Pure youth is an emotion, a set of emotions an experience, a passage of time that we experience just once however we kid ourselves. It's really nought to twenty one. Those are the valuable years.Everything else is a question of reflecting on and trying to build on those. So long as you're reasonable fortunate, born into reasonable circunstances and to a happy family as I was.
If you have this. This is a good platform. We're many of us reasonably fortunate me certainly. What I did between sixteen and twenty along with the other stuff was to start to collect records. This was an unconscious start of a great journey but I'm glad I planted that foot on this road rather than starting to collect beermats or explore gaming. The fork in the riad was R.E.M's Murmur in late 1983 and then I was up and running and I haven't really stopped running since.. I still consider myself fortunate.
From Murmur I went to early R.E.M.interviews in NME and Melody Maker and from there to Cypress the debut album by Let's Active. Well Mitch Easter, the R.E.M. co producer was head poncho in Let's Active who hailed from North Carolina. They came to the UK soon afterwards and went on a tour supporting the Bunnymen. I think my sister went to see them. .I listened to it quite a lot then but I wouldn't have been able to say much about it at the time. It was just a record with a really good sleeve which I'd bought and liked..
But actually I'm only really starting to listening to it properly now. Over forty years later. I've played it a lot over the last few months and I've come to realise just how good it is. Like R.E,M, Let's Active clearly don't believe in readily marked out beginnings middles and ends and this makes their records intriguing in the extreme and listening to them properly a lifelong task.
Cypress is a clash of sounds and colour without obvious influence though B52s are in there esomewhere in tems of the harmonies and inflections. The guitars are incredibly inventive and playful. The mood somewhwere between and Marl Twain and the whole Southern Tradition. Holly Golightly meets the kids from to Kill a Mockingbird for a midnight feast. I think I'll listen to it again. It has more twists and turns than an episode of Whacky Races. .
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