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This is the second part of the memoir of an anonymous pop picker, covering a period of 23 years in Britain from the early 80s. Being a memoir, it enables the reader to follow the specific strands of his experience as a continuous narrative. Being anonymous, it gives the reader access to typical impressions and responses, making it representative as well as personal.
It's about great records and dreadful records, heroic acts and acts whose success drains the living spirit. It's about golden moments at gigs and unforgettable episodes at festivals; it's about hunting for original copies and being swallowed up by record fairs; it's about attending music quizzes and becoming a momentary sex god. It's about ordinary people responding to events in a way that posterity often claims they didn't. It's about those moulded plastic rings at the centre of seven-inch singles and those brittle circular fixtures designed to secure early CDs in their otherwise-impregnable casings.
A chunk of it is given over to the indie scene of the 90s, its hopes, its triumphs and delusions. It gives readers a taste of its southern English context and the lives of those in marginal bands on the Camden scene. This world once had a dream. Many feel it was fulfilled in a haze of white powder, while others thought it was snatched away; by political complacency, by the corporate world of mainstream entertainment; or perhaps, specifically, by the Spice Girls and Westlife.
Most importantly, however, the book is about ageing. Our anonymous pop picker quickly moves beyond that esteemed 16-24 age bracket and, from then on, it's all downhill - except of course that it has proved to be not quite so terrible. Nowadays, there is as much facility for pop fans on the sedate side of fifty as there is for teenagers - we have magazines, TV channels, radio stations and festivals, put together with our vintage in mind, comprising a vibrant and lucrative market, with the internet providing additional possibilities endlessly. These pages chart the journey from the fading of youth in the cynical 80s to this realised world, one where, if so inclined, you can boogie for as long as you're able to stand.
Pop music aids and abets our dreams. But sometimes it creates them. And at other times still we cook dreams up on its behalf. That is, perhaps, what can make a pop picker devout.
By the way, when was the Golden Age of the CD Single?
