Jones the Song

London’s first dedicated Jazz radio station was the original Jazz FM.  It started broadcasting in 1990.  In addition to its Jazz output to which I rapidly became addicted, each Saturday morning at 10 am, Paul Jones broadcast two hours of Blues.  Jones has to be the most learned Blues maven in the UK – if not beyond.  The breadth and depth of his knowledge is extraordinary.  In addition to playing ever more arcane records, Jones’ playlists feature artists with whom surely no more than a few hundred dedicated Blues aficionados in the UK are familiar.  Jones conducts interviews with visiting American Bluesmen with intelligence, wit, insight and due reverence that is neither patronising nor obsequious.  However obscure the artist, Jones will share an easy familiarity with his – and occasionally her – life and times and, of course, music and musical influences.

Paul Jones started his career as singer and harmonica player with Manfred Mann.  In common with many of the bands that emerged in the vanguard of the British R’n’B boom of the early sixties, the price of Manfred Mann’s commercial success was partly paid by pandering to the needs of the pop charts.  Notwithstanding the requisite cultural compromises that included regular appearances on Top of the Pops, the Manfreds’ early hits were heavily R’n’B influenced.  ‘5-4-3-2-1’ became the opening music for iconic TV show ‘Ready, Steady Go’.  By the time that ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’ – a cover of a track originally recorded by The Exciters - became the Manfreds’ first number one hit in the summer of 1964, Jones’ public persona was more teen pin up than earthy bluesman.  It was only a couple of years before he departed to pursue a mainstream singing and acting career; at least temporarily.  

In between these events, the Manfreds toured in a package co-headlining with fellow R’n’B pioneers, The Yardbirds.  Towards the end of 1965 the tour reached Portsmouth.  Promoted as a triumphal homecoming for the Manfreds – along with Jones, drummer Mike Hugg was a local boy, the Guildhall was packed.   In amongst the music fans were massed ranks of teenage girls whose primary objective was to scream themselves into a state of near-clinically diagnosable hysteria.  As irritated as I am these days by having to shush the non Jazz-loving poseurs who insist on talking over the music at  Ronnie Scotts, there was nothing anyone could have done to quell the waves of mayhem that more or less drowned out the Manfreds. 

However, there came a point in the set when Jones managed to persuade every one of the damp-knickered, teary-macscara stained pubescent girls to shut up.  The highlight of the evening was a memorable performance of Bob Dylan’s ‘With God on our side’.  This was the time of the folk-protest movement of which the Manfreds were not an obvious part.  The choice of this song and the powerful manner of its delivery imparted the relevance of that movement’s message that might have previously passed by some of the audience.  Not the first gig I had attended, but the first ‘concert’ and memorable for that and more, too; the audience’s response was genuinely passionate.

While indulging thespian pursuits – including a spell with the National Theatre - together with guitarist/vocalist Dave Kelly and fellow Manfreds’ alumnus, Tom McGuiness, Jones formed The Blues Band.  The use of the definite article is wholly justified.   Over the past thirty years or so I have seen The Blues Band play a number of live gigs and they have never been less than splendid.  In addition to some originals, they perform classic blues numbers aplenty.  There are also numerous lesser known covers no doubt, at least in part, unearthed from the vaults of Jones’ extensive memory bank and record collection.  The Blues Band’s choice of material is always thoughtful and blends intelligent messages told in true blues language with catchy riffs, outstanding musicianship and the authentic vocal excellence of both Jones and Kelly.

Stage favourites include the reluctant kiss off message of ‘Find Yourself Another Fool’, the eternal requirement of ‘Green stuff’ and ‘Funny Money’ as well as the fact that the Band have discovered  ’29 Ways’ to make it to their baby’s door!

I have met Paul Jones on a couple of occasions.  The first was when he and his wife were sitting at the next table to my wife and me at The Jazz Café and we chatted as you do with anyone else next to whom you might be sitting at a club.    Walter ‘Wolfman’ Washington was touring at around the time of the release of his 1991 ‘Sada’ album.   The album’s highlight and showstopper is the title track, a plaintiff tribute to Washington’s then infant daughter whose picture is on the album cover.  Jones’ radio programme had introduced me to Washington’s music as it had to much else besides.  More recently, I saw Jones was playing with a pick up band at a corporate do in Grays’ Inn .  I don’t think anyone else realised who he was.  The band had been introduced anonymously to a crowd of City suits more interested in getting hammered on free champagne and gorging on up-market nibbles.  In between sets we spoke of our respective experiences of then recent visits to our shared alma mater.  Portsmouth Grammar School had recently started indulging in an orgy of reaching out to its lost alumni.   Although still looking remarkably youthful, Jones is actually 10 years my senior.  His reaction of positive disbelief to the new paradigm of inclusion, youth and modernity at the school was similar to mine.

