I don't like how you listen to music

I'm assuming you're reading this blog post from start to finish?  You're not plunging in somewhere in the middle, are you?  Giving paragraph 4 a go before skipping back to 2, then forwarding to paragraph 10?  (Ha!  I said 'paragraph 10'.  That'll put you off reading any more, won't it, you attention-restricted by-product of the 21st century, you!  Actually, there are only 5 paragraphs, so don't worry, you'll get to the end before your mind screams demandingly for proper entertainment, like a ten second video of someone shitting in their tracksuit bottoms while using gym equipment.)

What you're NOT doing is clicking a shuffle button to make the paragraphs appear before you in a random order so as to elicit a sense of unexpected joy and surprise each and every time.  But you might listen to your music on shuffle.  This is WRONG.  And there are lots of WRONG ways to listen to music.

To begin at the beginning.  I grew up listening to records.  We didn't call them vinyls or even vinyl records any more than we called cigarettes tobacco cigarettes.  And unless you were a cack-handed clutz or just plain fucking careless, it was easily possible to avoid scratching or damaging records. (All the records I bought in the 80s still play without jumps or crackle, because I don't have ham fists or an illogical disregard for their preciousness.)  Mind you, you did have to monitor your environment, like not letting your younger sister into your bedroom to leap from bed to floor with a thud that caused you to shout, 'YOU'LL MAKE THE RECORD JUMP!' with the sort of panicked hostility that caused her long-term psychological damage.

I did buy some albums on cassette around this time, but for the life of me I can't recall why that was.  I had a need for music on tape in order to listen to my Walkman during my paper round and later on, when I could drive, the beige Austin Allegro in which I cut my road-teeth had a stereo that took cassettes.  But you could just tape your records onto a TDK90 (or 60 for those annoying albums that came in at 50-something minutes rather than the sacred and infinitely preferable running time of 35-45 minutes) so there was no need to BUY albums on tape.

Then clever people on telly (Tomorrow's World, I suspect) were fooled by the BIG FUCKING LIE that said that Compact Discs were better than records, both in terms of sound quality and durability.  So in about 1988, I stopped buying records and starting to get everything I wanted on CD (and then taped CDs onto cassettes for the car, until I could afford a car with a CD player, many years later.)

CDs were in fact a bit crap in sound quality until about 1993, but I didn't notice this, because the LIE was so huge.  I forgot all about records.  I stopped using my record player with the same callous disregard that Andy demonstrates when he stops playing with Woody somewhere between Toy Story 2 and 3.  And worse still, I set about buying the CD version of all the best albums I already had on record.  I even swapped my Doors LPs with my brother for his Doors CDs (again, pre-1993 versions, with a vastly diminished sound quality, like you were listening with some tights over your head) which he treasured for months before selling them to get money for booze.

Soon, CDs did start to sound better and thus began the trend for re-mastering original analogue recordings, so I'd sit and listen to Led Zeppelin re-mastered and not even think about touching the record versions, which adorned the lounge like the books in the book case that I'd read once and wouldn't read again, but kept on show for ornamental reasons.  We had two children and they were able to leap from armchair to floor and make horrendous thuds, year after year, without any danger of hearing me yell at them, 'YOU'LL MAKE THE CD JUMP!'

And then computers could BURN CDs, which was the new word for making your own compilation CD, like a tape, and for a while you could illegally download songs as mp3 files, but these were worse in quality than pre-1993 CDs and sounded like someone HAD spread jam on them, like on Tomorrow's World.  But soon iTunes sold us songs that sounded just as good as proper CDs and you could even use your computer to make inlay cards as long as no one caught you doing colour photo-copying at work.

Then, one day, when the kids were too old to want to make horrendous thuds, on a whim I started to listen to records again and (after realising that my old turntable was running a few rpm short of 33 1/3 and having to send it off to Manchester to one of the few turntable repair companies around) I realised that they sounded NOTICEABLY BETTER than CDs.  I suddenly heard what was digital about CDs, which wasn't a problem for songs that were recorded digitally, but everything pre-mid-80s recorded in analogue sounds warmer and more real on record.  Then a second-hand record shop opened where I live.  Then I realised you could buy second-hand records on Ebay.  Then everyone else started to like records again (bloody sheep) and bands started to release vinyl versions with pointless (to me) download codes.  And thus, records now outsell CDs.  And thus, I buy more records than CDs (I only buy CDs of newly released stuff by artists who aren't my favourites, simply because it's cheaper than always buying the vinyl version.)  I still make CDs as well, though laptops don't have in-built CD drives anymore, because all you young bastards are streaming songs on Spotify etc... and playing them through sound bars and you have no OWNERSHIP of music.  It's all INVISIBLE to you.

