my wee band

There is a concept I heard Jim Kerr of the Simple Minds put forth one day on afternon tv (many years ago) about the dangers of what he termed 'my wee band'. Basically, you discover a band that you really like and proceed to talk about them endlessly, buy all their stuff and promote them to all your mates. However, if they actually have the bad grace to become successful you start moaning about how they've sold out, that their new stuff isn't as good as their original material. The idea Jim was driving at was this was all a form of selfish toss. When the band were yours alone they were shiny and great but when they came to belong to everyone they were cheap and nasty. A generous confident person who values the work will be glad the band's work has found a wider audience, while a more insecure and selfish person wants the pretty thing just for themselves. Yet they do want everyone to know how fabulous the thing they and they alone have is! It can only ever end in tears before bedtime

In slightly different vein, while living the land of 'pan I discovered the joys of a CD library in Maebashi. You could borrow CDs much like books 2 weeks at a time. This offer included new releases and it wasn't long before I was taping to beat the band like the cute Kerryman I am. One band whose album I recorded at the time but had not heard of was this '24 years of Hunger' by Eg and Alice. The album quickly became one of my favourites but try as I might I've never been able to get it new on CD in order to give some reward to those who created it. And that is a real, real pity. I urge poeple to look out for it for themselves. It really is a divine piece of work. And I'm going to root it out and give it a good old listen now that I've got my tape collection back.