The CD Chain

Music was my first love...well actually it was Spiderman comics but music followed pretty quickly. The first record I ever paid money for was 'Dreaming' by Blondie. I've still got it somewhere, a delicious photo of Debbie Harry pouting adorns the record sleeve. I count myself lucky that I got intrested in music just as it was re-inventing itself. They say that people can remember what they were doing when they heard that President Kennedy was shot; I can remember what I was doing when the Sex Pistols were swearing their way into notoriety...I was watching it on tv! I never wanted to be a punk, I had enough trouble with one zipper on my trousers, let alone 20. I loved the music a lot, but I found New Wave more to my liking if I'm being really honest. New wave was really the acceptable side of punk and my heroes were Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, The Boomtown Rats. Then Ska made a revival and groups like The Specials and Madness came on the scene. It was a great time for music...but it had to end. Sometime during the late 80's a new sound took over the airwaves of Britain, Dance music. Groups such as S'Express, MARRS and Bomb the Bass seemed to dominate music until Oasis came along to save and change the British music scene. In the barrens years between Dance music and Brit Pop, I sought out new types of music. At that time there was a Hollywood trend for Vietnam movies and most of them had great soundtracks, from Charlie Sheen getting high to Smokie Robinson and the Miracles in Platoon to Robin Williams playing The Beach Boys and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas in Good Morning Vietnam. I don't know if it was watching men getting killed to cool music or the fact that this old stuff was really good that made me seek out music from the 60's but it gave me an education in music and later a chance buy of Steely Dans greatest hits for £1.99 gave me a whole other decade to explore. I've learnt over the years that if you stay away from the pop charts then you can find some really good music. It's constantly surprised me that even though the group Elbow has been around for 18 years, until recently, hardly anyone I spoke to had heard of them. If they don't get airplay, then people don't know them. I used to read the New Musical Express and I constantly would see reviews and posters for a group called The Rezillos. I could point them out in the street if our paths ever crossed, but it was only last year that I actually heard one of their singles! That's why the internet is such a great thing, you can access so much new music. Which is why I've started a new blog. I want people to share their musical knowledge with me and tell me about cd's and groups I may have missed. The rules are quite simple, I want to form a chain of similar music and I want people to give me their cd choice which will be a link. Hopefully, after a while, people will be able to discover groups they have never heard of before and so will I. You can find the blog on http://thecdchain.blogspot.com/, I have posted the first link of the chain and you can even have a listen to the cd by using the rather nifty Amazon widget next to the post. Hope to see you there. Let's Rock!