 Photo: Judith Burrows |
The Editor's BoxIan Anderson's comment column |
Here I am, putting the finishing touches to this, our 300th issue, and feeling a combination of proud, awed, smug and knackered. There’s something about such a big round number which seems more significant than a passage of time measured in years, the more so because we actually managed to get them all out on time, without a single break. Somehow we got through the Thatcher years, postal strikes, printer breakdowns, technological disasters, the odd financial doldrums, and even yours truly getting distracted by the occasional wayward side project that filled more hours than a waking week ought to sensibly hold.
I’ve been asked a few times lately what “the secret” behind it all is and my usual stock answer is “staying enthusiastic”. But what keeps this enthusiasm going? The answer, I believe, is not simply “the music”, but that everything surrounding it has kept on improving.
Some of this isn’t about the quality of notes twanged and words sung, but how it is presented to us. The current listening experience is so far ahead of where it was when we started out. A lot has to do with improvements in technology and the accessability of quality. Whether it’s the equipment we listen to music on, the way it’s recorded and packaged, the listening environment for live performances, affordable good instruments, or the possibilities of hearing and learning about more varied music than we ever imagined existed (with just the click of a mouse), everything is better than in our wildest dreams.
We’re now in a golden age for sources of music and the inspiration these can provide. I’m sat in a room where the nearest surfaces are piled with two particular kinds of albums. One is remarkable new records by artists moving forward in a myriad of interesting, exciting, inventive and sometimes unconventional ways. The other is beautifully presented archive material, utterly inspiring reissues from the past. This afternoon I’ve been ODing on old Greeks and Guineans; earlier, my iPod was on shuffle on the kitchen stereo and in the time it took me to have breakfast I heard classic ’50s Chicago blues, a hot new Italian band, a field recording of a morris side, a jazz saxophone legend, a local hit from the Indian Ocean and a jaw-droppingly good young English singer. Who cares about the big mountain of lesser works piled up over there by the reviews editor’s desk?
Small wonder things continue to get better. Nobody, especially the new generation of musicians, needs to exist unquestioningly with the second rate any more. No longer is that the only thing available in your local record shop, granted space on the radio, or wasting everybody’s time in your local performance space, keeping horizons low.
A famous ‘70s editorial in a long-gone UK folk magazine once trumpeted controversially that “Crap begets crap”. It was probably right. Now we’re in an era where musical alchemists are more able than ever to turn inspiration to gold. And the rest, who needs it?