The Art of Missing the Boat

I sometimes get stubborn and try to pretend that I was right all along about whatever judgement originally led me to ignore the artist. (This is stupid, I know.) This is why I don't own anything of Will Oldham's, even though I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy a lot of it -- at some early point I decided I wouldn't be interested, and to buy something now would be like admitting I was wrong.

God forbid. Actually, I think I'll go off and buy a Will Oldham record now, just to stop being ridiculous about it.

I'm still kicking myself for not going to see X or Love & Rockets back in '85. I knew who they were, but wasn't that interested at the time. And I thought Black Flag was too hard core - now I really wish I had seen them.

But I don't think I'll ever get on the Radiohead bandwagon. Not only do they bore me, but they don't seem original to me. (No offense! just my opinion.)

Know what you mean. I have a habit of not buying stuff hot out of the oven, unless I'm desperate to hear it. A lot of the time when an "important" or hyped release comes out I'll read all the reviews, interviews and articles etc, but hold back from getting it for a few months, sometimes for up to a year and beyond. Then I'll finally make the purchase and go back again and read the discourse. Same as waiting for a movie to come out on video I guess. With the music though, it's probably just a scepticism of stubborness that takes over me when I refuse to listen to something in the middle of the hype.

GO, GO NOW AND GET SOME WILL OLDHAM. If only for his cover of Big Balls by Ac/Dc

Thank you for confessing you've never heard KidA or Amnesiac. Me neither! Only difference between us is I plan never to - and don't care if I'm missing out. There's so much else out there still to discover. (NB - I do own and enjoy some Radiohead)

That 'taking sides' thread was totally bizarre from my perspective :-)

I know what you mean. In 1987 to 1989 I was compulsively reading the MM and NME, soaking up all the releases by AR Kane and MBV and Loop and the rest, but not actually hearing them or buying them (apart from MBV in 89 onwards) because I was in the middle of a big depression and had no money (and anyway I was buying 60s psych on Bam Caruso, why should I want 80s psych? At least that was my mentality).

Then in '93 I picked up a copy of "Blissed out", read about what I'd been missing, went out and bought "69" and "Playing with fire" and whatever and was blown away at what I'd missed, then had to hunt like a lunatic for all the AR Kane singles that were everywhere in '88 but nowhere in '93. Life's a bitch, but it was worth it for finding a secondhand copy of the second AR Kane single in Cwmbran for 50p.

Steve Miller

I expect you'll find this hard to believe, but I'm often wrong about dismissing someone or other at first, generally because there's something in the hype or some such that puts me off and I don't pay enough attention. This was initially true of Eminem, for example. And it sometimes takes me a while to get to grips with kinds of music that are new to me. I was OK with drum & bass, for instance, because I'd liked hardcore and Shut Up And Dance and that, but it took me a while to get most African music, for instance.

I saw the Smiths on Top of the Pops in 1984 and hated them. Three years later they took five minutes to become my favourite band ever (up till then) and I discovered they'd split up about a month before!