Before the 80s my musical development was pretty linear - Disney - The Wombles - Max Boyce - Prog. We watched Top of the Pops of course, but I didn't like most of the things on it, especially Punk things, it seemed too silly and cartoonish, like the wrestling on ATV. I was a serious school orchestra boy and I liked my music engineered, not slapped together. I think my favourite musical idea was that picture of Pink Floyd's gear all nicely laid out, from the middle of Ummagumma. It looked so precise and perfect.
This was further solidified in 1980 or 81 when my parents blessed me with a Sony TCS-300, the first recording version of the Walkman. It meant I could borrow albums from people and listen to them on my paper-round. I eagerly copied the Pink Floyd Nice Pair compilation, Wish You Were Here, Dark Side Of The Moon, Animals. All onto those orange BASF cassettes. I think that first experience of listening to music, loud, in my own head, while walking around, was the single most astonishing and magnificent moment of my life. (Obviously apart from love, marriage, parenthood, friends all the stuff you're supposed to like more.) It is of course, taken for granted now, but back then it was a miracle.
(with book for scale, that thing is huge)
So my first moment of musical transcendence was probably at 14, listening to Shine On You Crazy Diamond, leaning on a fence as the sun came up over a Derby housing estate, waiting for the van to arrive with the papers. This was the first moment I had a soundtrack beamed into my head, making the world seem more significant, the music made everything bigger, more meaningful. (It didn't hurt that The World About Us always used Shine On as the soundtrack for wildebeest on the Serengeti, it made everything spacious and portentous.) I'll never grow out of that. Technology and music had ganged up on me, I was 14, I stood no chance.