Along with Georgie Fame, Eric Clapton and Stevie Winwood, Paul Jones is one of the few musicians I have seen performing live in every decade since the 1960’s.  With his boyish enthusiasm for his work, Jones is a living example of the power of music to transcend generations and assume an energy that is all its own.  Who’s to say there isn’t another couple of decades of great music still to come from him?

‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’ by Manfred Mann is an original 45 vinyl single.  It also appears along with ‘5 4 3 2 1’ and  ‘With God On Our Side’ on the ‘Manfred Mann EP Collection’ released on vinyl in 1988 by See For Miles – a super collectors’ label. The Blues Band’s albums in my collection include the Arista vinyl releases ‘Ready’ (198O), ‘Brand Loyalty’ (1982) and ‘Bye Bye Blues’ (1983).  There is also a CD released in 1992 by Castle Communications entitled ‘Homage’ on which I did the legal work for Castle.  Walter ‘Wolfman’ Washington’s ‘Sada’ is a CD released in 1991 on the Pointblank label. 

Paul Jones now broadcasts a weekly does of ‘Rhythm and Blues’ on Radio 2 on Monday at 7 pm.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wrpd

Upcoming gigs for the Blues Band: http://www.thebluesband.net/HTML/TourDates.html

After the Grantrush

Anywhere looks good in the sunshine. My first, indeed my only, visit to the Victorian majesty of downtown Bolton, Lancs took place on a bright, sunny Saturday in the late Autumn of 1970.  The picture of its imperious town hall still sparkles in my memory.

In those days, students with cars were few and far between.  A peripheral mate with a fourth-hand Ford Anglia was persuaded to hack up the A666 with me to  Boots in Bolton.   He negotiated an appropriate consideration with me in order to forego the pleasures of an extended Friday night bedroom session with his girlfriend.  A quarter page ad in the Manchester Evening News had alerted me to the fact that an emporium, then more or less exclusively known for selling health products and stuff that women smear on their faces, had a special offer on a rather smart looking all in one stereo record player with detachable speakers.  Thirty-two quid was a serious bargain and I had started to plan accordingly.

While I spent every spare penny on accumulating LPs, the sound freaks invested wages from summer jobs on poncey components that together made up state of the art stereo systems.  Finely calibrated turntables and fancy amps with German names were connected to massive speakers by tangles of wiring that pumped out vast numbers of ‘watts per channel’.   Many of these early technology geeks owned little in the way of listening material; perhaps worn copies of ‘Axis Bold as Love’ or ‘Disraeli Gears’ and maybe even  ‘A Hard Road’.  On the other hand I was still using my now ancient Elizabethan mono player that was doing little justice to endless plays of ‘Live Dead’ and ‘In The Court of the Crimson King’.

When my sixth form school mates started toiling away at Oxbridge entrance exams, much to my parents’ chagrin, I hadn’t joined them.  In revolutionary counter-culture mood, my decision was to eschew the allure of the glittering spires and head for the red-brick realism of Manchester.  Serendipitously, I had learned that Manchester awarded scholarships based on the results of competitive exams that were strikingly similar in scope and difficulty to those required by Oxbridge.  Competing with 500 others – mainly pupils from top grammar schools scattered across the north of England - I confounded the expectations of my schoolmates and teachers.  I won one of six open scholarships, the Schools Major Award, which was worth £100 a year.  It was a lot in those days when the maximum annual student grant was a mere £420.

In applying to Manchester, I had indicated a preference to live in Quaker-run Dalton Hall.  Dalton then offered various privileges to University Scholars including an additional £50-a-year bursary.  Owing to the quirks of the grant system, I couldn’t take that bursary in cash.  Ted Fox, Dalton’s amiable Principal, stipulated that I had to spend the money on ‘books and items of cultural interest’.  ‘The Who’s culture’ opined a chum.  Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to take a receipt for ‘Live at Leeds’ or ‘Who’s Next?’ into the University Cashier for reimbursement.  In three years I never bought one record with that Bursary.  Generally, it was used to equip myself with all the expensive law books I needed to get myself through my degree course.

