Music Feature: Exquisite by Karl Coppack

Author: Karl Coppack

I wonder if you've ever sat down and thought about why you like certain things. Why you listen to certain types of music, watch films, eat certain foods as opposed to others, why you choose to imbibe or take powders and resins? The obvious answer would be that you are unique and certain things appeal and others don't. You follow your tastes and ignore others. Thomas Hobbes simplified this, unusually for a philosopher, when he said that we are geared towards pleasure and avoid pain. This has been giving me pause of late. I, like you, prefer to listen to my own music and as my age marches on without me I find myself unable to listen to the unfamiliar. Why? Because I know what I like and I haven't got time to think about "things that I may like." Well, that and I'm a miserable old scrote.

Some of my closest friends love Primal Scream. Good honest people who stand their rounds and have sensible opinions on Eamon Holmes. They have shook Screamadelica in my face and implored me to open my ears. I won't have it. Why not? Because it's "dance". My door is closed to that. It's just the way I am. Let's get this down to cases. My friend Whistling Al McKenzie, who infests these pages with his pithy take on modern life, tends to speak nothing but sense. He's addicted to it. I turn to him when I seek sage. We have an understanding on certain matters, as we've known each other since the egg. At the age of sixteen he lent me the first Velvet Underground album on cassette. I can picture it now. A red Polydor tape in a clunky box. He told me that this was the sort of album that would make me sit up and pay attention. To be honest he was probably just trying to get me away from my Style Council records but I trusted his words and took the tape home.

I was dumbstruck by what I found. The sheer, sheer, sheer beauty of Sunday Morning, the rambling twelve bar of Waiting For My Man, the sleaze of Run Run Run, the mystery of All Tomorrow's Parties, the pain of Heroin and the haunted voice of Nico from atop an isolated tower somewhere in Narnia. I was shocked to the core, to the blood of my blood. Something wanted to get into my marrow and I let it sweep through my hall. That, THAT, is an album. What was Al's response when I saw him the next day? He was disappointed in me. Disappointed that I hadn't come to college wearing wrap around sunglasses and leather trousers.

My laboured point is this. We were seventeen in 1986 when this took place. I'm now staring at my thirty seventh birthday and still love that album but were Al to scream at me to buy another album of the sort I would take my time and begrudgingly get around to listening to it, probably considering it to be "an Al album" that lives outside the Venn diagram of our tastes. Can or Trout Mask Replica, for example. I'm now at the age where I understand me a lot better. I don't need further moulding and have long gone past the stage where I run into the groove of a certain genre. I'm happy with my own rut. So what do I do? I buy re-issues or the entire back catalogue of a band that fits my psychological profile. For example, a few years ago I went to the Fleadh festival to see Neil Young. I marched around the tents to get out of the rain and chanced upon Teenage Fanclub. I was awestruck. The Smiths meet the Beach Boys so therefore very much me. In less than three weeks I bought every album. My CD collection increases by the week but my tastes haven't. Is that a sad blinkered viewpoint or just basic honesty? Maybe both. Nevertheless I'm happy with what I've got.

Do you know what ecstasy means? Let me tell you in a condescending manner. It's a Greek word that means "standing outside of yourself". The idea being that something is so fantastic that it can lift you out of yourself and take you to places where things make sense or the opposite. Certain parts of songs do that for me. You've got your own lists but this is my article not yours so I'll go for;

Lonesome Tonight - New Order - the gasp at the end
The solo from In My Life
Rock and Roll Suicide - Bowie - YOU'RE NOT ALONE!
The opening of the Pixies "Where Is My Mind"
Walk On The Wild Side's "alright!"
The intro to Love's Old Man, especially when the bass drops in.
The middle eight of Joy Transmission - "People like you find it eaaaaasy."
The bit in Seven Nation Army where he plays the riff and octave higher.
The "yeah" before the solo in Cinnamon Girl.
The intro of The Chills' Rolling Moon
Ooh Child by the Five Stairsteps
The middle eight of Pure Shores
Deep Forbidden Lake by Neil Young
Nimrod from the Elgar Variations
The backing vocals of Fool To Cry
The refrain of Atomic.

Sometimes you don't need the whole song, just a bit which makes your heart leap and you stand outside yourself. That is the mark of music's capability. They're mine. I suggest you find your own. Oh, and buy that Velvets album. Your future mightn't let you.