A year in music: eight random things

No idea why I ever started it, but a few years ago I did a "random things from the year" blog in December that year and, weird creature of habit that I am, I now absolutely must continue to do one of these each December even though no-one (not even me) actually cares about them. Such is life.

So here are my eight random things for 2020, this most random of years:

1: Biggest tech disaster
There are several contenders for this. There's been the fact that my much-used (and apparently no longer manufactured) mini-disc player has been malfunctioning for months. Fuck! There's the typical bit of Niluccio idiocy where I accidentally switched two of my (four) room speakers off at the amp and consequently spent the year thinking, "I must get around to sorting out the cables for those speakers". Which I finally did, getting horribly sweaty crawling around on the floor before finally twigging the problem. Genius! But no, easily the worst music-tech disaster was the final meltdown of my stupidly-relied-upon iTunes library and the sudden disappearance of about 30,000 songs. Let it be said here once and for all: never again will I use a bloody Apple product. Rotten to the core ... 

2: Most valuable thing parted with

My New Order ruler! It's apparently worth many ££££££s! Earlier in the year, my new friend in the Netherlands let it be known that he was willing to relieve me of the responsibility of holding onto this valuable item - read all about it here. 

3: Best joke heard concerning the post-punk band Magazine

Obviously there were many candidates for this (ahem), but this (as seen on Twitter) was good: 

I once went into a clothes shop & the shopkeeper was humming what I thought was a Magazine song, so I asked, "Are you humming 'Because You're Frightened'?" and he looked at me in confusion, as if I was trying to intimidate him, and said, "er... no, I'm humming because I want to." 

Even Howard Devoto himself would crack a smile at that. (Maybe). 

4: Stuff I've enjoyed listening to

Aside from the stuff I've churned out via monthly/quarterly podcasts, these are some things (old and new) I've been listening to:

Damo Furlong, The fairgreen shopping centre experience

Big Deal, Thirteen 

P22, Human Snake

John Holt, Police In Helicopter

Strange Boys, Be Brave

Advance Base, Come Back To Us Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard 

Basement Scene shows on BCB Radio

Ossia's shows for Noods Radio

Marcel Wave, Discount Centre

Captain Beefheart, The Best Beefheart

Hot Chip, Coming On Strong

Hamer, A New State Of Imaginary Hell

Cosmit, Cosmit

Deathcrash, Slumber

Beach Skulls, Slow Grind

Tilly & The Wall, Nights Of The Living Dead

Mush, Great Artisanal Formats

Ergo Phizmiz, Smallpox baby

This unidentified snippet of window-shaking ragga being played inside a scruffy building in Hackney during the dark days of lockdown

Tom Vek, We Have Sound

Most of what I've heard on Off Me Nut records, Sheffield's barmy army churning out a stream of "wobblaz"

Art work for BroDawg ManDude's J1T SH​*​T on Off Me Nut records

5: Most sudden reversal of a carefully-made-decision-taken-after-much-agonising

To ditch about 20 12" record sleeves after initially convincing myself that their ugly yellowy-brown stains (from floor varnish gunk) wasn't a problem and I should keep them stains 'n' all, not least as they included records I'd had in my possession for about 35 years. Nope! I just couldn't cope with those stains. They had to go (now replaced with pristine plain-white sleeves ...). 

6: Best purchases

Lots this year - it might take me the rest of my miserable life to properly listen to everything I've bought in these past months where, I suppose, rifling through the cheap racks in record shops came to partly compensate for the lack of live music. Don't worry, I won't bore you by listing all my shiny acquisitions, but this batch of CDs (apparently mostly a music reviewer's cast-offs) was good: 50p each from a table-top sale in a freezing-cold room in Coventry on the penultimate weekend before the big March lockdown; these apparently-out-of-fashion indie singles (£1 each) were generally excellent; and a bunch of about 30 reggae singles - including this Scotty scorcher - were surprisingly decent given their untypical cheapness (for reggae), at 50p a piece. 

7: Best books read

No-one (not even me) wants to read only books about music (in fact, kids, read the classics, you might get to meet Lawrence from Felt that way), but ones I enjoyed this year included: Peter 'It's The Law That You Must Call Me Hooky' Hook's Hacienda book, Ned Polsky's Hustlers, Beats And Others, and Andrew Krivine's lavish Too Fast to Live, Too Young To Die: Punk And Post Punk Graphics 1976-1986 (pure self-indulgence that I bought this). But ... hands down the best book was Tony Wilson's 24 Hour Party People: What The Sleeve Notes Never Tell You. Check out my enthusiastic blog. Wilson's such a famous a figure these days that I wonder if people have overlooked just how good his book is ...? 

What the eulogies never tell you: that Tony Wilson was a very good writer

8: Most surprising discovery

There were several of these (including a realisation that my turntable was better - looks, functionality - without its horrible plastic lid), but the big one was that despite being a sort of gig-going simpleton who constantly needs the cheap adrenaline rush of gigs in small venues to feel even half alive, during the coronavirus lockdown ... amazingly ... I haven't actually missed gigs anywhere near as much as I thought I would. Weird, no? Why is this? I guess it must be the simple fact that there's always music to be listened to. At home. In the car. Wherever. But, come the vaccines, will I be going to gigs in 2021? Yep, I definitely will. But only the good ones ...