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1/ I was thinking about the music that I listened to when I was growing up. In my formative 12-18 years I was painfully shy. Music was my escape from a crap homelife.
2/ I had a Commodore 64 and got in to music listening to the chip tunes that guys like Martin Galway and Rob Hubbard did. I got a Sharp radio player so started listening to the top 40 and taping songs off it.
3/ I spent a lot of time listening to John Peel and Jeff Young on Radio 1. I lived in a northern town (this was late 80s) and it was pretty grim. Well, Grimsby, to be exact. I was white, the whole town was white, and it was all about the rock music.
4/ My whole life was ordinary working-class. My parents record stash had about 10 LP's: Who's Next, Aladdin Sane, some Arcade compilations, the Nolans. Pretty standard stuff. I wanted to discover worlds beyond all of this.
5/ And looking back on where I travelled musically it was all being fed by "outsiders". Black, gay, those marginalised, groups hiding from the masses who wanted to do things differently.
6/ The Hip- hop scene :
I had never even met a black person in our town growing up! It was life-changing. I played Public Enemy to my dad in the car in '87. It really went well over his head. It was ace! Just the reaction I wanted.
I had never even met a black person in our town growing up! It was life-changing. I played Public Enemy to my dad in the car in '87. It really went well over his head. It was ace! Just the reaction I wanted.
7/ The Industrial scene: :
Apocalyptic sounds that drove audio nails to our skulls. Heavy, driving, intense. Metal music that actually rocked more than rock music.
Apocalyptic sounds that drove audio nails to our skulls. Heavy, driving, intense. Metal music that actually rocked more than rock music.
8/ The New Beat sound. I imagined dark clubs where DJ's played slow, dense records to impossibly cool and unobtainable women. Not the goths down our local club or the Mandy's and Sharon's at Pier 39.
9/ Hi-NRG:
I had certainly never met anyone who was gay. Or knew I had, anyway.
I had certainly never met anyone who was gay. Or knew I had, anyway.
10/ Chicago House:
Music made by gay men to be played in gay clubs that took over the world. I had no idea it was made by gay men originally. Grimsby in 1988 was a pretty sheltered place and I was pretty clueless.
Music made by gay men to be played in gay clubs that took over the world. I had no idea it was made by gay men originally. Grimsby in 1988 was a pretty sheltered place and I was pretty clueless.
11/ Techno:
No idea the people making these sounds were black. It wasn't important to me. I just heard the music.
No idea the people making these sounds were black. It wasn't important to me. I just heard the music.
12/ Italo:
Sounds from Europe where people, to me, were just so fucking cool. It's preposterous but to this 16 years old and living the other side of an industrial estate this kind of shit was so fricking glamorous.
Sounds from Europe where people, to me, were just so fucking cool. It's preposterous but to this 16 years old and living the other side of an industrial estate this kind of shit was so fricking glamorous.
13/ All these sounds bouncing around my head. And looking back I was directed to the "outsider", whether they were black or gay or marginalised or part of a clique or scene that simply wasn't just British white people doing shit white, heterosexual things.
14/ I couldn't stand The Smiths. I was in to Frankie Goes To Hollywood. I didn't like guitars, I liked cheap synths and samplers. I liked non-stop repetitive beat music. And looking back, with 30 years having passed, this was an escape. Not a literal one, though.
15/ It'd be years before I left the town for the big cities. But it was a mental escape from the grey, desperately dull crap I saw all around me.
16/ And now in 2020 I have to block family members from my social media because they are homophobic and racist and hurtful and pretty crap people. They don't understand anything that isn't within their frame of reference. I won't be bringing my girls up that way.
17/ I want them, as they grow, to find their own scenes, their own references. To head to the "outsiders" as they're always the most interesting types.
18/ I like to think this 'tolerance' (shitty word for this, I know) is the end result of those late nights in the 80s listening to those records on the radio. We've come a long way, but there's still a long way to go. And more music to find.
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