite simply, my favourite pop song of 2011. L.O.V.E it.

A full list of all the songs (good and bad) featured in this series and links to the blog posts will be posted later today.

Music That Made Me #41 - Ellie Goulding - Starry Eyed

This is the penultimate post in the Music That Made Me series. Over the last 41 weeks I’ve written about some of the songs that I associate with particular people, moments in life as well as some that I love simply because they are great tunes, and nothing more.

Amongst those that I’ve mentioned, I’ve said very little about the two most important people in my life; my children. ( I’m sure my girlfriend won’t mind being third in the pecking order - in your role as a parent it’s something that you have to take on).

I sometimes feel a bit sorry for them, living with dad means being constantly exposed to music; the radio is on in our house a lot. However whilst I would probably prefer to listen to 6 Music for most of the day, in the world of a near teenager’s eyes it’s ‘boring’. Therefore the sounds of Chris Moyles, Scott Mills and the like are often heard booming from the numerous radios in our house, because daytime Radio 1 is king.

Someone once said to me that if you go abroad and then come back to the UK and want to quickly tap into what mainstream youth culture is listening to, then expose yourself to Radio 1 for a week and you’ll be up to speed. He was probably right.

It’s very easy as you get older to switch to Radio 2, 6 Music, Radio 4 or the like and before you know it you’ll be grumbling that ‘music isn’t as good as it was in previous decades.’ My kids know who The Beatles are but they probably couldn’t name any of their songs. They don’t mean anything to them. They could however name all of the songs on Ed Sheeran’s album or Rizzle Kicks debut long player. When I asked my eldest daughter (pictured above) what her favourite band was she replied “the sort of things they play on Radio 1.”

As you get older it’s very easy to sneer at today’s pop music. There's a sizeable number of times that I’ve had conversations with people in their twenties, thirties and forties who suggest that ‘pop music is the kind of music that just 14 year old girls buy,’ as if 14 year old girls are not able to be good judges of music. Yet surely good music is what you as an individual relate to emotionally, rather than a list of so-called ‘must have’ songs that have been featured by Pitchfork or that have been agreed by committee as being the best. What’s good to you as an individual isn’t necessarily what’s good to someone else. It’s why in many respects teenagers are actually the best judges of music because many teens have a huge emotional connection to the pop music that fills their lives at that time, far greater than at any other point in their future. It’s why people often say that ‘music isn’t as good as when I was growing up,’ because for a lot of people once parenthood, work and the like take up much of your time, the opportunities for developing those big connections to music lessens.

It’s why I’m really grateful to my children for moaning if I wallow in the middle-class middle-aged smugness of 6 Music for too long (great station that it is). I secretly love the fact that we listen to Radio 1 an awful lot. Because it keeps my love of music fresh, enables me to challenge my own tastes and ideas about what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and stops me ever becoming too snobbish and self righteous about pop music.

It’s why I’ve chosen to include Starry Eyed by Ellie Goulding as a choice in Music That Made Me. It’s not a ‘classic’, indie snobs will laugh at it being ‘pop music for 14 year old girls’, but it’s a song that simply makes me and my children happy. When I’m away from them and hear it, it makes me think of them. Simple pleasures and emotions like that that are as important to our make up as any sort of deep intellectual worthiness. They make us the people we are.

Music That Made Me #40 - The Unthanks - The Testimony Of Patience Kershaw

“They could sing the songs of Las Ketchup and make them sound impossibly sad and beautiful,” someone once said of The Unthanks. I couldn’t agree more.

The Unthanks play folk music. Not the sort of rousing, chest-thumping, arena filling folk music that the likes of Mumford & Sons play, nor the whisky punched stomp of the likes of The Pogues from the 1980’s. No, The Unthanks play downbeat, mournful, utterly bewitching traditional folk music, much of it handed down from generation to generation.

When I was younger I always thought of folk music as being something that old men with beards and aran knitwear exclusively listened to. The closest I got to this form of music as I was growing up was probably The Waterboys album Fisherman’s Blues and much of The Pogues output, but by and large my ears weren’t open enough, my experiences not broad enough and my prejudices too strong to really give this music a chance. Yet slowly as the years have gone on folk music has become an integral part of my life. I still don’t have the aran jumper or the beard, but at least now I’m old; or older I prefer to say - although my children delight in telling me how ancient I am.

