Track of the Week:

I'm feeling like crap today so I'm listening to The Wedding Present's 'George Best' album on my headphones, partly as a treat because it's a favourite of mine and partly because it pretty much sums up how I feel today. I trudge along the street singing along, probably looking and sounding like a psycho but like I care. Because I'm in a bad mood, I decide to stop off in my local independent record shop and flick through the records, as that usually calms me down a bit. Maybe the price of that Fall B-sides compilation will have gone down. As I look around the shop, I am confronted with the new issue of Mojo, which , surprise surprise, features the Fab Four, in all their psychedelic glory, beaming down from the cover with a mix of stoned benevolence and matter-of-fact arrogance. 40 years since Sergeant Peppers. Does anyone really care? As I flick through the magazine, a wave of nausea wells up inside me. Elvis - boring. The Sex Pistols - boring. The Beatles - for Christ's sake. The media constantly bombards us with the same messages, the same images, the same music. Recently, I was able to go back to Revolver and Rubber Soul and almost - almost - hear them without the weight of context, cultural relevance and lazy nostalgia. For a moment, I was able to hear them as I heard them as a kid and fall in love with them all over again, for nothing more then the melodies, the songs themselves. This magazine has set me back years; it'll be ages before I'm able to listen to the Beatles again. The problem with living in the information age is that almost nothing is able to retain mystique - how magical is Revolver when you know what John Lennon had for breakfast the day he wrote 'Tomorrow Never Knows'? The song is shorn of all its unknowable magic and becomes the obvious and inevitable result of what happened before it. This is not helped at all by the mass marketing industry constantly releasing extraneous compilations, remixes etc in time for the Christmas market every year. Or by music's constant presence in adverts, films, TV programmes, pubs, clubs - by linking the magical to the mundane, more often then not you make the magical more mundane. You're almost forced to seek out the obscure in order to find some form of music that is able to hold some personal meaning to you that isn't tarnished by over-exposure. I went to the record fair yesterday and bought Eyeless In Gaza's first LP. I have never seen an article on Eyeless In Gaza, and have no idea what Martyn Bates or Peter Becker look like. The guy behind the counter actually gave me a discount on the record because I didn't ask him some horrifically obscure question - 'Do you have the Fire Engines' first 45?' ect etc. Even record geeks think I'm a record geek. Great. I have a pile of CDs in my flat that I've just not found the time to listen to yet, and still more that I need to get round to listening to as much as they deserve. I now have this terror of music I like becoming over-familiar, so I actually ration my favourite albums. I've not listened to Hex Enduction Hour for over a month, I might give it a spin some time soon. It almost borders on obsession - I'll be trying to pay attention to whatever task in my mundane daily existence preys on my time, and my mind will wonder. Joanna Newsom is going to have a hard time following Ys because it comes so close to perfection. New Fall album out soon. Should Josef K have stuck around for a second album? Should Husker Du reform? I've always had a thing about bands reforming, isn't that just what sad old gits do when they've run out of money and integrity? Still it was good to get a chance to see the Fire Engines live... And there's always something playing in my head, even if it's just a half-remembered guitar hook circling in the background; like the ringing in my ears, it never really goes away. So much noise... it gets to the stage where it's like having the same thoughts circling in your head like old clothes stuck in a washing machine, going round, round, round... The new year will bring with it even more new music, some of it great, some of it terrible. The NME are already hyping up a load of terrible chancers with bad hair, borrowed clothes and no talent as the Next Big Thing, a shed load of reissues are scheduled, and there will of course be the chance discoveries listened to on a whim... I've not gone off music. I'm not sick, tired or drunk (The June Brides have started singing 'Sick, Tired and Drunk' in my head.. shut up! Screw you Phil Wilson, you and your amazing songs). I could write about how great The Wedding Present are, or maybe how the Young Marble Giants' stark, quiet, minimal pop sounds all the more striking in these days of over-cluttering and excess volume, or maybe about how much I like Ys. But I just don't feel up to it. There is no Track of the Week this week. Listen to what you like.