This months front cover image appeared on the front page of The Guardian a couple of days ago. It features a group of Kate Bush fans in Folkestone dancing to ‘Wuthering Heights’, dressed in homage to the artist as she appeared in the 1978 video for the hit single, on the occasion of Kate’s 65^th birthday. I love the joy on their faces and the fact that this was such an open, public celebration. The idea that a few passers by might have had an interest in Kate Bush sparked up (“you know her, she did the ‘Stranger Things’ music”) can only be a good thing. Any time I hear music I love forcing its way into a public space or into the mainstream consciousness I feel the universe is moving in the right direction. Equally, I feel we are on a terminable slide into mediocrity when I hear EDM blasting out of a passing car or I am assaulted with auto-tune-hell muzak in a high street shop.

There is something so personal about music that ensures it is a very unusual occurrence for someone to play me something and I instantly offer approval or ‘feel it’ like they do. Friends over the years have noticed me playlisting or listening to an artist only to comment “you said you didn’t like them when I played them to you”. It seems for music to truly speak to me (I accept I am far from being alone in this) I have to find my own way to it, that way it somehow feels like my own. I found this over the past month when staying with a family of folk music aficionados who spent the whole time bombarding me with relentless Paul Brady and Jackson Browne. I have been aware of both over the years without ever getting into them but the unchosen, daily exposure did not work. Far too much brow-furrowed reverence to guitar technique and craft and way too little feeling for me, in fact it made we want to reach for the nearest, trashiest, fuzziest Rock album I could lay my hands on to relieve the tedium… and I am a massive fan of Folk and singer-songwriters!

Maybe the day will come when I find my way to both these hugely respected artists and they will suddenly click with me. I wondered if the problem is me and I am missing something so did some internet research (it obviously is me, both artists seem to command massive critical acclaim and respect) which uncovered the little nugget of information that Paul Brady appeared in the film ‘Charlie Is My Darling’ stood outside a theatre in Ireland in 1965, waiting for a Rolling Stones performance. I had recorded the film off the TV recently but not got around to watching it so gave it a viewing. What a film! The best I have ever seen about the Stones. Originally intended for release in 1966, it actually only surfaced in a restored format just over ten years ago but it is already up there with classic music documentary films like ‘Don’t Look Back’ or ‘Jazz On A Summer’s Day’. The thrill of seeing the Stones in such up-close, unfiltered clarity in their early years; the deranged energy their live performance provokes in the crowd (who kill one performance with a stage invasion); watching an iconic looking Brian Jones plugging in and unleashing such atom-splitting riffs on his electric guitar; Mick and Keith lovingly jamming on some of The Beatles most recent material in an Irish dressing room, it all makes for the most riveting time capsule that I thoroughly recommend checking out.

Anyway back to the top, this months playlist kicks off with some classic Kate Bush and then unfolds with a fair representation of the music that’s excited me over the past four weeks; no Paul Brady, Jackson Browne or even any Rolling Stones for that matter. In fact, if you’re anything like me, if you listen to it at all you probably won’t even like that much of it but rather use something found within as a prompt to head off in your own direction and uncover the music that speaks to you. That is, after all, how all record collecting and music discovery should work. Finding your own taste, not adopting someone else’s, that’s the way forward…