After discovering the Boots advert I remember rushing up to the Bursar’s Office housed in the bowels of the University Administration Building.  Before I laid out the unfeasibly large sum of thirty-two quid and organised the logistics of transporting a large box from Bolton to Manchester, I needed to be certain that a Boots bargain stereo qualified as an ‘item of cultural interest’.  The kindly gent behind the desk disappeared into another room to check with someone more senior – perhaps even the invisible Bursar himself – that I might proceed.

Following a relatively uneventful trip to sunlit Bolton we returned to Manchester mid-afternoon.  I rewarded my chauffeur and schlepper for the day with the price of a couple of pints, or perhaps something more exotic, and reimbursement of petrol costs.  He dropped me off at Dalton with my large box and retreated to his girlfriend’s flat.  There was still time for me to race down to Marshalls’ record store in Rusholme, before it closed, to buy a couple of albums.  Clearly I had to have something new with which to anoint my first stereo. 

Frank Zappa’s ‘Hot Rats’ was soon booming out of my room.  One irate third year student working in the Hall library at the other end of Bottom Corridor stormed through my double doors to complain about the volume.  By the time he did, five or six other music fans were sprawled around my room nodding in time.  Alerted by the opening drum roll and grand piano chords of 'Peaches en Regalia’, they had come into assess my new purchase; they were already in full flow playing an array of air instruments - guitars, drums and even keyboards.  Our irate hall mate less than reluctantly abandoned his Pure Maths theorem to start plucking an air bass - a Fender of course.  ‘Little Umbrellas’ and ‘The Gumbo Variations’ filled the room – and indeed the corridor and beyond - in glorious stereo.  The album’s highlight is perhaps ‘Willy the Pimp’ which features a guest vocal by the otherwise dubious talent of Captain Beefheart.  We sang along word perfect even if insufficiently experienced of life to imagine the grubby reality of the ‘little lady (who) walk that street, telling all the boys she can’t be beat’.

Once the lads finished congratulating me on my purchase which, even without an obscure German name, clearly met with their approval, I shut the door.  I slipped the second album onto the now no longer virgin turntable.  Neil Young’s ‘After The Goldrush’ seemed an appropriate song to describe the events of that week:  ‘Well I dreamed I saw the silver spaceships lying in the yellow haze of the sun’.

A Ford Anglia was hardly a spaceship, but the sun had shone on Boots in Bolton, Lancs.  I turned out the lights, lay back on my bed and bathed in the warm sounds of the West Coast on my all-in-one stereo with the detachable speakers.

‘Hot Rats’ by Frank Zappa and ’After the Goldrush’ by Neil Young are both original vinyl pressings as are ‘Live Dead’ by the Grateful Dead and ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ by King Crimson.  The Who’s ‘Live at Leeds’ and ‘Who’s Next’ are both CD re-issues the former with bonus tracks added to the content of original early-70’s vinyl release. I have never actually owned either Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Axis Bold as Love’ or Cream’s ‘Disraeli Gears’ albeit that I have always enjoyed both.  I once ended up in unwitting possession of a borrowed copy of ‘Disraeli Gears’ for some months without knowing its provenance before eventually locating its rightful owner to whom I returned it.  In recent times I endeavoured to buy a CD copy of John Mayall’  The Bluesbreakers’  ‘A Hard Road’;  the reason I didn’t may be a suitable theme for a subsequent blog.

A shot of Rhythm 'n' Booths

Lamenting the demise of the high street store is occupational therapy for the avid collector of records.  Save for a few specialist havens and the last surviving HMV on Oxford Street, even the music mecca of London doesn’t satisfy the retail cravings of its many music junkies.  I have never once downloaded a single MP3.  To supplement my occasional bursts of bricks-and-mortar shopping, nowadays I score CD sound fixes online from Amazon, eBay and some specialist anorak websites for more obscure items.

Back in the sixties, when outlets for fans to hear new music were limited, an after school trip to my local record shops was not a jaunt but a compulsory requirement.  To one side of the hoovers, heaters and food mixers in Weston Hart, the electrical store in Albert Road, Southsea, was its record department.