And that's WRONG.  Invisible music, on shuffle, being beamed across the lounge to a sound-bar, passing through our heads and turning our brain cells to fudgy mush, with nothing to hold in our hands and read as we listen, because we are always holding our phones and watching videos of people shitting their tracksuit bottoms in gyms rather than actually listening or wanting to know who played bass on each track.

And that last paragraph was paragraph 10.  Fooled you.  Serves you right.

I, T bloody V

I read a tweet today that concisely and accurately described how to tell you were visiting a posh house when you were growing up (assuming you grew up in the 70s or 80s) - it had more than one type of cheese and booze that wasn't bought to drink the same day.  I would add one more feature:  The people in the house never watched ITV.

Growing up with only 3 channels - and only two broadcasting companies - meant that your perception and judgement of BBC and ITV was in terms of their contrast to each other.  It was like the sort of contrast you might have between your parents' respective families, where one was better educated, reserved, dignified and a bit tight with money (like the BBC), while the other was more popularist, loud, able to laugh at themselves and fairly wanton with the old spondoolies (ITV).

To some extent, the legacy of this dichotomy between the two channels still exists.  Quiz shows are a case in point.  I used to love ITV quizzes and game shows as a kid, partly because I could answer the questions and partly because the prizes were exciting (i.e. expensive).  I couldn't answer anything on BBC.  Even Crackerjack asked kids questions that you'd now see on University Challenge.  And all they'd get for demonstrating a level of knowledge commensurate with studying for a PhD is a fucking Crackerjack pen.  A poncey bloody biro.  Over on ITV, if you knew the capital of England, guessed the price of a teas-maid or could throw a dart with any accuracy, you'd win a mini.

On the subject of kids' TV, for cutting edge, anarchic, brash and pure piss-your-pants lunacy, you clicked the 3 button.  ITV gave us Rainbow, the forerunner of BBC's The Young Ones, ten years later. (Have you ever noticed the comparison?  Zippy = Vyvyan, George = Neil, Geoffrey = Mike, Bungle = Rick; and Rod, Jane and Freddy were Motorhead, Madness, The Damned or whoever provided the music.)  BBC served up Barnaby the Bear.  Wetter than a Sunday afternoon in the Amazon.

Probably the most exciting time of the week was when Thames Television handed over to LWT (London Weekend Television) on a Friday evening.  As the iconic London panorama folded inwards on itself to the sound of trumpets and trombones and then the letters L, W and T unfurled in red, white and blue, my ten-year-old heart would race.  And then Mind Your Language came on.  Proper 70s-diversity with no political agenda.

The BBC stopped broadcasting in the afternoons.  Like a tired old grandfather, the channel went to sleep.  Meanwhile, we'd turn over to watch Derek Batey presenting Mr and Mrs or Fred Dineage fronting Gambit, both with the most garishly coloured sets, proper council estate contestants (most of us were council tenants in those days) and most importantly, ad breaks that allowed you to go to the loo or make yourself a quick Soda Stream drink or Angel Delight.

When it boiled down to it though, and you tended to realise this slowly as you grew up, the better programmes were on BBC.  Who can recall a typical Saturday night on ITV?  Not me.  Because nothing could compete with Jim'll Fix It (er...), Basil Brush, Doctor Who, The Generation Game, The Duchess of Duke Street, Match of the Day.  I can't even tell you what I ever watched on ITV on Saturdays.  Cannon and Ball in the early 80s was about the most memorable show and that was only because it was so astoundingly shit.

Nowadays, the nation is divided by Brexit, perceptions of liberalism and attitudes towards male grooming; back then, you either watched ITV or you didn't.  We did and were proud of the fact.  And in its favour, it wasn't all trashy and low-brow.  I learnt more from How? then I did from Mr Sagoo my physics teacher in secondary school.  And that's what sums up ITV.  Fred Dineage was educating the kids in How? at the same time as he was encouraging gambling in Gambit.  Your know that if Fred was your uncle, he'd spend more than a fiver on your Christmas present.

Because he's I, T bloody V!