Never hearing bands or music you’d absolutely love before you die

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I love collecting music. It’s my thing. I have way over 2,000 CDs at this point and well over 3,000 titles in all formats overall. It’s a great hobby. Relatively inexpensive and provides hours of pleasure. I’ll even go as far as saying my collection is akin to a time machine. I can play a given album and I’m immediately transported back to the time when I first played it and re-live the emotional highs and lows of what was happening in my life at that time. Music is truly a wonderful and powerful thing.

The other day I was browsing in my local used record/CD store. A guy who works there (Dave – who I didn’t know) happened to stroll past and noticed I was wearing a Gary Numan tour T-shirt. He made some comment about the ‘Holy One’ and engaged me in conversation. During our chat I learned our musical tastes overlapped to quite a degree and he mentioned a few bands I might like none of which I’d ever heard of before. Quick as you like, Dave whipped out his ‘phone and played me some clips and one in particular sounded very interesting to my ears. As luck would have it, the store had new copies of that band’s 2nd and 3rd albums in the rack. I decided to take a punt (that’s how you end up with a ton of CDs in your collection) and asked Dave of those two, which would he recommend. He suggested their third album.

An hour or so later I’m back home and ready to give my new purchase a spin. First track and I’m absolutely blown away. It’s dark, heavy, atmospheric, jangling guitar, swathes of electronics with a haunting male vocal line that repeats:

Don’t say you love
If I don’t say I love who you are now
Who are you now?

The whole album is quite exceptional. It’s a rare treat to be this mesmerised so quickly by something completely new to me. I’ve since ordered their entire back catalogue (another way you end up with a ton of CDs in your collection). Yeah, I think they’re THAT good.

My point is, I just happened to be wearing a Numan shirt, Dave the store guy just happened to walk past, noticed it and had sufficient time on his hands to stop for a chat. All of which lead to me discovering a new band I now absolutely love. If I’d worn a different shirt that day or Dave wasn’t working that day or hadn’t walked past or …. none of this would have happened. How many other bands am I not going to discover who I’d love if I heard them? I suppose it’s silly and irrational, but I find that thought sad and depressing and a bit of a cunt. Dave has over 8,000 CDs in his collection which is also a bit of a cunt. I’ll never get close to that before I peg it.

The Band: Drab Majesty
The Album: Modern Mirror
The Song: A Dialogue

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Nominated by Imitation Yank.

149 thoughts on “Never hearing bands or music you’d absolutely love before you die”

  1. I watched some TV show other night called the last hours of Keith Moon.
    Or summat.

    He was trying to sober up and due at Paul McCartneys big party.

    He’d been off the booze awhile and on some strong drug to help pisspots, hermevtine.

    He took coke, and at the party couldn’t resist and had 2 glasses of champagne.

    He jossed it that night in the same flat Mama Cass died in.
    They found 26 undigested pills in his tummy.

    What a berk.

    But he was my hero as a kid😁

    Here’s the WHO

    https://youtu.be/PNbBDrceCy8?si=wT2QGx_Ugwh2oaBH

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    • Moonie did go to Macca’s shindig.
      However, he did leave early.

      At the time, Keith was on Heminevrin. A very strong pill to combat alcoholic withdrawal. He was only supposed to take three a day, and six pills could kill someone.

      The doctors at this post mortem found 32 of the pills inside Keith’s system. So, that points to suicide. Six of the pills were digested.

      A self desructive loon. But what a drummer he was.

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    • I love Moon’s drumming, but he never used a hit-hat for some reason.

      Bill Ward in the orignal Sabbath and Mitch Mitchell with Jimi were great drummers. Also Carmine Appice with Vanilla Fudge.

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    • 10cc were supremely talented, Paul.

      Graham Gouldman was a master songwriter.
      But Eric, Lol and Kevin were also very gifted.

      Too much talent in one band, you might say.

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  7. Great taste Yank, seen Numan 10 times or so. For the sake of the topic of the thread try the Sacrifice and Berserker albums. I try to have a couple of Spotify sessions a week to discover new stuff but so much out there and not enough spare time.

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      • Overall, that is generally true Norm. Things have shifted over recent years though. While it would be unfair to say he’s not great with/to his fans, these days you’re expected to pay for news, updates and general background stuff via his Patreon membership thing.

        I’ll say this though. I’ve done quite a few VIP meet ‘n’ greets before Numan shows. Never previously having had anything to compare it with, I thought it was fine and OK. Then a few years ago I did a VIP meet ‘n’ greet with Killing Joke. Now THAT was fun. Jaz, Big Paul and Youth were absolutely amazing. Jaz chatted to me like he’d known me 20 years. He was so friendly and energized with everyone there. I’d never met Youth before and we started taking the piss out of each other like we were mates. And Big Paul was beyond charming and an absolute pleasure to speak with.

        My point is, in comparison Numan meet ‘n’ greets are like a wake at a funeral. He’s affable enough, but you do get the sense he doesn’t really want to be there and is just going through the motions for the sake of the cash.

      • “A love like blood” – that was my intro to Killing Joke.

        So much music, so little time.
        It always gets me when you hear a new song and you form an image in your head of the singer. When you do some research or watch a video, they’re hardly ever like you imagined.

        I’m into Classical and Opera as well as 20th century and more contemporary stuff. There can be so much variation in a conductor/orchestras interpretation of a piece of music. Some you adore and some you can hardly bare to listen to.

  9. 2000 C.D’s sounds to me like a great collection I am sure I.Y, but that would all be worth a fortune if they were each & everyone of them on a vinyl phonograph recording as well. I don’t give a flying fuck what anyone says, this is the best & most collectable way of storing all of your music, no matter how much room it takes up. Just look at why for some time now, we have had a vinyl revival, that is not going away. As for C.D’s they were known to cut off too soon at the end, & their sound gained a reputation for never being quite as good as vinyl. But on the bright side they did put an end to the good old reliable “Dust Bug.”

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    • Greetings Lord.

      I sold the majority of my vinyl collection many years ago and replaced it with CDs. Vinyl weighs a ton and is more of a pain when moving, which I’ve done a lot of in recent years. That said, a box of CDs is pretty heavy too.

      If we’re honest, when we bought vinyl the first thing we did was make a tape of it so we could play the tape and not degrade the original vinyl by keep playing it. Then there was the risk of scratches, pops, clicks and hiss which you can get with vinyl. What a pain!

      There’s a sound engineer vid on YT where he does a direct sound wave/frequency comparison between the sound reproduction of vinyl compared to that of a CD. There’s no difference. People say vinyl has a warmer and more organic sound, but I think they want to hear that because digital has a reputation for sounding cold. Plus there’s the anorak aspect of it. Some people will gravitate towards somethings because of their relative exclusivity. And that’s fine by me.

      Fact is, the thing which has the greatest influence on what you actually hear is the thing closest to your ear. The speakers. £10K worth of turntable, amp, speaker cable, plugs and shitty single channel bookshelf speakers would sound worse than the cheapest CD player played through £10K speakers.

      My fear is CDs will gradually disappear and we’ll be left with download only. I buy a fair bit of dark ambient stuff off bandcamp.com and some of those titles are only available as a download. 🙁 Admittedly it’s 24 bit FLAC so the quality is fantastic, but there’s nothing quite like holding the product in your hand, reading the liner notes, lyrics, etc. Vinyl was better for that because it’s so much bigger than CD booklets.

      In closing, my collection may well be worth a fair bit. I do have some things which are very valuable. What makes me a little sad though is, since I don’t have children, my entire collection will eventually either be sold for pennies some day or end up in a land fill. That would be a great shame.

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