Tuesday August 16, 2005

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

South Current mood: good I know I write about music often but it has always been important to me. While cleaning my house today and listening to South, I thought about bands who have defined certain eras of my life. There are bands and musicians whom you like and there are those who for some reason take on a larger than life role in your life. For me, that would have to be The Stone Roses, U2, and South. U2 I have liked since I was about 5. They have always been there. I have now seen them four times in concert and will continue to see them every opportunity I can. The Stone Roses were my own discovery. While skiing in Colorado, age 14, I heard I Wanna Be Adored playing in the cafeteria. I saw a guy working there who was singing along. I was painfully shy at 14, especially of older boys, but that didn't stop me going up to him and asking who was playing. He gleefully told me The Stone Roses and gave me directions to Steamboat Springs' best record shop. He changed my musical life. The record shop (I don't remember its name) did turn out to be very cool indeed. I also bought a copy of Joshua Tree on vinyl, just because. Mistakenly, I bought the Stone Roses' B'side album, Turns Into Stone. I listened to it for months before I realised these were merely the B'sides. (You have to remember, this was 1993, before I had any access to the internet. My only access to good music information was NME and Melody Maker which I was still too young to drive to Tower to buy on a regular basis). The point is that The Stone Roses are so good that their B'sides were miles better than anything I had heard up until that point. I remember coming back from that skiing trip and staying up all night listening to Turns Into Stone. It still makes my spine tingle. I felt like I had come home, wherever that was, and no, I wasn't on any drugs. I was much too naiive for that kind of thing. South, it seems are my default band these days. I have been listening to them consistently for about a year and a half, although I listened to them sporadically over the past few years. They weren't my discovery, but I owe the person who introduced me. You know who you are. They are the band I don't have to be in a particular mood to listen to. I always like them. They are deliciously low-key, are complicated musically, the lead singer has a voice I could get lost in, and they have wonderful if somewhat vague lyrics. They are many layered and will fit such a variety of moods. I'm listening to them today while cleaning (and procrastinating), I listen to them in the car an awful lot, they ground me when I'm upset, they are excellent background music. They just feel like a great fit for me. I am most definitely a South groupie, or at least I would be if they ever came here. I have friends who make fun of me for listening to them so much (you know who you are as well), but to them I say....bugger off, I like them Currently listening : From Here On In By South Release date: 19 February, 2002