I first encountered The Unthanks when they were still known as Rachel Unthank & The Winterset, before various line-up changes and Rachel Unthank''s sister Becky committing firmly to the band after university. The moment of discovery was, like any hugely passionate music fan, at a live show. The Unthanks had just been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize for their haunting second album The Bairns and so inevitably a large crowd of onlookers had gathered to watch them play at Summer Sundae Festival in Leicester in 2008, myself and my family included. The group played in the De Montford Hall, a traditional civic theatre style venue and so to ensure we got a good view (my children being only relatively small and the audience in the stalls being standing) we sat on the side balcony to watch them play. From the moments the lights went down and The Unthanks stepped on stage I fell utterly in love. The pristine spacious mix of spectral piano, lush violins and achingly beautiful Geordie accented vocals created a moment of ghost like stillness in the hall. It was captivating. Dry eyes didn’t last very long. It really felt like I’d witnessed something very special indeed.

From this moment on I became a huge fan of The Unthanks. They have now released four albums, three of which are so timeless, so tense and so bewitching that if I was naming my Top 100 albums of all time, they would all appear in the list. It’s almost impossible to pick just one song for them for this series, so exquisite are so many of them, but I’ve chosen The Testimony of Patience Kershaw from their album Here’s The Tender Coming. The lyrics are based on the real spoken testament of Patience Kershaw, aged 17, to the Royal Commission on Children’s Employment in 1842 about her life working down the mine. The words are sweetly polite but also horribly sad.

Even now as I listen to this exceptional song again, a shiver runs down my spine. In the fast world of the internet and where music bloggers forget artists that they were claiming to be the next big thing every second, the music of The Unthanks will, I’m sure, stand the test of time. The video below shows the band playing the song live.

Music That Made Me #39 - Curtis Mayfield - Move On Up

This series is about songs that have formed my tastes and memories of key (and not so-key) moments in my life. Some of the songs are inspirational; some are never to be played again.

Mainly for reasons of practicality (the series needs to make way for the traditional favourite albums of 2011 and ones to watch for 2012 posts in December), but also because it’s the number of years I’ve spent on this planet, there will be 42 choices in total. When it’s done there will be a list of all of the tracks and links to all the posts, but let’s be very clear now – this list is in no way designed as a definitive collection of my favourite songs of all time, nor are they all what I deem to be ‘classics’. Sure, some of them are probably considered as such, songs by the likes of The Pixies, Kate Bush, The Cure, Chuck Berry and Kraftwerk could all easily turn up in the kind of lists you find in critics polls or music magazines, but I very much doubt if you would find The Wombles, Thousand Yard Stare or King in those lists. Nor would many music publications suggest that memories of snogging a girl at a school disco or lyrics that remind you of unfulfilled relationships would go down as valid methods of assessing great music, but this is what this series has done.

Looking back at the 38 choices before this, one thing is very clear. There has been very little (by very little I mean none) rap, hip-hop, urban or soul music in the choices. It appears on first glance that the soundtrack to my life has been largely empty of such music. Yet the likes of Public Enemy, Diana Ross and Sam Cooke would all feature in my ‘classic records’ list and todays choice very much fits into this mould.

This selection –Move On Up – by Curtis Mayfield ticks all the boxes. It’s undeniably a classic recording – funky, sharp, with hyperactive bongos, a punchy brass riff that gets me every time; it found Mayfield reaching the zenith of his career. It’s one of my absolute favourites, irrespective of it’s a classic status or not. It also provided a memory of soundtracking a moment in my life – the summer of ’96 to be exact, rather than 1970 when it was originally released.

I’d originally discovered the song in my early teens on a long lost compilation record that I had purchased for just a few pennies in a charity shop. I remember very little about it now except for its dog-eared slightly musty smelling blue cover and a title something along the lines of The Ultimate Soul Collection or Soul Classics. It featured the likes of Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Jackie Wilson, Percy Sledge, and Curtis and I played it over and over again until the grooves were nearly worn out. If you read the blog regularly you may occasionally spot this records influence – ever since I heard it I’ve become a sucker for punchy brass riffs which in a modern context you can probably best hear in Rizzle Kicks Down WithThe Trumpets or The Milk’s All I Wanted Was Danger. And let's not forget that a certain Kanye West sampled the song a few years back and brought it into a modern context.

Music That Made Me #38 - Bentley Rhythm Ace - Bentley's Gonna Sort You Out

I haven’t played a Bentley Rhythm Ace record for years. They certainly wouldn’t be in my classic bands of all-time list. The chances are I would have never even thought about them if it wasn’t for this series. However, for a short while in the late 90’s Bentley Rhythm Ace was a hell of a lot of FUN -B.R.A was a group that didn't take themselves too seriously.

Bentley Rhythm Ace was part of the emerging big beat scene – a scene that had evolved from the earlier acid house movement but used heavy breakbeats plus synth and sample generated loops to create highly danceable, often euphoric tracks that appealed to rock and indie fans as much as clubbers. Big Beat was more about a moment than losing yourself in the trance or groove of house or techno. It took its name from the Big Beat Club in Brighton that ran on Fridays at the Concorde up until 2001. Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers, Lo Fidelity Allstars and Propellerheads were all names synonymous with the scene and Bentley Rhythm Ace was also an integral part of it.

