Ink and Paper

My wife has been known to refer to me as a 'musical fascist'. I think this is meant as a term of endearment; that's certainly the way I'm taking it. It stems from my uncompromising attitude to what I like and dislike. I'm not one of those people who, when asked what kind of music they like, says 'a bit of everything' or 'all sorts', although there would be some truth in both statements.

The fact is I fall hard and deep for music I like, frequently to the exclusion of anything else. So criticism of the Tindersticks, Sisters of Mercy, early 80s electropop, Van Der Graaf Generator or John Grant will stir passions like almost nothing else. I used to be passionate about pretty much everything. I remember getting so worked up during England's Italia 90 World Cup quarter final against Cameroon, which I had to watch at my parents' house, that I was forced to watch the match on a different TV to everyone else and emerged after extra time pale, sweating and having mislaid my shirt, to the clear bemusement of the rest of the family. Now I can barely raise a shrug. I think it might be something to do with growing up.

You might infer from this that my life revolves around music, that I have a huge record collection and encyclopedic knowledge, that I'm a veritable anorak...in short, a fan.

And yet I'm not sure that I am. The downside of falling hard for a band or an album, so hard that you can't bear to listen to anything else, is that you don't. Listen to anything else that is. And this phenomenon doesn't last for days or weeks; it can last for months. Consequently, while my taste could be seen as eclectic it is not broad. I have a perverse disinclination to listen to people I should clearly like: I own no music by The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison, James Brown or Bruce Springsteen (actually, that last one is probably fair enough). I have voluntarily listened to My Latest Novel's album 'Deaths & Entrances' more than I have music by all the aforementioned artists put together. This makes me happy but I don't think it makes me a music fan.

Confirmation of this came during one of our periodic de-cluttering exercises at home. Presented with boxes full of CD's I merrily filled bin liner after bin liner with scarcely a second glance, knowing that all this stuff was in my itunes library or, if not, I could get it on Spotify within 30 seconds.

But when it came to the boxes of books that followed hard on the heels of the CD's I was angst personified. These were books that:

(a) I had read
(b) I was very unlikely to read again
(c) often weren't very good, and
(d) I could easily access again via a Kindle (if I had one)

And yet I physically could not bring myself to throw them away. It just felt wrong, as if I were taking them out into the street and burning them.

It's the same with the retail experience. I never liked record shops. I think it's a tragedy that so many independent record shops are closing but only in the same way that I mourn the passing of bespoke tailors. The world seems a poorer place without them but their disappearance doesn't impact on my life at all. Being able to pay £10 a month and access (nearly) all the music I need at the click of a mouse strikes me as an entirely good thing.

But I consider Amazon to be the work of the devil. Books should be purchased from bookshops and they should be printed on paper. I find it as impossible to leave a bookshop without buying something (occasionally a book I already own) as others do in record shops or confectioners. I could quite happily live in a bookshop, provided it had a small bar. I know all the arguments about portability and accessibility and believe me they resonate when I'm wrestling with the hardback of 'Bring Up The Bodies' on the tube. But they're still wrong.

There, I've found something else to be passionate about. I'm a book fascist.