Jennie On Music

I've always found it hard to understand the kind of people who pay no attention to music, or who simply accept what they're spoon-fed from a singles chart chosen by nine year old girls. Music has always been a part of my life. I was born in the year that Ziggy Stardust died, and grew up with my mother playing me her Bowie records, my dad still at home with his Beatles and his Stones (he never got off on that revolution stuff...) and the Sex Pistols constantly on the news because they'd said a rude word on some other TV show and sheltered folk thought that was shocking. I hung out with much older punks who played me the latest underground stuff on early ghetto blasters; I painted my face like Adam Ant and picked up bits of chain from jumble sales in imitation of the divine Marc Almond. The outside world may have been dull and suburban, but hiding in my room, eating parma violets and cherry lips, I could put on my borrowed Iggy Pop tapes and see the bright and hollow sky.

I always identified as a punk when I was younger, with some leanings towards new romantic stuff, and later on people started calling me a goth, which all in all seems to be the most appropriate label. Still, though most of my friends are goths, we don't always like the same things; and with my non-goth friends, it's even worse. Many of them, in fact, just avoid discussing music with me altogether, mostly because I'm likely to hate some of their popular favourites with a passion that they just don't think is reasonable. I can't stand modern so-called 'soul' music, for instance, because it's such overblown crap - Whitney Houston and the like going 'ooh-ooh-ooh' six times after every syllable, coating the melody with a facetious slime which just makes it come across as fake. Neither do I have any tolerance for the breathless whiny angst bullshit which was so popular in the Caring Sharing 'Nineties. That shite has no sense of humour, no ability to note its own ridiculousness. Please, dears, just cut your wrists and get it over with. Oh, and do it diagonally.

I like music that has something to say, some real passion and energy, or an honesty which enables it to communicate the way people really feel. I enjoy bouncy, silly songs as much as the next person - that kind of thing is fine, because it generally knows it's silly, and is about having fun anyway - hell, ridicule is nothing to be scared of. I just don't see the point in all the bland in between stuff. If other people want to listen to it, fair enough, just don't expect me to pretend it has merit.

There've been times when I've looked back on the various things I've done in my life and wondered why I never got around to being in a band. After all, most of my friends did. I guess I just never found the time. In the late 'nineties I was briefly a member of Table of Instance, but we never played, nor, indeed, created any music. That we were offered two recording contracts anyway tells you something of what it's really all about. When I'm out and about with my partner Stuart we're continually asked what band we're in. It seems that music is the only excuse most people can imagine allowing themselves for looking different. Then of course, there are people who look a particular sort of different and decide, therefore, that they're obliged to limit their musical tastes. I have never cared for such an approach. I'd rather enjoy myself than seem cool. Consequently, my taste is eclectic and odd. Stuart likes a surprising amount of the same stuff, but Donald largely disapproves - even as I wrote this, he came into the study to complain about the David Bowie cover of Pablo Picasso that I was playing.

Favourite Music

The advent of the easily downloaded .mp3 has been wonderful for me, as I've finally been able to get hold of all sorts of obscure tracks I wanted for years, including some which were pressed but never released. Thanks to Andrew Watson for sending me a copy of Sharon Signs for Cherry Red by the Kamikaze Pilots from Norwich, which I'd been hunting for for fifteen years. I had begun to give up hope of ever hearing it again. This is a fine example of what makes the internet worthwhile.

Artists I've been listening to a lot recently include the Meteors, Marc Almond, the J Geils Band, Patti Smith, the Damned and the Newtown Grunts. I go through these things in phases, as I very quickly become bored even by stuff I like; I'll come back to it after a break. I'm also enjoying Ennio Morricone, Rachmaninov and Beethoven, though I find them even more distracting.

Clubbing and Gigging

Nightclubs have, for me, always been more of a social experience than a musical one. This isn't necessarily the case by choice - as someone who liked rock music when the 'eighties were falling in love with acid house, I quickly found myself marginalised and got used to the idea that I was unlikely ever to hear many songs I liked in clubs. Furthermore, most of the clubs I go to are useless when it comes to sound dynamics, failing to understand that turning up the music as loud as possible does not automatically make it better - in fact, it often causes so much distortion that it can't be heard properly at all. I understand that wandering around blind, deaf and drunk may increase some people's chances of picking up similarly affected people, but to me it's boring. The clubs I prefer all have quieter areas where I can go and talk to people when there's nothing to dance to or when my illness is making it impossible for me to dance.

When I am well enough for it, dancing is one of my great loves. Since I trained as a swimmer in my youth, I'm still a junkie when it comes to hard physical work; I love that endorphin hit, and I love the fun of dancing too. It sucks that some people take it so seriously. I try not to get in the way of others on the dancefloor, but I've no time for those who stand primly right up against the edges of a pit and then complain when folk bump into them. As for those who flail their arms around holding cigarettes, they should be taken outside and burned. There's no call for it. Drinks on the dancefloor I can understand, but not if they're liable to spill. The police are always warning folk now not to leave their drinks unattended in case they get spiked. Sheesh. I've never left my drink unattended. Some bastard might drink it!

Clubs I attend regularly at the present time include Bedlam, for suspiciously bleepy goth and industrial stuff with a good crowd; and National Pop League, for fun music with delightfuly unsophisticated, lovely people. Very occasionally I make it to fetish club Violate, but I've found that physically very difficult since it's become so popular and so overcrowded - last time I went there literally wasn't room to swing a cat. This sucks, as there's no longer anywhere good in Glasgow for those with a genuine interest in bdsm to go. The spectator side of the fetish scene has never appealed to me, so I've yet to be dragged out to Club Noir, but even its former afficianados say it sucks now anyway. What ~I do want to try is the new zombie punk night at Barfly, but so far I've been out of town every time it's been on.

On the Glasgow scene I used to be a regular at the Rat Trap and, before that, the Cathouse (no relation to the shite nu-metal sp00ky hole operating today). I went to the old Hellfire nights before the folk running them fell out. In Edinburgh the Mish was my place, and I was particularly fond of Permission. In Sheffield, long ago, I used to go to Rebels where we'd hear a lot of cheesy metal but, if we were lucky, get Dominion/Mother Russia played by the end of the night, for which a horde of goths would emerge from shadowed alcoves, trailing black lace and smelling of Jack Daniels and Newcastle Brown ale.

I don't go to as many gigs as I used to these days, though there always plenty available - Glasgow has no shortage of earnest young punk and metal bands and would-be clones of the Velvet Underground willing to play for next to nothing. There are still a few favourite artists I hope to see live before they die, and I shall go back to see Iggy Pop any chance I can get. I did have a list here of some of the bands I've seen live (those I can remember or remember the names of, or that I ever knew the names of - you know the kind of thing) but it got a bit too big, so it's been moved to a page of its very own, which you can now find here.