My History with Music

Right, let's resurrect this blog. I make no promises of keeping it up to date and quite frankly it's competing with my physical diary for time spent creating original content. However it might actually get read by people, so that will be it's niche.

I'm currently on the train back from visiting my parents in Worcester, headphones in, Blink 182 blasting. Guess why? Because I've got Reading festival tickets. I'm finally going to my first festival.

Music and I have had a strained relationship during my life. I spent many years assuming that music just wasn't my thing. Fast forward to the end of Primary School/ early High School and I got my first CD (Busted). For about a year the year 3000 was the epitome of music, but it led to me getting into slightly heavier stuff. Blink 182 and Sum 41 followed along with Avril and Greenday. My music taste could be described as Pop-Punk. I progressed through to more classic rock with Evanescence, Queen, The Killers and The Darkness

By the end of High School MCR released Welcome to the Black Parade and Muse released Black Holes and Revelations. This was the peak.

By Sixth Form I was getting through a lot more music and bought the old albums of lots of my favourite bands. The Raconteurs, The White Stripes and Queens of the Stone Age all hit my wallet heavily. But I wasn't really discovering new things, I was just trying to complete my collections of previous favourite bands.

Then I hit uni and just stopped. I think the only album I bought for four years was Danger Days. I wasn't particularly sad about the absence, I didn't really notice it happening. Technology got better and with the advent of iPlayer and 4od I found myself just putting them on instead of playing music. In my mind Audio-Visual had to beat just Audio. The only time I listened to any music was when I was walking to places and I never put anything new on my iPod. Eventually with the death of a pair of headphones I didn't replace until this year, even that practice came to an end.

Then this year I started doing the whole music thing again. In those moments in my classroom before students arrive I started playing music. Students recommended things, starting with Imagine Dragons and Bastille but evolving from there. My friend Lily occasionally sent me playlists of songs and I would pick favourites and play them over and over.

At a party at mine a couple of weeks ago one of my friends commented that my music was stuck in 2007 and she's completely right. I'll try to fix that. With Reading imminent I'm going to use the line up as a menu, I'll go through it and find new bands. In the few months between now and then I'll be able to learn lots of songs.

So excited.