Simon Rushworth
I knew I was in trouble as I scanned down the list and didn’t know which was the band and which was the album.
Now I’m sure you’ve all had the same problem with modern-day chart lists crammed full of rappers, hip-hop artists and here-today-gone-tomorrow pop stars.
But this was more alarming. The list I was looking at was Rushonrock’s very own Best Albums of 2010 and quite frankly, I could have been reading Hebrew!
Me. Self proclaimed rock sage not knowing my Nelsons from my Finntrolls, trying to work out which way round Dimmu Borgir and Abradhadabra went and indeed raising an eyebrow to see an album by Terry Brock entitled Diamond Blue in a rock genre category.
Yes folks. The truth is out. I haven’t got a clue. Well, maybe just a little bit.
At least Slash’s R&Fn’R, The Gaslight Anthem’s American Slang and of course, the outstanding self-titled debut from Black Country proved I’m not yet totally out of sync with what today’s rock fraternity are listening to having included them in my own personal faves for last year.
And I would vehemently protest my innocence to those who accuse me of being stuck in a time that music forgot when it comes to my listening tastes.
True, hundreds of my CDs are from the period 1969 to 1984, which probably makes me a typical lover of classic rock.
But there are numerous new bands I’ve attached myself to and will continue to listen to for many years to come.
Indie bands such as Arcade Fire, Kasabian, Kings Of Leon, The Killers and Florence And The Machine right through to bands which are unashamedly classic rock such as The Answer, Black Country Communion and Airbourne.
In the last few years, I have also discovered new bands such as Dirty Evil, The Parlor Mob, Big Linda and Ricky Warwick, which, if they haven’t quite made the breakthrough like the above mentioned artists, certainly deserve to.
But the truth is that in reality, I have no great desire to discover new music.
I have over 1,000 CDs, almost 12,000 songs on my iTunes library and listen to Planet Rock and occasionally Radios Two and Six.
The next albums I buy will probably be those of established artists such as REM, Whitesnake, Rush and Van Halen all of whom have releases in the months ahead.
Does this make me a rock dinosaur, a stick-in-the-mud one of those music followers so despised by NME and Paul Gambacinni?
More worryingly, am I out of step with this website’s followers. Am I redundant to RushonRock’s requirements?
The answers (back me up please Ed?) are no, no, yes, no and no.
I really do hope that in 2011, I fall in love with a band I haven’t even heard of as I write this but I won’t be consciously hunting them out and I won’t lose any sleep if I don’t.
In the meantime, I will carry on listening to the music that has been the soundtrack to my life, both young and middle-aged.
And don’t be too surprised if in December, when I compile my albums of the year, it’s overflowing with bands I first listened to many years ago.