Here's a word to the no-doubt already wise on the subject of music; you don't choose the music you like. It tends, unfortunately, to choose you.
This is not strictly true, I'll admit. But as I understand it, here's how it works; you put up with your parent's tastes until you either buckle under and start to like it, or you develop musical tastes of your own. More often than not, the later option is done in such a way as to rebel against the sort of stuff you've had to put up with for your-life-so-far.
And, after all, why not?
Music is - at least, in my opinion, and you may disagree - all about rebellion in the first place. It's been with us since we first learnt to bang rocks and ullulate our voices together, and it'll be with humankind as long as we're around, because, goddamn it, we love the sound of our own voices as much as we love the sound of other people singing. When the first manned probe goes to Mars, the astronauts will spend their downtime listening to whatever they like.
When we leave this solar system, be damn sure we'll do it to our own beat.
Music is honest in a way that a lot of other media forms aren't, and that's what makes it a liar. Video can be edited; books can be edited then reprinted; hell, right now, there isn't a form of media that can't be 1984-ed until it says exactly what someone wants it to.
But music will, quite possibly, never escape it's live roots. Because of this, music is honest, because if a band plays a song differently live to how it is when it's recorded, people notice. Oh, yes, there are little variations that make the song more interesting, but at the end of the day 99 times out of 100 it's still the same song, which is the reason why people rush out and purchase it on 8-track/vinyl/cassette/CD/MP3 download; they know what they're getting, and it won't wriggle under the microscopic scrutiny that only the most dedicated music fan can provide.
In an uncertain age, maybe the only thing to trust is the song.
Or, of course, maybe not. Because musicians are tricksy bastards at the best of times.
So, this being the here and now, you get to put up with some more of my musings on the music that, for better or worse, has shaped my life so far.
Let's go way back. Deep into the mists of time, into the forgotten age - or, at least, the age that should be forgotten - the 1980s. I'm not talking about the cultural strip-mining that's been going on since around 1999/2000 that made an effort to make the 80s look cool - or, at least, look as if they were cool at the time, because every single decade has to suffer that sort of thing. I'm just surprised that there isn't a 101 50's hits out there at the moment, or some sort of post-war music revival, the way things are treated at the moment.
But the 80s - and whisper this, lest it be heresy - weren't actually that cool.
Fine, mark me down as a musical min. Do as you like. But to view the 1980s as solely a musical period of interest is an appalling way of doing things.
As I said above, unless you're very lucky, you don't get to choose the sorts of music you get to listen to as a child. Or, at least, you didn't way back when; nowadays, it might be different for you young whippersnappers.
Let's put this in context; Way back then, when only the adults owned stereo systems worth a damn and had jurisdiction on what got played on themdn't get to choose. Oh, sure, there were cassette tape walkmans, and as you got older you might be lucky enough to get your own radio - or possibly even cassette recorder - but right there, in those crucial early moments when you start to realise just how cool music is? Not a hope.
Which is why my first musical memory, curiously, is of the Pet Shop Boys.
Oh, lordy, yes.
I don't really recall what my parents listened to - one parental unit, as has been previously mentioned, had tastes that varied with the direction of the wind, and the other never particularly talked about it - so this memory is of one of the first albums I ever - technically - owned.
This was the 1980s. Why, oh why, could it not have been Talking Heads - which I discovered about ten years later - or, shit, anything other than electro-synth-pop guilt with undertones of heavily sublimated homosexuality?
Please don't get me wrong. I like the Pet Shop Boys. There, I've said it, and I'm only marginally embarassed. But unless you were part of Certain Circles, let's be honest, they weren't cool.
It's not just this, though. Music should be a thing of joy, and your first exposure to it should bring that about in such a way that you'll always remember it.
Instead, my musical childhood was soundtracked to It's a Sin.
Uh-huh.
I reckon I still feel guilty even now, about nothing in particular. It's that powerful a piece of music, because it's one man - Neil Tennant - baring his innermost feelings, and the strength behind that is a little humbling.
And, see, here's the thing - it stayed with me for a long time afterwards, whether I wanted it to or not, simply because it was the first music I could claim personal ownership of at that time to define myself against the world.
It stayed with me, in fact, up until 1995 - 1997, or, as people seem to like to think of it, Britpop. But that's another story for another time when I'm ready to talk about Country House and other such things.
Maybe.