Reading Roars!

I like to consider myself as pretty knowledgeable about music, pretty clued up, but the truth is – although I am generally more so than most of my friends – current music is always something that I take a while to catch up with. Now, I appreciate that makes me sound a tad old before my time (something I’m constantly trying to avoid doing, usually in vain), but I’m afraid it’s just the way it is.

And you know what? I don’t care. I’ll give you an example: last year I heard all sorts of good things about a band called The Low Anthem and how they’d released a great album called ‘Oh My God Charlie Darwin’. This instantly intrigued me as obviously it’s a fantastic name for an album but also because it was described as dark, dirty Americana with Neil Young undertones, which is the kind of music that I listen to most of the time these days. But I didn’t buy it. I couldn’t be bothered. I waited.

There seems to be some sort of snobbery surrounding new music which says that you can only enjoy a band or an album for the first two or three weeks following its release (often before it’s released), that somehow once this time limit has passed it is no longer valid, irrelevant and pointless. That if you were to be seen listening to it after this date that you would be out of touch and cast aside by the trendy set and sent to live in a dungeon marked “Radio Two Night Time Schedule”. 

I don’t see why a record cannot be enjoyed regardless of whether it has been out two minutes or twenty two years. Obviously there are exceptions – there is no doubt that Anarchy in the UK has less impact today than when it was released into a mainstream of sap in 1976 – but surely a valid mark of ‘great’ music is that it is relevant and exciting no matter what the context. 

So what, then, does this have to do with Reading? Well, I bought The Low Anthem’s album last week from Sound Machine in Harris Arcade. I often shop in there, as well as CDs on the cheap, you can pick up albums on vinyl for £3 in there that would normally be £12 in HMV on CD. Another great place to find some bargains is Music Man on Oxford Road. They have a fantastic collection of Beatles vinyl in there, I even picked up a White Album for £20 before Christmas.

These places are absolute churches for me – I can spend hours rummaging around looking at old Bruce Springsteen albums or Elvis Costello seven-inches. My girlfriend has a similar fetish. Sometimes we won’t emerge for an entire afternoon. 

These places need to be supported and cherished if they are not to disappear from Reading’s streets and arcades. The stuff in there may not all completely be up to date and current and painfully edgy, but surely the fact that it’s not is, well, EDGY in itself?