Blog Rules – OK? 

Have You Heard? has been running for 11 weeks.  A few days ago it passed 2000 page views.  Although more than half of those have been from readers in the UK, its audience extends to Qatar and Ethiopia, Colombia, France, Germany, Israel, China and a healthy contingent in the USA.  Thanks to all of you who continue to log-in; it suggests that I’m not writing in a vacuum.  Even if you don’t want to join the ranks of registered followers, feedback is always welcome.  You can send email to haveyouheard2013@gmail.com  If you don’t want your comments quoted, then just say so.  Confidentiality will be respected.

The Blog was initiated to address a task that was set by a friend.  Over the last dozen years the relationship between music lovers and their collections has begun to change, in some ways quite radically.   I was asked to consider what I thought may have been lost in the present era by those who download MP3s and don’t line shelves with a collection of physical records and CDs.  I was challenged to listen to my entire record collection over a year, engage in a dialogue with the music and write about it.  I was charged with teasing out the memories, the significance of different records and relationships between different pieces.  In doing this I decided to try and put them into their respective social and cultural context and talk about them from my own personal point of view.

Whether or not the Blog has succeeded in meeting the challenge is a matter of opinion.  Not every entry meets the criteria set out above – either wholly or in part.  Some entries have been concerned with the early years of my interest in music during my school days in Portsmouth.  My son tells me that he has enjoyed these particular Blogs the most.  The stories tell of events that are associated with particular records and artists, those artists and their records engender memories of particular events and periods of time.  While writing I have played the records quoted and used them as prompts.  As one sentence setting out a thought leads onto the next, I have been able to extract more and more details from the back of my mind.  Other Blogs have been inspired by recent gigs that I have attended.  Attending live performances continues to add musical memories and provides an ongoing source for new material. 

There is seemingly far too much to write about in Blogs that were originally planned to run to no more than 1000 words per entry.  Fortunately, no-one has yet complained about that.  Cue: an inbox full of email making such complaints. 

In order to meet the challenge – or at least as much of it as might be possible in a year - I originally intended that no record would be mentioned in more than one Blog and that, perhaps, when reaching a particular artist I would cover all of his/her/their records that I have in the collection in one go.  Amongst the 130 albums and 30 singles mentioned to date, there is already more than one that has had a couple of mentions.  While all of the records by Family were referred to in a reminiscence of an early gig (Savoy Browns and South Parade Blues: Part 1; published 22^nd April 2012), to date there has only been one record mentioned that features Pat Metheny (THE Duet live at the Barbican: published 15^th April 2012; check the discography if you don’t believe me!)  The collection includes 43 albums that feature Pat as leader or co-leader and another 20 on which he appears as a guest artist.  There are also about 15 DVDs including 10 of various performances from the Montreal Jazz Festival that have never been commercially released that were given to me by someone in the industry who knows of my passion for Pat’s music.  In all honesty, it’s difficult to know where to start with Pat; not only are there more of his records than any other artist to address, I have also seen him play live on more occasions than anyone else.  

‘Have You Heard?’ with its obvious connotation, was named for one of Pat’s pieces, first recorded and released as the opening track on the album ‘Letter from Home’.  Playing any track from that album ignites an instant Pavolvian response, and particularly the sweeping majesty of the piece entitled ‘5-5-7’.  In 1989 while on a riding holiday in Utah en famille, we were caught in flash flooding on rugged terrain outside of Moab.  Our horses were spooked by lightning that hit the ground not more than 30 yards from where we were trying to shelter from the storm.  My then seven year old daughter was also spooked and dismounted.  The rest of us followed suit much to the chagrin of the hapless wrangler who had led us out on an evening when the gathering clouds were an indication that he should have known better.  After leading the horses back to the ranch through the most intense storm I have ever experienced, there were four very muddy pairs of cowboy boots that needed two longish afternoon sessions to clean and polish.  While I sat on the porch of our wooden cabin in the shadows of a large mesa with a beer or two I listened repetitively to ‘Letter From Home’ on my Walkman.  Along with the other albums recorded between 1978 and 2005 under the name of Pat Metheny Group ‘Letter From Home’ contains an intoxicating expression of Jazz based on powerful melodies the sounds of which are imbued with influences from many other genres, Latin, Oriental, Electronica, Fusion, Rock Choral and Classical.  ‘Letter From Home’ is one of the albums I recommend as a starter pack to those not yet familiar with Pat’s music.

The starting point for this Blog has not yet been considered in anything more than a cursory reference.  Simply stated, will the 16 year old music fan of today who downloads an Adele recording – legally or illegally – and who never buys a CD, still feel the same way about that track in 25 years time?  Let’s take a simple example.  There must be a million stories of particular pieces of music being indelibly associated with the rawness of feelings of first romance.  Imagine a sixteen year old experiencing first love today to the sound of ‘Set Fire To The Rain’.  Let’s also suppose that like many teenage romances it eventually runs its course and ends with much emotion but no long term negative feelings.  Will our 2012 teenager-in-love have the same feeling of attachment to a digital file as her mother may have to a 45 vinyl single of Whitney Houston’s ‘Saving All My Love For You’ that she received as a Valentine’s gift from the boy she met at the school gates?  Perhaps personally inscribed with handwritten references to the lyrics, the gift from across the years will be as much a part of the memory of a seminal life experience as the music it contains.  Flipping through records on a shelf – or in a box of bric à brac when it emerges from the back of a cupboard – arguably adds a physical dimension to the experience of recorded music that is totally absent when calling up a file on a computer or shuffling tunes on an iPhone. 

In terms of the shift in the nature of the relationship between music lovers and their music, the rise of the MP3 is having a potentially even more far reaching effect – but that’s for another time.  After all, there are no rules to this Blog and even if there were I’ll make them up myself and they will evolve as the Blog develops. 

‘Letter From Home’ by Pat Metheny Group is a CD released by Geffen in 1989.  Whitney Houston’s ‘Saving All My Love For You’ is a vinyl single released by Arista in 1985.  I don’t own Adele’s records but I like what I have heard and imagine that many of her songs will become enduring to the generation that is now falling in love to and with them.