A foray into vinyl heaven started off with a flip through the double rack of LP’s.  This served two purposes: the first was to inspect what was on display and whether anything new had arrived in the few days since the previous visit.  Sadly, the pennies and threepences scraped together from parsimonious levels of pocket money rarely accumulated to the 32s 6d cost of an album.  The second purpose was to check out who was working behind the record counter; was it the curmudgeonly store manager with the pencil behind his ear and the dandruff sprinkled, tweed sports jacket or, more encouragingly, the otherwise unattainable blonde girl with the mini-skirt and faux Mary Quant hairdo?  The significance of the difference was how many singles you could get away with hearing in one of the three listening booths. 

The listening booths were shaped like oversized visorless salon hairdryers screwed to the wall and reaching down as far as the biceps of an average sized adult.  In the ceiling of each, a cloth covered speaker produced a trebly, tinny sound.  Mr Curmudgeonly would demand proof of sufficient funds to purchase at least one 45 before placing a disc on a turntable.  On a good day he might be persuaded to play more than one.  Ms Faux Mary Quant, however, would be only too pleased to keep the music playing for as long as housewives occupied Mr Curmudgeonly with kettles, cookers and sewing machines.

Most early sixties singles lasted no more than two-and-a-half to three minutes.  Ten or twelve minutes in a record store could therefore prove a totally rewarding musical experience – sometimes shared with one or even two others squeezed into a booth.

In June 1964, the release of The Animals’ ‘House of the Rising Sun’ heralded a number of changes for contemporary music.  With a running time of 4 minutes and 17 seconds the record did more than merely provide better value for the 6s 8d cost of a single than its competition for the number one spot.  And no, I am not talking about the extent of the annoyance it caused Mr Curmudgeonly with its continual requests for plays.  Here was an arrangement of a piece whose subject matter was the doings of an early twentieth century New Orleans brothel. 

The domination of the Hit Parade by solo singers with Elvis-like quiffs had already been quashed by the raw guitar sound of Merseybeat.  Groups – they weren’t yet called bands – were spawned all over the country: from Manchester there were The Hollies, Herman’s Hermits and Freddie & The Dreamers; from London there were the Rolling Stones, The Pretty Things and The Kinks; even Portsmouth proudly contributed two-fifths of Manfred Mann (albeit that drummer Mike Hugg actually hailed from Gosport).

The Animals came from Newcastle.  Untainted by even the slightest suggestions of sugar-coated boy-meets-girl teen romance, The Animals unashamedly sang about sex and its effect on the psyche.  ‘Baby Let Me Take You Home’ was no precursor to a snog on a parental sofa. ‘I’m Crying’ and ‘Don’t let Me Be Misunderstood’ were more than cries from the heart, they were screams from the soul.  Supplementing originals with covers of ‘proper’ R’n’B numbers by the likes of Ray Charles and Bo Diddley, The Animals conveyed a musical message that wasn’t confined to their lyrics.  Within a relatively short time earthier content became commonplace, prime examples being The Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’ and ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’.

At the same time and shortly afterwards, the era of the extended rock song began to emerge: Bob Dylan’s ‘Highway 61’ and ‘Desolation Row’, Vanilla Fudge’s souped up cover of ‘You Keep Me Hanging On’ and The Doors’ ‘The End’.  Eventually the contemporary rock form would stretch a piece across the entire side of a 33 rpm album: Bob Dylan again with the haunting ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’, Pink Floyd’s ‘Atom Heart Mother’ and the admittedly execrable ‘In a Gadda-Da-Vida’ by the otherwise largely forgettable Iron Butterfly.

By the time the decade was spent, albums had become the key component of music collections and the listening booth had become a thing of my past.  The quasi symphonic pomp of Deep Purple’s ‘Concerto for Group and Orchestra’ (59 minutes 26 seconds) and, subsequently, Yes’s ‘Close to the Edge’ (18 minutes 43 seconds) became the currency of students’ record collections.  The evolution of the rock song form had reached the end of a journey that had started with the story of a New Orleans brothel.

‘Baby Let Me Take You Home’, ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ and ‘Don’t Let Me Be Understood’ by The Animals appear in my collection on the original Columbia singles.  ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ also appears on an early EMI vinyl compilation originally released in 1966 complete with covers of ‘Hallelujah I Love Her So’ and ‘I Believe To My Soul’ by Ray Charles and ‘Roadrunner’ by Bo Diddley (ne Ellis McDaniels).  I have most of the other records mentioned in this particular blog in my collection in their original vinyl format although I have never owned any recording by Iron Butterfly in any format. 

