I must confess, my guilty pleasure is music. I’m an avid collector. Even better than listening to my established favourites is discovering new bands whose music I absolutely love. I recently discovered a couple of bands whose music I find quite exceptional. Black Swan Lane (album – Hide In View) and Desperate Journalist (album – Maximum Sorrow!). I also love the thrill of the chase, so to speak. Allow me to explain.

Back in the day, I’d spend hours in every record shop in town. Going through the racks looking for new interesting releases, bargains and ways to fill gaps in my collection. I miss those days. Our Price Records, HMV, Virgin Megastore, Tower Records plus WH Smiths, Boots, Woolworths and any number of local independent record shops. Happy days, but the internet age does have some compensations when it comes to making connections. For example, I love the late ’70s/early 80’s art pop/synth band Japan. Remember them? Well, their keyboard player was Richard Barbieri. I was wondering what he’d been up to since Japan broke up in ’82. Seems he played keys for a prog rock band called Porcupine Tree. I’d never heard of them, so I picked up their best of, Stars Die: The Delerium Years 1991–1997. It wasn’t bad, but the singer interested me. Steven Wilson. Porcupine Tree disbanded in 2010 (they reformed in 2021), so I wondered what else Steven Wilson had done since then. Quite a lot as it turned out. He’s made a number of solo albums, so I bought the cheapest one I could find. To The Bone. OMG!!! It is stunning. One particular track stands out because it is just so beautiful and moving. Pariah. Here’s a link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNTaFArEObU

The female vocalist is amazing. Ninet Tayeb. Her solo material is a cunt to get hold of, but I’m working on it. 🙂 My point is, a bit of random day dreaming led me to make a connection, which lead to something else which lead me to an album which I now adore. What if I hadn’t been day dreaming that day? What other bands and albums will I never hear because I didn’t make a connection? Or didn’t know the guitarist in one band collaborated with the bassist from another band who put out an album together in the ’90s that I will never know even existed? You get the general idea. Aggghhhhh!

I hate that and it really bothers me. I just know that when my time comes, I will long to hear the albums I love and deeply regret all the wonderful albums I never heard and never will. And that’s a cunt.

Nominated by: Imitation Yank