28. Queen - Brighton Rock
Middle age - in the sense of being forty-something, as opposed to being medieval - is a chronological situation which I have embraced without regret or wanting. I give far less of a shit about things these days. Some people might find that sad or even reprehensible. They might argue that indifference is a crime. That by becoming disengaged from what's happening in the world, being (even more) socially misanthropic and by re-embracing political incorrectness, I am in some ways doing something wrong. In a world in which ill-informed, polarised, over-simplistic, bite-sized opinion-spewing is the fabric of social media, I daresay my attitude would arouse much castigation. Fortunately, the not-giving-a-shit state of mind in which I dwell allows me to waste no amount of worry over what people think.
I'm not saying I am a calmer person - I frequently feel irritated and annoyed by life, contemptuous of much of what happens around me - but I do feel like I have grown into myself to such an extent that I have little self-consciousness left to guide my actions. (Why else would I write a blog like this that hardly anyone wants to read?)
How does this all relate to Queen's Brighton Rock? Well, for starters, when I was a teenager, I got into Queen for a couple of years, bought their 70s albums on cassette, their 80s ones on record, never realised that Freddie Mercury was gay, and then decided that liking Queen was just too uncool. In fact, I would ridicule people who liked Queen. A friend at university shared a house with some poor sod who had a fixation for Freddie and we would mock that fact, chuckling at thoughts of him in his room, dressed in a leotard and miming along to Radio Ga Ga.
Getting back into Queen was part of the whole middle age thing described above. But it also coincided with my switch back to wanting to listen to - and therefore buy - records again. I'd been buying everything on CD since 1989, fooled into thinking that CDs were better quality, more durable, less likely to jump, in essence they were the future. 25 years later, I decided I was wrong, dusted off the turntable and started to realise that music sounded better on vinyl, particularly if it was recorded in analogue rather than digital. The terms 'warmer' and 'more real' sound trite, but I did actually start to appreciate this. Coincidental to this music-format Damascus moment was the fact that a 2nd hand record shop opened locally and also Ebay became a go-to place for any record that I might want to buy. In fact, Ebay has become a hobby, because it requires searching, patience over months as I await a near-mint or excellent condition record to be auctioned at a price I'm happy to pay (usually £10-20) and it provides the the thrill of out-bidding others and having the prize arrive in the post.
Having spent the 90s buying CD versions of albums I already had on record, I have now done the opposite. Over the last 4 years, my record collection has more than doubled, sometimes with records of 70s-80s albums that I have on CD, sometimes with 70s-80s albums I never had before. Now that the vinyl revolution has spread, even new albums come out on record, so I sometimes (but not always, due to cost) go for the vinyl format of those recent releases if it's someone I am a big fan of, such as Dylan, Ryan Adams and The Decemberists.
Unworried by accusations of donning a leotard and throwing some Freddie Mercury shapes in the lounge, I have bought up 2nd hand vinyls of most of Queen's 70s albums, the most rewarding purchase being Sheer Heart Attack due to the inclusion of Brighton Rock. If ever a song has to be enjoyed on record and not CD, then this is it (though of course, anything recorded before 1993 really needs to be heard on record rather than CD).
There are also some incidental personal links to Brighton, such as:
I'm not saying I am a calmer person - I frequently feel irritated and annoyed by life, contemptuous of much of what happens around me - but I do feel like I have grown into myself to such an extent that I have little self-consciousness left to guide my actions. (Why else would I write a blog like this that hardly anyone wants to read?)
How does this all relate to Queen's Brighton Rock? Well, for starters, when I was a teenager, I got into Queen for a couple of years, bought their 70s albums on cassette, their 80s ones on record, never realised that Freddie Mercury was gay, and then decided that liking Queen was just too uncool. In fact, I would ridicule people who liked Queen. A friend at university shared a house with some poor sod who had a fixation for Freddie and we would mock that fact, chuckling at thoughts of him in his room, dressed in a leotard and miming along to Radio Ga Ga.
Getting back into Queen was part of the whole middle age thing described above. But it also coincided with my switch back to wanting to listen to - and therefore buy - records again. I'd been buying everything on CD since 1989, fooled into thinking that CDs were better quality, more durable, less likely to jump, in essence they were the future. 25 years later, I decided I was wrong, dusted off the turntable and started to realise that music sounded better on vinyl, particularly if it was recorded in analogue rather than digital. The terms 'warmer' and 'more real' sound trite, but I did actually start to appreciate this. Coincidental to this music-format Damascus moment was the fact that a 2nd hand record shop opened locally and also Ebay became a go-to place for any record that I might want to buy. In fact, Ebay has become a hobby, because it requires searching, patience over months as I await a near-mint or excellent condition record to be auctioned at a price I'm happy to pay (usually £10-20) and it provides the the thrill of out-bidding others and having the prize arrive in the post.
Having spent the 90s buying CD versions of albums I already had on record, I have now done the opposite. Over the last 4 years, my record collection has more than doubled, sometimes with records of 70s-80s albums that I have on CD, sometimes with 70s-80s albums I never had before. Now that the vinyl revolution has spread, even new albums come out on record, so I sometimes (but not always, due to cost) go for the vinyl format of those recent releases if it's someone I am a big fan of, such as Dylan, Ryan Adams and The Decemberists.
Unworried by accusations of donning a leotard and throwing some Freddie Mercury shapes in the lounge, I have bought up 2nd hand vinyls of most of Queen's 70s albums, the most rewarding purchase being Sheer Heart Attack due to the inclusion of Brighton Rock. If ever a song has to be enjoyed on record and not CD, then this is it (though of course, anything recorded before 1993 really needs to be heard on record rather than CD).
There are also some incidental personal links to Brighton, such as:
- My Grandad supported them, having grown up not far away from there in Eastbourne
- As a child and young teenager, I was taken there a lot my family and loved it for the pier, the amusements and the stalls selling Madness badges in the early 80s
- When I got into reading classic literature, aged about 19, I bunked lectures in order to read Brighton Rock in one day (Grahame Greene has remained a favourite author of mine since)
- My wife, Jen, went to 6th for college there
- I've had a great day out with my daughter there recently
And finally, keeping to my middle-aged, unselfconscious attitude that renders me indifferent to the too-easily offended, I should also mention that Brighton really is full of gays. Like Freddie Mercury.
Comments
Post a Comment