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probably get too excited about music for my own good. Those in my immedi- ate circle of friends will know that I’m prone to pro- nouncements of great certainty that, at this moment in time, the band I’m seeing are the best live band on the planet. Because right then and there in that place and atmosphere and for that performance, they are. They transcend all others. It’s
quite possible that within weeks another band may gain the same crown, but that’s how it is. I’ve experienced this epiphany so many times and have never managed to build up a resistance. I love those moments! And I love sticking a CD in the player and deciding within a few tracks that they’re my new favourite band. What’s better?
If you believe the stereotypes, you’re supposed to get more conservative as you get older. Your tastes are expect- ed to atrophy: you’ll know what you like and you won’t approve of anybody messing around with it. You simply won’t want to hear anything new. And indeed I encounter a lot of people like this, which is unfortunate if they’ve become so-called ‘gatekeepers’ – bookers of clubs or festi- vals, producers or presenters in radio or TV. I simply don’t understand how people can be like that.
I’m the opposite. I can’t bear musicians treading water, sticking to a tried formula, following rules. I like people who take risks; who play, sing or create without a safety net; who get lost in the movie going on inside the song or are captured by the thrill of the chase of the tune and don’t want it ever to stop. Soloists who suck you into some vortex and obliterate the surroundings. Bands who stop being a set of individuals and become a higher life form via some kind of telepathy and alchemy. Sarah Coxson once described in these pages how a particular band swooped and turned as one, like a flock of starlings – murmuration music. Hardly surprising that very band were one of those who, sitting a few feet away from them in a small venue one night, I thought were the best live band in the world at that point. They were too.
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The other side of that coin, though, is that I can get really annoyed by stuff that doesn’t move me. We’ve had so many records pass through here lately that are too clean, too soulless, too correct, too indistinguishable from others. Would-be charismatic guitarslingers with mannered voices, concentrating entirely on the flash and the noise they make and the image they project but saying nothing. A plague of sexless tweeness in those faux folk voices that belong to no tradition other than the enclosed world of folk club folky. Spooky twee is fine. Plastic twee is not.
That old Incredible String Band Hedgehog Song said it all: “Oh, you know all the words, and you sung all the notes, but you never quite learned the song, she sang. I can tell by the sadness in your eyes that you never quite learned the song.” I can’t be doing with that – I want to be excited. I’d rather something was downright bad than bor- ing. Life’s too short for boring.
Ian Anderson
Photo: Judith Burrows
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