I experienced the Bentley’s jumble club road show of sixties samples, driving beats, funk, trip-hop, jungle and whatever else took their fancy at the Glastonbury mud bath of ’97 and a much drier Astoria, London in ’98. Formed by ex-members of EMF and Pop Will Eat Itself their gigs featured silly wigs, car windscreens with working wiper blades in front of their equipment, smiley acid face flags and huge balloons. It was all about a not-a-care-in-the-world party with sets that built and built, dancing that got faster and faster, grins getting bigger and bigger and clothes getting sweatier and sweatier.

When they stopped releasing music I didn’t even notice. The scene had moved on, but they left me with some happy memories and sore dancing feet. It was case of ‘it was fun at the time.’ Sometimes that’s all music needs to be.

Music That Made Me #37 - George Michael - Careless Whisper

Back in the 80’s the school disco was defined by two key dances. First there was the fast pop songs; the wooden parquet floor cluttered with over-made up girls, swaying to the sound of Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran and Culture Club, the heat rising, the faint smell of sweat lingering in the air, like a slowly soaking invitation of adulthood. The boys, in the main, stood on the side lines – they were literally too cool for school.

Then came the slow dances, or 'slowies' as we all called them. The temperature rose a couple of degrees further. Our hearts pumped a little faster. The confident cool guys (the ones who a few years later I’d see in local pubs looking fat, worn-out and old before their time) would immediately swagger onto the dance floor and nestle themselves in with the pretty girls that we all secretly fancied. The rest of us would shuffle around awkwardly, unsure if to make eye contact with anyone, afraid of rejection but equally afraid of being left out.

Before I knew it, with a flash, a girl had stormed up to me. I had talked to her now and then in class, but never really taken that much notice of her. “Are you gonna ask me to dance, or do I have to do it myself?” she confidently questioned, her tall slim body, her slightly freckled face and long gingery blonde hair suddenly seeming very attractive.

Everything after that was just a delirious dream. Her arms were quickly draped around me, her body pressing heavily against mine, feeling her warm slightly sugary breath heavily against my ear. With teenage chemicals circling our bodies like an out of control ferris wheel, it took only seconds before our mouths were clamped vice like around each others – locked in a not-knowing-what-we're-really-doing-moment – just her, me and the music. Nothing else existed.

The song that soundtracked this moment and hundreds if not thousands of other 80’s teenage liaisons was Careless Whisper by George Michael. Right then it seemed perfect, even if now it seems like the biggest cliché in the world.

The next day on the long walk to school we spotted each other. Everything seemed awkward and embarrassing again. We tried to hold hands and walk together but somehow they slipped apart – maybe we were a little worried about people laughing at us.

We never really mustered more than an odd passing sentence to each other after that. Our school days passed and we moved on. Five years later I saw her stacking shelves in Tesco looking, well, a little bit drab and sad.

Over twenty five years on, dropping my daughter off and saying goodbye to her at her most recent school disco, the same wave of heat and sweat greeted us as we opened the hall door. These days there is no slow dance, but no doubt the likes of Katy Perry, Rihanna or One Direction will be the background to shy desperate moments of teenage experimentation.

Music That Made Me #36 - King - Love and Pride

As they get older, those of a glass half-empty persuasion probably look back at their teenage years and early twenties as the best of their life with everything after being a downward slope. I’m not one of those people. Yet neither am I one of those who rather too eagerly proclaim that their current age is their finest time. I’m more of a ‘pretty content at whatever age I am’ sort of person. Of course in your teens and early twenties there can be many potentially life changing moments and decisions, but there are also moments where life is pretty average, even monotonous.

A lot of my monotonous moments as a teenager were spent playing computer games with friends (something which thankfully I quickly grew out of once work, girls and being able to afford to do things that cost money took over) and listening to music (which I never grew out of). School holidays were often spent crashed out on the sofa round friend’s houses tackling the latest Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum or Atari 2600 game and watching Aztec Camera, Frankie Goes To Hollywood or Dexy’s Midnight Runners on Newcastle based Channel 4 music show The Tube, making laddish ‘phwoar’ noises at Madonna’s Like A Virgin Video on MTV (like pretty much every impressionable young man in the country at the time) and in later years laughing at the stuttering electronically sampled Max Headroom show. Every household now had a video recorder (we were always a VHS and never a Betamax family – my dad got it right first time round) which meant that I could record my favourite pop music videos and watch them over and over, analysing and dissecting them.

