Extreme Listening Mode!

Light and shade. That’s what we strive for round these parts. In ELM Towers, you’ll find rooms bathed in a light so shiny and white you’d swear you’d walked in on Simon Cowell, whereas the adjoining room would be dimmer than Manni Dinogue. For steady repetition is not good for the soul. But we’ve been guilty of a little negativity this past while.

Sure, there’s plenty to get annoyed about. Glasvegas. Talentless losers chancing their arms and getting the spot of far more deserving bands. Glasvegas. Irritating, tuneless wonders lecturing us on their deeply-held convictions about society that they’ve held for fully half an hour. Glasvegas. Oh, and Glasvegas.
So today is a simple, straightforward list of things we love about this hoary old beast called popular music. Everybody loves at least one song. Everybody. People you can’t imagine ever needing a sitdown in the toilet, they love music. Saints and sinners – lovin’ the music. Now, low-quality music that may be, but people love the Farrelly brothers movies. It’s like liquorice – it takes all sorts.

So here we go. Five reasons why music is unquestionably wonderful;

Shouty Choruses – You cannot beat a singalong chorus, a big beasting shouty thing you scream out at the top of your lungs. It doesn’t matter what – ‘Born to Run’ by Springsteen, ‘I Love Rock’N’Roll’ by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, ‘Jump’ by the Pointer Sisters – anything that gets you opening your throat and belting out is fine in our book. Perfect for annoying people, and sometimes in life, you have to do that.

It can make you cooler – You may not be cool. Reading this, you probably are, but at one point you probably weren’t. Then you found a band….or a movement…and suddenly you were ice-cold. Absolute zero. Everybody knew it. Your clothes changed, your walk changed, you were the man. And maybe no-one else knew it, but you did. And that’s all that matters.

Live music – We have all sat through dreary concerts of unremitting, constant drab. We have witnessed a hotly-tipped act suddenly reveal that, in fact, the emperor’s arse cheeks are exposed. We have all watched a band we love phone it in while we quaff warm, over-priced lager and reflect that we will be eating from the Tesco Value range for a week due to the ticket cost. But when its right, when the adrenalin rush feels like an injection of bathtub speed and the place is heaving and you KNOW that you are at the centre of the universe and there is nowhere else you’d rather be….that really is why you put up with it.

The gift that never stops giving – Music can, and often does, take you unexpectedly from behind. Roughly. You can hear a song and be gobsmacked by it every single day. You can fall in love with a new band, a new voice, a new tune, a new lyric every single day. You can even hear old songs you haven’t heard in aeons and fall in love all over again. What other hobby gives you that sense of infinite possibility? Speaking of which….

There’s so much of it – You will never listen to every record in the world. You will never even listen to every record in a single genre. But what fun you will have trying.

So, a bit of light to draw the week to a close. We probably take this whole lark too seriously – it can’t be right I feel I could murder Jonny Borrell and live a regret-free life – but that’s why. Music matters. Enjoy the weekend, folks.

Filed under: Friday Fives, Regular Features Tagged: | born to run, gigs in scotland, Glasvegas, hello!, i love rock, Live music, music, my itchy herman gelmet, Pop, rock music, springsteen