The Search For Goth Disco

The first time I saw Paulo Nutini I thought he was a moody faced bugger.  There he was half crouching, half standing on stage as he warbled on.  Yes his voice was fantastic (despite me not being a big fan of the musical style) but all I wanted to do was give him a shake and tell him to “cheer up min”.

A long while later I was at a friends house for a meal and they put his latest album on.  Now I think there are rules here.  When you are driving or have people round visiting, then you must have the final say on what music is played.  No social niceties, just personal choice.

So I suppressed my disdain for the mans music and just got on with the conversation.  In the background I let the music and lyrics flow over and around my ears and without realising, I found myself finally getting the man.

His music is so full of joy and celebration and you can’t help but just hear this spring from your speakers as it plays. 

I changed my opinion of him that night.  His presentation of his music may not be to my taste but that doesn’t matter, he is enjoying what he does and allowing the music to lift him up to some mythical place as he performs.

I admire that.

Recently I have been going though a phase of listening to dance music from the late 80’s / early 90’s.  There is an optimism in the majority of the tunes that were released around then, not just because of the drugs but because they were synching with some mechanism that could not be seen.  Everything just worked.  Listen to the joy in that music and I cannot stop myself feeling happy.  I will even admit to doing a wee dance around the kitchen whilst doing the dishes as I listen to music that I used to hate.

Oh yes I truly did not get it back then.

Do not get me wrong, in a club I understood the energy that these tunes created and the way that people could just let themselves go.  Yet I did not get the same feeling when I would listen to the same songs at home.  There was emptiness there and I just assumed that it was because you needed the shared collective energy of fellow clubbers to unlock the meaning.  I didn’t particularly like clubbing and I didn’t do the drugs, so the whole scene meant very little if anything to me.

When I listen to the music now, I hear the wonderful joy coded into the bass lines as clearly as I guessed the clubbers did.  Except there is just me and occasionally my cat.

Is this because as I get older I am harking back to a lost youth?  Possibly?  I was asked a year or so ago; via one of those internet Meme’s that distract me from real work, what my favourite top 5 albums were.  I answered without really thinking too much as they were obvious to me.  Looking over them I saw that it was all stuff from my late teens and early 20’s that had made the list.  I have enjoyed music since but yet nothing had carved itself onto my memory enough to make me include it on that list. 

I suppose each generation has its musical time.  I was too young for Punk and too old for Britpop – yet what I have grown to love I would not change for the world.