This was how I spent much of my wasted youth. It wasn’t incredibly exciting, but I was happy doing this. It’s those times of doing all the average, normal, pretty mundane things that we tend to forget, in the same way that sometimes high charting pop songs that seemed dear to us then are also lost in the memory without constant media reminders of what a ‘classic’ song it was. Love and Pride by King is one of those songs. I first heard it through one of those TV sofa moments, which in hindsight was a little ironic given that frontman Paul King went on to be a ‘VJ’ presenter on MTV after the bands short two album lifespan closed. The group, who originally were called The Raw Screens and described themselves as ‘multi-tone’ were probably as well known at the time for Paul King’s cockatoo haircut and, more importantly for me, his Doctor Marten boots as they were their tunes.

If Love & Pride influenced my musical taste in a anyway I’m not so sure, although when I hear King yelp “That’s what my heart yearns for now,” and that funky slap bass and goofy 80’s synth sound kick in it still does something to me insside. However its bigger influence has been the fashion, because 26 years on I’m still sporting DM boots. In fact you’ll very rarely see me out of them. That was at least partly down to this song and this video.

Music That Made Me #35 - Suede - Animal Nitrate

1993. The Brit Awards. Simply Red won Best British Group. Annie Lennox won Best British album. Tasmin Archer won Best British Newcomer. Nirvana seemed to be every ‘alternative’ music fans favourite band, except mine and picked up Best International Newcomer. But all of that has thankfully faded from memory, only restored by the power of Google.

However the 1993 Brit Awards stay ferociously embedded in my brain because of one moment. It was a performance that signalled the populist arrival of what Melody Maker (R.I.P) had already headlined as ‘The Best New Band in Britain’ before they had even released a single. It was a two fingered salute from a group that had more energy and charisma than Tasmin Archer would ever have and yet they hadn’t been nominated. Thankfully the NME began a campaign to get the band booked to perform on the show and it worked, the result being a recklessly joyous celebration of everything that was wrong with the British music industry. Brett Anderson, with his androgynous arse spanking sexuality, girls haircut, pale torso and spit charged sexual lyrics stood out like a sore thumb at a ceremony that apart from these three minutes was the ultimate in bland. As Anderson posed, strutted and pouted in front of an audience of dumbstruck dickie-bow wearing toffs (pictured above), Suede became brutally and brilliantly out of place – a hard suck of aggressive fresh air. Yet for people like me, sat at home watching the group storm of the stage at the end Suede held out a hand to the future; a future of excitement, passion and rawness that was lacking in music right then. I was incredibly glad I could reach out and grab that hand.

For me this is the time that Brit Pop started. Suede’s performance was a huge f*ck you to the establishment. Several years later that genre had (arguably) pulled the soul out of indie music, but at this moment, with this song, anything seemed possible.

Music That Made Me #34 - Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights

There are certain songs that we associate with particular memories, people or places. Much of this series is about that. It is after all the environment around us that affects the way that we think and act. None of us are so single minded that we are not altered by what surrounds us to a certain extent. To deny it just shows a certain lack of emotional intelligence.

Yet this song has no one singular memory for me. I vaguely recall hearing it or seeing it for the first time on Top of the Pops when I was young, but that memory doesn’t stand out as a singular special point in time. Instead Wuthering Heights – Kate Bush’s song based on the book of the same name - is a constant in my life. Even just a few weeks ago when I was at a festival and a young Danish band played a cover version of it, all it took was those first few recognisable piano chords to create goose bumps all over my body.

When any new slightly quirky female singer appears, there’s a fair chance that the Kate Bush comparisons will be rolled out again on this and many other blogs. It’s a cliché to use them but it shows how influential Bush was and continues to be. Wuthering Heights is one of the greatest songs ever created in the history of pop music. Every time I hear it, it creates a fresh memory.

Music That Made Me #33 - Peter, Paul and Mary - Puff The Magic Dragon

As you may have noticed by now, Music That Made Me is not an erudite list of classic songs, nor is it just a compilation of my favourites from over the years, but records that have in some way influenced my tastes, for better or worse. There are probably certain periods of our lives that our musical preferences are influenced more than others; my teens and my mid-twenties probably stand out as defining periods, although I continue to be excited by discovering of the new even now. Yet one of the most important periods, hardly touched on in this series, is early childhood. I’ve mentioned my first single purchase and early camping holidays in France, but before that much of my earliest exposure to music came from my parent’s record player.

There was something very sturdy about that record player. It was a solid brown box with a hinged lid that was fixed down with two golden coloured clasps. You would place the records on a central spindle from where they would drop onto the deck with a satisfying ‘clomp’ before the arm swung slowly across and rested itself onto the vinyl grooves.

