Sunday arrives and I know that Summer is around the corner. "M" and I celebrate by heading into town thus ensuring a) another weekend without music, as well as b);
The Miseducation of Otis.youth - Part 6
“M” quite literally walked into my life (actually my office). First impressions weren’t all that great; she didn’t like me at all. Not that it mattered. No one, including yours truly, could fail to notice what looked like a giant engagement ring on the appropriate finger. As I thought she was off limits, I reverted to my usual John Cusack as in Hi-Fidelity easy going character, and this eventually did the trick. Around two years later she succumbed to the acquired taste that is otis.youth.
Despite the efforts of the boom box in my office, music did
not play a major role in our courtship with my complete and utter failure to play
anything in my collection that led to any expression of, even begrudging, enthusiasm.
I put this to one side as I gradually became
aware that our sense of spirituality and what’s important in life were for all
intents and purposes identical. Before I
knew it, I had proposed fully realising that the most unlikely scenario in my
life was to be writ large; I was going to share that rest of my life with
someone whose musical taste did not remotely resemble mine.
But ultimately this did not matter as we found ways and
means to overcome the void. Lazy Saturday
mornings in bed listening to music we loved never eventuated; instead we
discovered our taste in movies and TV was practically identical. Friday and Saturday nights in pubs attending
gigs likewise didn’t occur and we found other activities to take its
place. Music shopping? Initially, I relied on shopping strips or supermarket
malls where I could shop for music whilst “M” hunted clothing or shoe bargains.
Now there’s the internet.
Not that this was ever going to get in the way of our
getting married. As many people have
written, marriage is just about the hardest thing that two people could
undertake. It is a commitment that
requires patience, understanding, love and the ability to compromise. I knew that I was ready to get married – and
that my love for “M” was unshakeable – when I realised how easy it was to painlessly
give up certain parts of my music life.
The biggest compromise was my gig going.
In the entire time we’ve been together, I’ve not seen more than five gigs
in any given calendar year until this year when I’ll get to six and for half of
that period I’ve seen no more than three per year.
I’m still adding items to my collection, but I’ve found ways
of doing this more efficiently. This
means I do this using far less time and, crucially, without it impeding much on
our time together. Mind you some of
these developments were forced upon me with the closure of so many fine record
shops. These included the Last Record
Store in Collingwood, Au Go Go Records and HMV in the City, and the loss of
another via the merger of Collectors Corner and Missing Link Records also in
the City. The Brashs and Sanity chains are
also completely or largely gone and even many of the department stores have
dramatically cut back on stock. For the
most part only JB HI-Fi remains as does the legendary Greville’s records in
Prahan, Polyster in the City and Fitzroy and a small number of second hand
stores.
The internet has also helped, although it took a long time
before I embraced it. The catalyst came
for a period of over 2011/12 when Amazon removed postage charges for deliveries
to Australia. Added to the then high
state of the Australian dollar, I used this as the opportunity to order a mass
of material that is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get here. I
closed my account when the reintroduced postal charges. Since then, I turned my attention to my music
library and have been expanding that, taking advantage of sites that also don’t
charge postage. I need to work fast;
once the dollar starts to depreciate, I’ll close my account.
None of this stopped my musical explorations. In the first decade of this century I started
to delve into World Music once I’d accumulated enough of the key reggae
albums. This was an area I’d always had
an interest; I did go across to Adelaide
for the first Womad Festival there in 1992 and I started collecting Fela Kuti
albums as a result of listening to Talking Heads. But over the last decade BJ turned into
something of an authority on the music and pointed me into all sorts of
interesting directions.
My explorations into the world of German experimental music
(or Krautrock) were all my own doing and represents “M”s greatest musical
legacy to me. Before she entered my
life, my knowledge of this field was limited to the mighty Kraftwerk as well as
a couple of minor Can albums I’d been able to snag. It started to take off when I returned to “M”s
home city to visit her parents and get engaged.
As per usual standard operating procedure when I arrive in a new city, I
poke around her hometown’s music stores.
It wasn’t (and still isn’t) all that inspiring. However, she took me to a weekend market
which seemed to specialise in music, movies and electronics. There were so many music stalls there I felt
I arrived in heaven. At one of these
stalls I bought Can’s Tago Mao and Future Days, a disc of John Peel Sessions
and Kraftwerk’s hard to find in Australia first two albums. From there I was hooked and over the course
of the years since have added the master works from the likes of Cluster, Harmonia,
Popul Vuh, Aamon Duul II, La Dusseldorf, Tangerine Dream and, of course, Neu!
But the biggest impact from these trips has come from my
decision to purchase the one thing in my life that is welded to me today almost
as securely as “M” – my iPod. It's impact on my listening and purchasing patterns were to become significant.
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