Maybe it’s all the sensory overload today that assaults us every moment that is responsible for the death of music. I can remember how 20 years ago when we didn’t have much TV and radio was boring and bars were dark evil unfriendly places that seemed to cater for miserable old men who didn’t like music, when there really was no place to go, and yet it was then that a good friend and I would often fill up our Saturday and Sunday afternoons smoking dope and listening to his extensive album collection and really TALKING about music. All kinds of music. We were in a world of our own. And today music seems to be nothing but a loud irritant splashed at us from everywhere all at once – insipid shit backing every television show, bleeding out of crappy speakers in stores, blaring from every corner of every shit pub often with a telly on somewhere at the same time. Music now is never HEARD, it’s just sort of tolerated. Every fucking band in every fucking club is some kind of clone, or a pre-packaged spectacle of whatever the current standard of ‘popular’ music is supposed to be. It’s all so lame. I haven’t seen any music in years that was presented as real musicianship or real songwriting. It’s always presented now as over-loud fashion statement of some kind. Blokey Blokes blast boom-boom music from stereos louder than my amp in cars the size of bathtubs. Buskers flog plywood guitars singing cardboard songs to hollow souls. We are constantly told by the music press just what we are to listen to (and act like) if we know what’s good for us. These days it’s all about GOING places and DOING things, it’s like football crowd mentality or how fucked up can you get as fast as possible to prove you’re still cool. Nobody listens to music anymore, and because of that nobody PLAYS music anymore. I’m nobody because my music doesn’t come thundering out of a 300 watt Marshall amp with eleven different effects boxes all on at once while I strike poses and scream my lungs out. Oh I CAN do that, and in the past I HAVE done that, but more importantly I want to be the real me, not some deranged puppet for amusement. But that’s all people want now. Music is no longer meant to inspire thought or emotion, it’s meant only as accompaniment to loutish behaviour. It’s the soundtrack to modern stupidity. It covers the sound of your farts. I sit here completely skint, I can’t even feed or clothe myself properly anymore. I’m not allowed to play my guitar because I’m too poor to be able to live by myself. I have no friends because I have no money. I am unwanted and unimportant. And I see my old guitar there across the room while the newsman tells me what a hero George Harrison was and I think to myself, the fucking bastard – when he was my age he was fucking rich and I’m a better musician and songwriter than him. But here I am hungry, cold and wishing I was alone so I could play some songs just for myself. What the fuck happened? About 20 years ago I was living on the road, going nowhere but at least I had my music – or maybe it’s better to say that the world had a place for my music. But not anymore. And the sad part is that I’m better now than I ever was back then. But here I sit with no hope, no future, and a lost past. I have no friends, no home, and no money but worst of all I have no music anymore. It’s still inside of me but I’m not allowed to do it. And then some prat chucks a shitty old acoustic guitar with four strings and a bent neck at me and says “Here – play us somethin’”. And you know I can’t. TIMO