My parent’s singles were kept upright in a wire rack, which ensured that any possible warping of the discs was kept to a minimum. It was a mix of their teenage rock ‘n’ roll favourites, from The Everly Brothers to Eddie Cochran but interspersed with some children’s records that they’d purchased for me – recordings of Teddy Bears Picnic, (How Much Is) That Doggie In The Window and this, the bizarre Puff The Magic Dragon by Peter, Paul and Mary.

Although the writers of the song denied its references, the allusion to ‘puffing’ a joint, chasing the ‘dragon’ and ‘Little Jackie Paper’ - a possible relation to rolling a spliff, caused an outrage amongst the moral masses when it was first released in the 1960’s and was adopted by the flower-power hippy scene at the time . Yet to this young listener, sitting at home in his parents lounge with its patterned brown wallpaper and white fake leather sofas – the epitome of cool in the early 70’s – this song was a sweet, magical and innocent song.

Music That Made Me #32 - Aphex Twin - On

Although much of the music that has made me and continues to inspire me now is based in the traditional structures of song – verses, choruses and delightful melodies – there’s another part of me that thrives listening to the leftfield. No other artist satisfies this desire for the more peculiar than Aphex Twin. The first Aphex Twin album I purchased was his classic Ambient Works. It was a mesmerising recording full of graceful looping synths, out there beats and calm creeping atmospheres that I would put on constant repeat for hours and hours. I loved the way the tracks were in no rush, everything in the music appeared when it was ready and not before.

Following its release Aphex Twin became the king of experimental and underground music, throwing out remixes, singles and albums at some rate of knots and with a somewhat maverick approach. Rumour has it that he was meant to remix a Lemonheads track and when the record company came to collect it he hadn’t even started work on it, so he just gave them a half-finished demo he had been working on and they loved it.

His gigs became legendary; there were tales of DJ sets where he would put on sandpaper discs instead of records. When I went to see him play at The Old Trout Pub in Windsor (before his status ensured that grotty pub gigs would be out of the question) he set his equipment up at the back of the stage, filled the place with dry ice and blasted mind numbing techno at ear crushing volumes out to the crowd. When he left stage the music just continued and nobody knew when to applaud or even leave the venue. My most vivid memory of that gig was a zoned out hippy standing at the front with his ear pressed hard against the speaker as the beats punched out – his hearing surely destroyed for life.

I have many loved Aphex Twin tracks, but it’s On, a single that wasn’t featured on any of his albums that is my favourite. It finds a measured balance between his ambient material and harsher techno work. The video for the track was also directed by Jarvis Cocker of Pulp fame. Although the likes of Come To Daddy and Windowlicker with their freakily menacing horror show Chris Cunningham directed videos are more universally well-known it was On that achieved Aphex Twins first ever UK Top 40 single, which for music that was obtusely non-commercial is some achievement.

Music That Made Me #31 - The Cardigans - Sick & Tired

During the mid 90’s The Cardigans became my new favourite band. The first time I heard them was with Sick & Tired on GLR radio, which in many ways was a precursor to BBC 6 Music. At first I was sure it was a group from the 60’s; the sunny saccharine cuteness of the lead singer’s voice and the chirpy instrumentation surely couldn’t be from anywhere else. Yet it transpired that the Cardigans were a new group from Sweden and a few months later they were coming to England to play. The song seemed completely at odds with much of the emerging Britpop scene – this was music that gleamed with light rather than something that swaggered with laddish bombast.

As the band walked on stage at Camden Dingwalls they were everything I hoped they would be. Nina, the singer, stood at the front, sporting a shift dress, hand on hip, gently swaying her other arm and clicking her fingers whilst a good looking bunch of boys with bowl haircuts created hooky, catchy pop gems full of knowing ironic retro-references. They even covered a heavy rock song in a jazzy cocktail lounge style. They were brilliant and I was in love. .

The Cardigans was the first band that I ever saw more than a couple of gigs of on a particular tour, taking a week off work to follow them round the country when they formed part of the NME Brat Bus soiree. I got to meet the band and at their Nottingham show they even invited me in to watch their soundcheck, so impressed were they with my commitment to them. I remember sitting in the venue on my own, listening as Nina sang to just me and melting. .

Later years would see The Cardigans become international stars with their disco-influenced pop hit Lovefool, which featured on the soundtrack of the Baz Luhrmann film Romeo & Juliet and big hit singles such as Erase / Rewind and My Favourite Game, before they veered into darker less commercial territories that produced some of their finest work with later albums. It was this song that first grabbed my heart though and it still sounds fresh and effervescent today as it did then.

