Do you remember your first favourite band or artist? The first
time you fell in love with a musical act? And probably the first
time you ever fell in love with music too? Do you remember how
it felt?
My story may be familiar to yours as I’m sure there are millions
of people who were having the very same experience as me.
I was a typical teenager who wasn’t very sure of himself, but I
was sure that I loved music and this was largely due to my mum
who always had music playing around us as I was growing up. In
the house and in the car, it was always on but was mostly chart
music from the radio or the 50s and 60s ballads that my mother
liked.
I started to hear about some new bands from other kids at school
and I also began to find some interesting sounds on a station
called Radio Luxembourg, which was a pirate station broadcasting
from Europe, and it played a lot of the post punk new wave music
that I was destined to fall in love with.
I remember it well now – lying in bed with the radio on at
midnight, the volume turned down low so my parents couldn’t hear
it while the Alternative Top 30 chart was broadcast late into
the night. It was around this time that it happened – I
discovered my first favourite band.
My first love was a band called Japan, and it was in 1984, two
years after they had split up that I fell in love with their
music.
It was through a friend at school that I discovered them, he was
one of the cooler kids who was at the forefront of the
alternative music scene that was leading that way then.
We were all Baby Goths at the time – too young to be ‘proper’
Goths but wearing as many of the clothes as possible - dressed
in regulation tight black trousers, pointy toed boots, flowery
psychedelic shirts and black bikers jackets or long black coats,
all topped off with lots of silver jewelry and chains.
We were in the park one day listening to that great staple of
the 70s and 80s teenager’s musical diet – the compilation tape.
John had a typical ‘alternative’ compilation with A Forest by
The Cure, Spiritwalker by The Cult and several Bauhaus tracks,
but he also had some tracks by another band I had heard of but
never heard any music by, and that was Japan. He recommended
that I get the Assemblage album, which was basically a
compilation of their early singles.
So off I went to Virgin records and sought out a black vinyl
copy of the album and took it home in a big plastic album bag to
my trusty turntable.
I pulled it out of the sleeve, excited about what listening
pleasures lay before me and pulled the lever that sent the
needle over to the record’s edge. And the effect of that first
track quite literally changed my musical life.
As the opening bass, synth and guitar lines of Adolescent Sex
came through the speakers, for the first time in my life I felt
a shiver down my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck
literally stood up.
It’s an old cliché but it was absolutely true and I was filled
with the emotion of what this music did for me. I loved the
feeling and I wanted more and I was sure Japan could supply it.
And that was the start of my quest to buy as much as possible of
Japan’s music. Over the next few months I bought everything I
could find and afford. I just about memorised their discography
as I read everything I could about the band and even sought out
fanzines, bootleg tapes and books of photographs.
I remember sitting at home at night writing out various
different lists of my favourite Japan tracks – favourite guitar
tracks, favourite synth tracks, instrumentals, various different
versions of my top ten which invariably changed every night.
It was great, it was new, it was all consuming, it was a
passion. And I loved it.
Over the next few years I had several similar experiences with
other bands I discovered and got quite obsessed about. And with
one band I went even further than I did with Japan in terms of
my desire to collect every note ever recorded on record, studio
demo tape or live.
But none of them ever really recaptured the newness and
marvellousness of the experience with Japan, my first favourite
band.
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