I was listening to an unofficial French double album of Camel’s live performances from 1972 and 1974 and I absolutely loved it. Sometimes I forget how good a band is, especially one that I listened a lot to a long time ago.
Anyway, I was thinking while listening to ‘Homage To The God Of Light’ which was recorded live at the Marquee in October 1974 that, my God, this is nearly 52 years old. 52... I don’t know about you but I couldn’t have conceived of 2024 when I was 13. It seemed impossibly distant. But here we are. It’s a very different world in many ways but it’s also remarkably similar. More similar than we could have imagined. Though try explaining the internet to your 13-year-old self.
And it got me thinking about what music would be played 50 years from now and I’m not sure there is any. I’m sure there’s some good music being recorded but it comes to the market as a disposable item. It streams in and you don’t feel anything about it as a product to make it stick the way it used to.
I think we’ve been rewired for disposability, whereas I cannot explain just how much reverence I had for records in 1974. They were the very opposite of disposable. They were magical and now, so many years later, they still hold that sparkle and magic.
All those people who were at that Camel gig in 1974 will have felt part of an essentially youth culture which we can’t really appreciate now. The idea of my dad, in his early 50s at the time, going to see Camel is laughable. It was so alien to him, this, what he often called ‘bang bang noise.’ Now, music is transgenerational. Which is good in a way, but removes a specialness we felt as kids.
When I made the decision to sell the remnants of my CD collection, including many box sets. This despite my hoarding tendencies. It was a big thing in my life to do but I hadn't played a CD for at least 7 years. And even though many of them are hard to get now, I won’t miss them. This is the disposability gene in action. Did anyone ever really, really care about a CD? There’s something cold and inadequate about them for me.
The music industry has wrung money out of us for physical product at least 3 times and is now attempting the same trick again with streaming and downloads. How many more times? The vinyl alone would have served you well and saved us a lot of money.
