Keeping Out of Date With Music

Earlier this week I was nominated by my good 'pel' Stevie Lewis to list my top ten albums of all time on Facebook. Usually I don't tend to join in with the nomination stuff, I've ignored this request before -shamefully, when my Dad nominated me for something similar, and I dodged the ice bucket challenge when the whole world and its auntie were drenching themselves.

I've purposefully not listed my favourite books, tv shows, films, places, whatever. It's not that I think I'm above all that stuff, it's just never really floated my boat.

However, I knew Stevie would be interested to see what I'd listed, so I took a few moments and started listing the albums that meant the most to me (the list is below, along with a little detail as to why I chose those particular albums, if you're interested).

It was only after compiling that top ten that it really hit home how out of touch with music I've become. The newest band/artist on the list is Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds and to be honest, given the length of time he's been around the charts, I've a bit of a nerve classing Noel Gallagher as 'new'.

After that, the next most recent was Kasabian - again, we're hardly talking about the cutting edge of niche music discovery here.

I have to say that I was a little embarrassed by that. Maybe more than a little. My family is pretty musical, my parents are both musical (check out www.tomfoolerymusic.com or www.tomfairnie.com), my cousins Paul and Alan were both in a band in days gone by - Alan posts his own blog, the excellent http://listeningisnotenough.blogspot.co.uk/ , and so to have that in the background and publish a list that was just so, well, dated, was a bit of a kick in the baws to any shred of credibility my musical tastes may have been hanging on to.

I'm not quite sure how this has happened, I suppose the obvious connection was that getting married and having kids probably sapped a lot of the time available to listen to music to a hefty degree. It certainly sapped the money for doing it. I couldn't ever have seen a time when music wasn't important to me when I was in my late teens and early twenties, but looking through my iTunes library (the CD's are long since gone) you could almost date stamp the time music stopped being essential to me.

Britpop (and to a lesser extent the baggy indie scene that preceded it) was my musical prime time. I still love that era to this day and probably can't lay enough significance to its influence in shaping the person that I am today. I found new friends, girlfriends, nightclubs - not necessarily in that order, either. Britpop resonated with where I was. Oasis, Blur, Pulp, James, Supergrass, and so on... they were important -no, essential, when I was finding my identity. They got me through great times and terrible times, break-ups and make-ups, ecstatic highs and crashing come-downs..

So where did it all go wrong, or has it gone wrong at all? Is music still as important as a middle-aged father of three, with a 3 bedroomed end terrace in suburban Fife as it was when I was a young upstart with no ties and the world at my feet? Do bands even write songs that have any relevance to me these days? I can't imagine Noel Gallagher writing Rock 'N' Roll Star for people like me now. Middle Management Guy doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

Should I be being hard on myself for not knowing the latest bands? Am I missing out on something spectacular? Is there a scene waiting for me and Mrs F that we just need to track down?

I don't know. I do know there is some music that is kicking about that I like. My old workmate Craig Anderson has tipped me off on a couple of bands that I really enjoy - Chvrches and The XX, but as far as I can tell, they've been about a bit as well.

I hit 37 this Sunday, and was gifted tickets to Belle and Sebastian's show in Glasgow next May. I love that band, and because they're still kicking about writing and playing their twee music I maybe don't have that urgency to go and find something different or new (or even vaguely similar and new, which is, I suppose, how lots of people find lots of bands). Maybe if they were to pack it all in, and if Blur did it, and James did it, and Radiohead, then I'd have to come out of my musical cocoon and listen to something new.

I suppose the other thing that causes some reluctance on my part to find new music is when I do chance upon new tunes on the radio, a lot of it is, well, shite. Is that just my age? Probably.

I don't think I'd cope if I never had the bands that I grew up with and love. I'd definitely miss my favourite albums, so maybe I've got the balance that I need, and when my kids are playing the music that is important to them when they're the age that I was when I found the music that was/is important to me, then I'll hear something in it that will make me want to explore it further.