Music That Made Me #30 - The Pixies - Debaser

The first day I walked into college a soon to be friend told me that he had me sussed immediately. Dressed in a black shirt with white polka dots, black jeans and Doctor Marten boots I probably couldn’t have shouted ‘indie’ any harder if I’d tried. Yet despite a rapidly growing love of angry guitars, feedback and non-singing vocalists my inside was gripped by the second summer of love – free parties, raves and the ecstasy revolution were transforming music and reshaping youth culture. This is where our musical tastes crossed paths, got intertwined and fed off each other like hungry parasites. He introduced me to A Guy Called Gerald, D Mob and Phuture. I introduced him to The Primitives, Jesus and the Mary Chain and The Pixies. What we shared was a passion for music.

He put on raves, filled with dry ice and whistling loons. I went to one and lost everybody I knew in the fog of the smoke machines, dancing on my own in a detached happy world for what seemed like hours. Even although this was the e-generation, I never bothered with the drug myself. I didn’t need to. The music on its own set me free.

At college lunchtimes we always went to the local record store. I remember one time in particular we both bought the same album – my influence over him – Doolittle by The Pixies. The next time we met we could both only talk about one track. Debaser. “Got me a movie I want you to know, slicing up eyeballs I want you to know,” Frank Black screamed like an aggressive banshee over searing guitars and pummelling dirty bass; it was impossible not to be moved in some way. It was and still is an exceptional song and one we both agreed on.

Music That Made Me #29 - Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene 4

I can remember the first day that I listened to a Jean Michel Jarre record. The date was 13 July 1985. The day that Live Aid took place. I watched the whole thing, mesmerised on my TV at home, suddenly feeling part of something, feeling that music really could change the world maybe in the same way that those who listened to the political message of The Clash in the 70's felt that they could change the world. I remember Bob Geldof, sat next to a cigarette wielding Ian Astbury of The Cult and Geldof swearing (in those days still a very controversial thing to do on TV) and thinking that suddenly this seemed very important.

I remember the morning before Live Aid started. I remember the trip to my local library, and the selection of some vinyl albums chosen purely because I liked the covers. One was Oxygene, a skull peering out from the core of earth, representing a dying world. I took it home and listened to it before the TV took me to Wembley.

I was hooked on first listen. I loved the pulses, the waves, the textures of the music revolving around in that secret space that only the escapism of headphone listening can give you. It was my own world, exotic, futuristic and visionary. A world inspired by electronic music that had first been released almost ten years before. It was glorious.

Music That Made Me #28 - Stornoway - Zorbing

The first time we met was in a steaming pub, the atmosphere typically boisterous for a Friday. I remember a DJ playing some unremarkable dance music to drown out the slurred chatter; our introduction only lasted a moment. I complimented her on her dress and then was gone, rushing somewhere else into the evening.

Cut forward a few years and now the moments last longer. She’s responsible for some of my worst hangovers, biggest bouts of laughter and bizarre nights out in my life. From dancing with kilted up Scotsmen in a low rate Cardiff 80’s retro bar to freezing nights in an old canvas bell tent in the New Forest after stealing products from a posh hotels toilet and listening to a terrible covers band playing through an antiquated sound system. But behind the fun and her love of zombies, sewing and making the most fantastic cakes (one of which is pictured above), there’s something between us that forms the basis of all the best friendships. It’s knowledge that you utterly trust each other, could tell each other anything without judgement and absolutely love each other. Not every minute can be full of buckets of sunshine; life has its more serious times as well and the greatest friendships share both. Neither of us makes a fuss about the bad times. We get on with them – life’s too short to wallow in being mournful.

In putting together this series, the original idea was to look back nostalgically at my past and the songs that have formed my core. Yet in doing this I have realised that the songs that make me feel vibrant, fresh and alive are often those that I have only just discovered. This friend also makes me feel like that. Although we have our memories it feels that the future is more important. This is a song that we both love. It’s not that old. I know when she hears it reminds her of me a little, and likewise when I hear it I think of her. She’s the only person in the world that whenever we meet always tells me that she loves me. I’m really proud to have her as my friend.

Music That Made Me #27 - Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - Sheriff Fatman

Living in the Hampshire / Surrey / Berkshire borders in my teens and twenties meant that unless I took the forty minute train ride to London, exposure to indie / alternative music culture was very restricted. There were very few venues to see bands in and the clubs were full of hair gelled boys dressed in pastel coloured suits trying to get off with girls in ra-ra skirts, high heels and bad make up. The kind of girl I liked was more likely to be found in a pair of Doctor Marten boots and a pretty flowery dress, and they certainly weren’t hanging around the likes of Cinderella’s or Ragamuffins.