The Weston Hart premises in Albert Road, Southsea are now occupied by Haslemere Bicycles.

625 at the Maltings

In 1968, pop was absorbing the impact of Sergeant Pepper and evolving into rock.  DJ’s John Peel and Pete Drummond, who had abandoned the pirate radio ships as they were sinking, brought the likes of Jefferson Airplane, The Dead and Captain Beefheart to our ears via the newly established BBC station, Radio 1.  Yet, for the music fan, television offered little outside of Top of The Pops and mainstream MOR with the likes of Lulu and Val Doonican.

 

At the age of 15 - and not long before my family upped sticks to London - the living room telly died somewhat unceremoniously. Up until then, television viewing, exclusively in black and white for us, was a mixed bag on the only two existing channels.  BBC 1 provided an assortment of entertainment, childrens’ programmes, news, current affairs, sport, comedy, documentaries, movies and some drama predominantly aimed at a family audience.  ITV offered more of the same, albeit with a brow that was slightly lower but whose programmes, as now, were plagued by adverts.

The hastily purchased replacement Morris Family TV received the much heralded 625 lines.  Bravissimo, Dad!  I could now tune in to the then mostly wonderful BBC2 which had eventually reached southern England some time after its 1964 launch in London and the Midlands.  The delights of World Cinema  – which I think was broadcast on a Wednesday evening – opened me up to The Apu Trilogy, Alain Resnais’ ‘Last Year in Marienbad’ and all things Godard, Louis Malle and Bergman.  I can also remember the first showing of Ken Russell’s ’Isadora’ and Theatre 625’s ‘The Year of the Sex Olympics’ a groundbreaking drama that was broadcast around the time of the Mexico Olympiad.  There was also ‘Late Night Line Up’ a hip Arts programme with the estimable Joan Bakewell – with whom I once subsequently ate lunch in the early years of my career as a media lawyer.

However, the programme that made the biggest impact on me and which introduced me to a totally different music genre was ’Jazz at the Maltings’.  An audience seemingly consisting of intense, bearded and bespectacled thirty something males were gathered in the round in a converted agricultural building somewhere in East Anglia.  Hushed and in awe, they sat with diligent reverence as the Gary Burton Group played live and did their thing.  I had never heard anything like it and I never forgot it, even if I did not then quite appreciate the dexterity of Burton’s four mallet vibraphone technique and Steve Swallow’s innovative funky bass guitar style.

It was some time later, five years to be exact, when I first acquired an album by Burton and who I have subsequently seen play live on many occasions.  That album is ‘Gary Burton & Keith Jarrett’, one of many collaborative ventures in which Burton has engaged.  It was also the first jazz album I actually bought.  At the time, I spent every spare penny I could scrape from my parsimonious student income on buying rock albums.  Buying a jazz album meant one less rock album for my collection, which was already then becoming envied by many of my student contemporaries.

Consisting predominantly of original compositions by virtuoso pianist Jarrett – with one by Swallow – the music moves through various contemporary moods and styles.  On tracks like ‘Grow Your Own’ and ‘The Raven Speaks’, the band dwells on the riff based forms that became popular with jazzers in the early seventies.  There is also strong melody – ‘In Your Quiet Place’ and Swallow’s Latin-tinged ‘Como in Vietnam’ and blowing – ‘Fortune Smiles’.  The band’s line-up was completed by drummer Bill Goodwin and, inevitably in a Burton-led group, with a guitarist, Sam Brown.

Although I had been going to some jazz gigs for a few years, it had taken a lot for me to persuade myself to buy a jazz album instead of a rock album.  This was the case even though this was music that was clearly influenced by the nascent jazz-rock fusion genre that was then becoming popular.  Buying a jazz record was an act of devotion and commitment to the form.  Shortly afterwards the floodgates opened and it became increasingly easier for me to make the choice to buy music as eclectically as I had long been prepared to listen to it.

‘Gary Burton & Keith Jarrett’ is a vinyl album and is a US import produced by Joel Dorn for Atlantic Records and first released in 1971.