And if you have any recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

Here's my top 10:

1. Definitely Maybe - Oasis. This album just encapsulated how I felt about life when it came out. I adored Liam Gallagher back then, which is absurd considering how much of a bell-end he is now. It had everything, swagger, attitude, optimism. Mostly optimism. I heard this and felt I could do anything, and that's an unbelievable feeling.
2. The Boy With the Arab Strap - Belle and Sebastian. This is the first Belle and Sebastian album I owned, and I still love it to this day. It's a perfectly whimsical album and probably the polar opposite of Definitely Maybe in terms of style, swagger and optimism. It's inward and reflective, observational, charming, cruel and witty, and just a beautiful, beautiful album. Belle and Sebastian aren't everyone's cup of tea (she would admit to me), but I would urge you to sit down and listen to this on a Sunday morning with an open mind. You'll thank me for it.
3. Kasabian - Kasabian My best friend Craig Robertson bought this album for me and from the first play it was a favourite. For a debut album it's incredible. A confident swirling sound with anthemic songs that just demanded to be played over and over and over. On the very rare occasions that I find myself in the house alone, this gets played, loudly. 
4. OK Computer - Radiohead I could have picked any number of Radiohead albums, but for me OK Computer is Radiohead at their very best. At times sneering, at times beautiful, this album just does it for me. Paranoid Android is up there with my favourite songs and it's not even the best song on the album. And their Stephen Hawkings styled Fitter Happier remains one of the few songs I can keep in tune with. Love it.
5. Play - Moby Moby is one of the best live acts I've seen, and Play is his best album in my opinion. If I remember correctly, Play was the first album to have every song on it commissioned for adverts. That put a lot of people off it, but it didn't matter to me. I love the depth of the music,it's probably the most uplifting album I've heard, and I will take with me to my grave one moment I had standing in an ecstacy-fuelled euphoria in a Perthsire field, listening to Moby play My Weakness, certain that it was just me and him and the music and nothing else mattered. 
6. Surrender - Chemical Brothers  There are few albums that kick off with the energy of Surrender, the quickening build up of Music:Response crashes into life with beeps and beats, setting the tone for the rest of the alum. Their collaborations on the album (the best, in my opinion being Let Forever Be with Noel Gallagher) reflect their importance to music at that time. Hey Boy, Hey Girl is terrific, my personal favourite however is The Sunshine Underground which just builds slowly and whimsically into something special.
7. Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds it's fair to say that I hadn't enjoyed an Oasis album since What's The Story, Morning Glory, and so Noel Gallagher's solo project was a real surprise. I thought that Beady Eye - formed by the rest of Oasis that weren't Noel - were pretty ordinary and very uninspiring, so when I heard that Noel was bringing out an album, I wasn't holding out much hope for anything special. Thankfully, Noel hit a real return to form, it's like he held back any decent tunes from the last fifteen years to keep for himself. AKA What a Life and If I Had a Gun are two very different but terrific songs from the album.
8. Tellin' Stories - The Charlatans I remember seeing The Charlatans at T in the Park when I reckon Tim Burgess was one of the few folk in a hundred mile radius who was significantly more drunk than me. Regardless, they were outstanding, and few bands will top How High or One to Another as examples of indie/baggy at its best.
9. Seven - James This was (I think) the first album I bought. I remember listening to it on my record player in the days before CD. The track Bring a Gun had a jump in it, so there was a point where I would have to get up and change the speed setting until the needle skipped past the problematic part (after the lyric you have pushed me through too many windows and too many doors - it's ingrained in my memory now!). James were my band, they still are my band. They were the first band that I really loved. I can remember staying up late in my bed trying to catch tv appearances when they were on. They were the first band that I was desperate to hear more from, or even just to hear what I'd already heard. Sound is probably my all time  favourite song, for reasons I probably can't explain without sounding like a bit of a tool, but there's just something about the way Tim Booth's high pitched "whoooooo" through the chorus takes you from the slightly sinister low - almost whispered- build up, to somewhere distant and peaceful. Throw in the lamenting trumpet that accompanies it, and it just does it for me. A fantastic album.
10. Parklife - Blur I'm not even sure if this is my favourite Blur album, but it holds an incredibly special place in my heart. Blur kicked off Britpop, and Parklife led the way. I know a lot of people loved it for the way that it was quintessentially British, but Blur's depiction of Essex-esque life didn't really mean that much to me. What did matter was the catchy pop-riffs, the style and again that sense of optimism that emanated from start to finish. 

* That was the list that as originally published, on reflection, I'd probably have The Stone Roses by The Stone Roses in there, though not sure which album it would replace so it'd go in as a something-and-a-half, because I feel the albums already there all should be in a top 10.