Until I discovered The Cube. The venue was still Ragamuffins but the night was The Cube. Like many provincial nightclubs it was entered through a door at street level with a gaudy neon sign proclaiming “Night Club Ragamuffins Discotheque” before climbing a flight of stairs to the pay desk and entering the world of mirrorballs, sticky floors and smoke. But on Cube nights, held on a Tuesday when the smart dressed kids who went to ‘Rags’ on a Friday and Saturday night and danced to ‘The Erection Section’ were at home, I found my music.

There’s a variety of songs I remember from the club around that time – The Cure, Pop Will Eat Itself, Pixies and the like, but this one brings back the most colourful memories. I remember the place seeming empty, but then these sounds boomed out and it seemed as if from nowhere the grebos, the punks and the indie kids came streaming out of the shadows and dry ice onto the strobe-lit dancefloor, arms flailing, heads shaking, singing out the words as if they were alone in their bedrooms. You could feel the physical energy and it was inspiring.

Nobody quotes Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine as being an influential or important band these days. But their black humour, puns, unusual wordplay, ability to put a tune together and hard gigging gave them a significant fan base, leading to them having 4 UK top 10 albums and 8 UK top 30 singles. They also appeared second on the bill on the main stage at the Reading Festival and reportedly blew the headliners James away with their huge bank of white backlights and intensity. Their ’30 Something’ long sleeved t-shirts sold by the bucket load and became a defining image for indie kids across the country in the early 90’s (along with the Sit Down t-shirt of James, which featured the words written on the back at the bottom). I remember seeing quite a few of those at The Cube.

Ladies and gentlemen. I give you Sheriff Fatman. Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine.

Music That Made Me #26 - Astronaut - Three

I’ve always been drawn to water. My mother told me that even as a crawling baby she would take me to the beach and I would eagerly and immediately bolt towards the ocean. Her day was spent running after me, removing me away from danger to the back of the sands and then repeating the whole process like a lost scene from Groundhog Day.

I live near the sea now and one day hope to live somewhere where I can open my door and see the coast line stretch out in front of me, but in the late 90’s I lived on a houseboat on the River Thames (pictured above), just outside Windsor. It was on this boat that the very beginnings of Breaking More Waves were created. Sat in my bedroom, as the tourist boats sailed by whilst the seemingly always angry ducks quacked outside my window I would stare across an open field to Windsor Castle and hammer away at my computer at a rate of knots to form a paper fanzine. This was a far greater labour of love than any music blog ever was.

The title of this home grown publication was Breaking Waves. I wrote it under the name The Boy on the Boat. The first issue featured nothing more than a rather comical diary of the 1997 Glastonbury Festival. It was 38 pages long. I printed enough copies to give out to friends and sold a few to drunk strangers at gigs.

Issue 2 contained the more typical gig reports, discursive articles, single reviews and my first ever interview – with the drummer from Idlewild. Issue 3 turned into a somewhat gargantuan boozy review of an indie compilation album called Snakebite City. The Greatest Snakebite City and Alcopops Review in the World Ever was 16 pages long, with 20 songs from the album reviewed, plus 1 bottle of alcopop also being described and drunk / rated with each song. Here’s a sample (after 19 bottles) of my review of the band Mascara and their song V Sign “Do you know I once walked up a mountain in Greece with bare feet and nothing but a banana for company and when I came down I was so dehydrated that I drank 3 cans of iced tea down in one. Amazing.” My mind wandered a little under the influence. However, looking back at the one ragged copy of the fanzine that I still own (the others sold out) I can see that I haven’t changed much in that time.

The writing is still very much my personality now. It’s maybe a little more surreal and comic than this blog but it’s very much me. A review of The Verve at Brixton Academy had just 1 line “Dull. I’m not wasting any more space on this. OK?” I asked the BIG questions. “Why do we eat popcorn at cinemas?” “Who actually buys Simply Red records?” and “Has anybody invented strawberry flavoured glitter body paint?” I named Kate Winslet as my ultimate fantasy woman (she still is) and the bands that I recommended included The Beta Band, Mogwai, Broadcast, Arab Strap, Disco Pistol and Ultrasound who were all new at the time. But the group I was most excited about at this point, was an unsigned group I’d seen play in Camden. I was convinced they’d be globally huge. They were called Astronaut. I described them as having ‘melodies that dazzled.’ Of the lead singer I said ‘girls believe me, you will want to shag the pants off this man.’ Nobody ever heard of them again.

So as you read this, almost 15 years later, remember that the template was set a long time ago. I’m still discovering bands that nobody will remember in fifteen years.

It says it at the top on the right on this site “Once this blog was a paper fanzine. Then the internet changed everything.” But I think I’ve stayed pretty much the same. Here’s Astronaut.

