What Music Means
Kerry Jane BOO Editor and Drummer with Tiny Ghost
I started BOO! because when I re-found music I stopped feeling numb and alone. I’d never really stopped listening to music I just lost the real connection and didn’t know where to find new music that I liked. Going out to gigs and playing gigs gives me a way to get the feelings out that I can’t put into words and helps me to know that others feel real things too, sometimes the same as me, sometimes completely different. It has connected me to the most interesting, brave, talented and flawed people I’ve ever met so over to them to tell us what music means to them.
Abigail Ziering, singer and guitarist with Luna Lacuna, epic supporter of local bands and organiser of shows
In a social context music is fluidity between the interior and exterior, introspection and connectivity, micro and macrocosm expressed in the personal, the universal, and the space between. It is angst that can laugh at itself and humour that is reflective and reactive. In essence music is a fusion of logic and emotion, the place where the right and left brain can compare notes and produce something momentous even if in a small way. It is the ubiquitous liquid in which we may dissolve and distil the small details, the big stories, and the archetypes, all that defines us.
Lucy Foster, drummer
I used to walk everywhere with headphones in my ears, which gave me an excuse not to talk to anybody. I could lower my eyes and get lost in the swelling sound, holding on tight to every last word. Lyrics would grab me as if they'd been written just for my ears. I learned to treasure songs that would instantly trigger memories or get me out of bed in the morning.
Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand. Music is everything. Its a person, always there for you, a form of expression. Its something that helps people connect. Music is the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Joseph Wise, guitarist and singer with Punching Swans and Frau Pouch
Music to me means communication. It's part of my everyday life and has been for so long, not just as a listener, but being in bands and writing is 'normal' to me. I think it's a very personal thing, it can help people find their own identity and other like-minded people. Or it can be a creative outlet, therapeutic and cathartic. It's language that can be shaped however we like with any message or non-message we like. It doesn't have to be anything
Richard James, noisemaker with Pillowspeaker
Music transports me to a different place. Especially instrumental music. It conjures atmospheres and aesthetics that are personal and subjective. Landscapes, buildings, the ocean and far away galaxies. You can find something transcendent there.
Chris Garth, guitarist with UpCDownC, drums and guitar teacher
Music has pretty much been all I think about ever since hearing Smells like Teen Spirit back in the early 90's. Everything changed after that day. The hair grew, every T-shirt had a band on it and every car journey would be had with head phones on and a walkman in hand. Haircuts and walkmans have changed but Music is still here. It makes me happy, sad, violent, calm, can take you on journeys, help you get through rough patches, makes you friends from all over the world and basically accompanies you through life. It's my big Brother/Sister and has to be LOUD.
Sam Slattery, noisemaker with Dul Fin Wah and occasionally with Interstellar Noise
Drive
It's always a wicked mystery to me, because I'm not completely sure how people make music. I've spent years wrapping my listening gear around loads of different types-and I'm no more enlightened than I was as a kid, in my room-fiddling with a broken guitar and tape recorders, pressing the same key down on my tiny old casio keyboard, for an hour-or listening over and over to the same song on repeat-and falling in love with a melody, or a chorus-or a some tiny little sound that (somehow) flavours the whole thing. Not that this is a problem in any way-it's a beautiful part of the experience, more than anything; a sort of child like wonder, un polluted by the bitterness of knowing too much.
Music is more than the sum of it's parts-and I love how it can be essentially made from anything; musical instruments, pots and pans, bodily noises, found sounds.
As cheesy as this sounds, music can be as easy or as complicated as you want it to be. It's a journey, I suppose-sometimes into the unknown-sometimes along familiar lines. It can be good, bad, ugly, beautiful-or a strange mixture of all of this. It's magic.
George Clift, Hot Salvation Records boss and guitarist with Cosmic Thoughts
Music is the most primitive and primal form of communication we have before spoken language. It crosses culture and race. It serves out well being individually and acts as a conduit for group activity. It therefore assists the definition of our humanity.
It's essential to my life in all facets and has remained my consistent companion, be it passively or creatively. I need it to live meaningfully as much as I need my senses.
Suzanne Wise, Drummer with Frau Pouch
Music is the glitter on the giant turd that is the human race.
Michael Foreman, Guitarist and singer with Tiny Ghost
From a very early age music captivated and moved me. Within sound and songs I found an emotional language that could express far more than I was able to in “real life”. Initially it was quite insular, as a very young kid I would sit on my own with a record player and a random collection of Cowboy songs (I loved the stories), 50s Rock and Roll and Viennese Waltz’s. The weekly fix would be Top of the Pops and by the time I was at primary school I was hooked on pop (Blondie, Elvis Costello, Disco, Grease, even Abba…I was very young).
My first real communal experience of live music was sitting in front of a guitar covers band at Reculver Caravan Park, immersed and transfixed by Martin (Mac) McVey playing Hendrix songs. Guitar suddenly seemed like a tool for what could be obscene, raw and intense expression.
At Secondary school I was allowed to go to the Friday night youth club at Herne Bay’s “Cabin”, a true cultural education. That place exposed us all to a massive variety of music old and new. Sat around the dance floor were clearly defined tribes; Punks, Ska fans, Mods, Casuals, and the occasional New Waver/New Romantic. I loved all of it, but initially it was 60s soul, Motown and Northern Soul that ignited the idea that I could belong to a tribe. It was an alternative world, a complete lifestyle, all based upon emotive music about heartbreak, young love and human longing. I also found this tribe to be very female inclusive, strong female artists and no so much macho posturing (as opposed to punk, ska etc).
Obviously I was in a band at school, this made life much more exciting and opened me up to new experiences (I was terrified of playing live, I could barely speak to people let alone sing/play in front of them…not much changes).
Music gave me moral reference points, advice, encouragement and above all a sense that there were other people in the world who shared some of the passion, fear, joy, energy that I had buried deep in me. Although I studied visual Arts at Uni, I always found the accumulation of artefacts (stuff I’d made) quite depressing and a burden. The transience and impermanence of sound is liberating. It vanishes leaving only mental/emotional flotsam and jetsam in its wake.
Music means I can connect with people, ideas, worlds, images, emotions and abstract concepts that would possibly elude me otherwise. Music is also the best therapy.
