LJC before Jazz

1965-2005

Forty years is a long time, LJC. What else did I listen to before Jazz- any “hidden secrets”?

In a word, plenty

This is the CD collection and yes, there is a secret –  Jean-Michel Jarre has his own compartment. Shhh!! Its our secret. No one must know!   Da di da da da…

Potted Biography

Growing up in London in the Sixties was easy. You just picked up an instrument, practised a little, and joined a band. I played lead guitar in an R&B Band, passably well, but not well enough to do it for a living. What followed was years of listening to music, rather than playing it.

Emerging from the Sixties British Blues Boom, somewhere around 1970, I followed signposts for Jazz Fusion, but took a wrong turn somewhere in the 1980’s, and ended up  in Californian New Age.  Doctors feared I might never think again.

For the next twenty years I travelled the music world in search of a cure: Europe, India, West Africa, Brazil, world ethnic genres, contemporary classical, I even dabbled with “European Post Modernism”. Nothing worked, at least not for long. Just when hope was almost gone, in 2006, I wandered into a small record store in London’s Soho and something led me to pick up a copy of Anthony Williams Lifetime, Blue Note 4180, from 1964, mono first pressing. It was £50, more than I had ever spent on a record before in my life.

I still don’t know what made me buy it, but when I got it home and put it on the turntable I was overwhelmed. I had never heard sound like this before. The rest, as they say, is history.

A lot of the the musical journey was made via the evil silver disc, so the CD racks still offer an audit trail, like discarded travel tickets, as to where you have travelled.

Any other significant things? Yes. What’s not there:

• The Reggae, Rap and Hiphop Collection bottom right compartment. Zero.
• No dance, soul, garage, indie, metal, mainstream pop, psych-funk, experimental electronica, or pre-20th Century classical. I have listened but I couldn’t find anything there for me.
• Marketing nightmare – no interest in what or who is hot, trending or the next big thing, or what my friends are buying. No social media footprint: no Facebook, Myspace, Instagram, Bebo, Bozo, whatever. I mostly don’t watch TV, buy no magazines. I chart my own course.
• No jazz singers, no vocals or songs in English, though some in other languages not my own. The human voice is an instrument. In a foreign language the voice remains an instrument, untroubled by story-telling narrative.
• Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon“: the hifi test record worshipped by a certain demographic. I haven’t listened to it since 1973.
• The music of my youth. It’s been and gone, bye bye. I am much more interested in the music I have yet to hear.

If you think there is any social group or demographic I have not yet managed to offend, there is plenty of room for more pages. People say I am opinionated. And that’s not just their opinion.

Next: LJC before “hi-fi”