Music That Made Me #25 - Jim Jiminee - Hey Day

I met my first real love through music. This should come as no surprise.

Not much happened in Fleet, Hampshire where I was living at the time. This was pleasant middle class suburbia, just a short train ride from London, where the biggest thrill came from phoning the local fast food takeaway shop and lusting at the sexy intonation of the girl who always picked up the phone. Even this moment of excitement was killed once you’d picked up your order though.

So when local band Jim Jiminee started getting played on Radio 1 it was the most exciting thing that had happened in years. Their gigs at local pubs and the town football team’s clubhouse were sweaty, out of control things where the band mixed it up with a blend of soul, pop, skiffle and indie with songs about dole life and wanting to work. They felt like being on the edge of something, a ground swell of exhilaration.

Sometimes I’d go to the shows alone, other times with friends, and it was at one of these gigs where somebody who I worked with brought along a pretty, delicate and incredibly attractive girl. Everything about her seemed perfect, particularly the way she seemed utterly composed in amongst the chaos of the gig. We talked a lot that evening, sensing something between us, although she had a boyfriend. A few days later she invited me to another concert in London with her. It was obvious that even if she had been single she was out of my league. She was too attractive, too stylish, too intelligent and attended northern-soul clubs that I’d never even heard of. She was a cool heavenly dream. Her boyfriend was also incredibly good looking and immaculately dressed, although it did seem that he was a little dull. At the gig in London the two of us found ourselves chatting the whole time as if we’d known each other forever whilst he just stood there looking vacant.

A few weeks on and I heard through the grapevine that they’d split up. A day later we met up again at another Jim Jiminee gig. Nothing happened that night, but you could sense it in the air. There was a buzz of electricity running between us, chemicals rushing in all directions. I was trying to keep my nerve and not spoil things; the band made a welcome diversion for my brain that was sprawling and pounding with impulse. A few weeks later and we were together.

Jim Jiminee never made the pop charts; they’re now largely forgotten. You never hear their songs played on the radio; nobody quotes them as an influence and you certainly can’t kind find their music in the shops, on iTunes or on Spotify. But although they may not have left much of a legacy, they performed an important part of my life; as an audience member I felt part of their gang and more importantly they were responsible for meeting my first adult love. Songs such as Town & Country Blues, I Wanna Work and Do It On Thursday are all remembered fondly by me, but the track that stands out was a song from their debut album Welcome to Hawaii called Hey Day, which captures the clattering spirit of the bands gigs and the frenetic energy of falling in love for the first time perfectly.

Music That Made Me #24 - U2 - C'mon Everybody

In the mid 80’s I became an obsessive collector of unofficial bootleg tapes of concerts of my favourite bands. It wasn’t just enough to have all the albums, the singles, the t-shirts, the books – I needed to hear more. These unique documents of gigs, many of almost unlistenable quality, often recorded in the audience with a tiny microphone, gave a rare insight to shows I had no possible chance of attending. The most exciting ones were those where the band did something different on one particular concert – a cover version, a new song or said something unusual from the stage.

When one of my favourite groups had started a new tour in another part of the world it would be time for me to contact bootleg suppliers and then yearn for the moment when the postman would drop a little spool of magnetic tape through my letter box with a full length recording. This sense of anticipation was something the instant accessibility of the internet and You Tube has destroyed. The tapes would come with a poorly photocopied black and white inlay card complete with track listing, date, location and a picture of the band stolen from the NME or Melody Maker. The suppliers of these tapes often produced detailed catalogues, with notes about each gig and the quality of the sound.

Some tapes were a little easier to digest – recordings from foreign radio stations, TV shows or better equipment had been smuggled in to make the bootleg. It was one of these, a recording of the Self Aid concert in Dublin –a huge gig arranged to highlight the chronic state of unemployment in Ireland where I first heard U2 covering Eddie Cochran’s C’Mon Everybody. At the time it sounded raw, edgy and impossibly exciting - a long way from their ‘big music’ that they were becoming known for. Not only did the song cement my love for U2 but it instigated me investigating the back catalogue of Cochran and savouring the original version as well as the likes of Summertime Blues and Somethin’ Else.

Listening back now U2’s version doesn’t sound anywhere near as great as I thought it did then. It’s rather like looking back at photos of an ex-girlfriend and wondering what you ever saw in her in the first place. Sometimes you get caught up in the moment. Listening to the announcer of the concert shout "Do you want to see a band from Dublin ? Do you want to see a band that you know and I know to be the greatest live rock band in the world?" and the deafening scream that followed it, it's easy to see why I did. It’s part of the adrenaline buzz of live music - moments that will be, for better or worse, part of the music that made me.