From Cricket Bats to Beatles

The Summer of ’63 was long and hot.  So were all the others of my childhood – or at least that’s how I remember them.  In the Summer of ’63 I embarked on my voyage of musical discovery.  Conventional media in which hidden gems are mined by intrepid music fans include live gigs and radio shows, friends’ enthusiasm and, of course, in these digital days, the internet.  The shaded knoll at the edge of a prep school cricket pitch may seem more unlikely.  This is especially the case since the prep school in question, the Lower School of Portsmouth Grammar, was not then an institution in which pop was part of the culture.  The school was run with military precision by a group of authoritarian teachers.  They had spent their teens and early twenties fighting the Battle of Britain in impossibly flimsy wooden Spitfires and watching their friends fry in tanks at El Alamein; one had even survived a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Burma.

While waiting my turn to bat, three or four of my classmates spontaneously picked up their cricket bats, started to strum them in imitation guitar mode and to sing ‘From Me To You’.  It was the first time I had heard of the Beatles.  A couple of months previously the band’s ‘Please, Please Me’ had topped the charts, but somehow the event had passed me by.  My listening thus far had focussed on instrumentals – The Tornados, The Shadows, The Spotnicks and Jet Harris & Tony Meehan.  By the time the next games afternoon came round, I was word perfect and confidently joined in.

By the end of that summer and the release of the follow-up single ‘She Loves You’, in common with millions of others I was indelibly affected by the generational phenomenon of Beatlemania.  Impossible for my children to comprehend, those who were there knew, understood and believed.  The emergence of the Beatles defined the parameters of a new cultural order.  A couple of years later The Who would be ‘talkin’ ‘bout my generation’.  However, without the Beatles it is questionable as to whether the conversation would have started in quite the way it did.

‘From Me To You’ and ‘She Loves You’ by The Beatles both appear in my collection on the original Parlophone singles.  They also both appear on the so-called ‘Red Album': The Beatles ’62-’66 released on vinyl in 1973.  There is also a brief live-studio performance of ‘From Me To you’ on The Beatles ‘Live at the BBC’ released as a 2CD set in 1994. Hava Nagila’ by The Spotnicks is a single on the Oriole label released in 1963.  Two singles by The Tornados - ‘Telstar’ and  ‘Globetrotter’  and three by Jet Harris & Tony Meehan – ‘Diamonds’, ‘Scarlet O’Hara’ and ‘Applejack’ are all original Decca releases from 1962 and 1963.  ‘The Shadows Collection’ is a 22 track compilation CD released by HMV in 2001. 

‘Have You Heard?’

A blog about life, times, people, places and, most of all, music

A few days ago I was discussing the importance of music with a friend.  She observed that over the last dozen years the relationship between music lovers and their collections has changed radically.  New and younger music consumers rarely line shelves with CDs and may not even know what a 12 inch vinyl album looks like.  She queried what I thought may have been lost in the present era of the instant download, the deletable Youtube visual and the ephemeral Tweet.  We then considered what it is and, more poignantly, what it means to build and maintain a collection of music on longer playing physical media.  That got me to thinking about my own relationship with music which is defined – at least in part -  through the medium of my extensive record collection.

There is seldom a day that goes by when I don’t play CDs or vinyl albums albeit that only rarely do my seven inch singles make it onto the turntable.  But what makes me play particular pieces of music or sequences of albums?  Why did I buy the records that I own?  What part does and has music played in my life?  Why am I so emotionally involved with the music that I listen to and love?   The fact is that an intro, a chorus, a theme, a riff, a rhythm, a coda or even a single chord or note can instantly conjure up a connection or a memory: people, places, times, events both personal and global, gigs, venues, holidays and, naturally, the musicians and vocalists themselves whose performances have continued to captivate me since my youth.

2013 will mark fifty years since the first time I went into a record shop and emerged with a 45 RPM single.  My parents had bought me my first record player, an Elizabethan, as a reward for passing the entrance exam to the secondary school of their choice.  Shortly after that, I was given my first vinyl album as an eleventh birthday present.  Since then I have accumulated approximately 3,000 albums that cover a broad range of Jazz, Classical, Rock, Blues, Folk, Soundtracks, World and other styles.

During the course of the next twelve months I have been challenged to listen to every record I own, no matter how embarrassing or jarring some may now sound.  In doing so I will engage in a dialogue with the music and write about it.  I will tease out the memories, the significance of different records and the relationship between pieces.  In the time frame proposed, it is unlikely that I can actually listen to every note of music that I own.  It would take about eight or nine hours a day to achieve that in a year, leaving insufficient time for life itself!  Nevertheless, over the course of a year there should be enough time to cover a significant number of the CD’s and albums, put them into their respective social and cultural context and talk about them from my own personal point of view.