f

When I was a young fella there were about ten L.P. records in my parents collection.

I played a certain few of them mostly.

Simon And Garfunkel's Greatest Hits. The Clancy Brothers. Elvis. The Dubliners.

I had to climb up on the kitchen table to get to them. The player was on a shelf.

Take the record out of the sleeve. Place it on the turntable. Press play.

Listen carefully. Be affected. Be taken away into a place of harmony and joy.

That collection, to me was a tiny yet perfect gene pool of human music.

It wasn't all the music. But it was heaps of music. HEAPS.

The T.V. had one single channel. For the record. RTE 1.

Then later we got BBC 1 and 2 , ITV, and UTV.

Just a limited finite amount of stuff to be going on with.

No mobile phones! None. One phone in the shop only. 6409 was our number. No computers.

Just people and stories people told about each other.

Point being if you wanted to hear music, which was a very special treat , you had to buy an album or a single, choose it carefully because it's your hard earned money , and take it home and by that stage you would be ready to savour every single note on it.

Also when I started gigging first there would be one T.V. in the pub. I'd set up and say "I'm ready to start thanks".

T.V. off. No mobile phones. Nothing. Just song and audience and singer. And fucking rakes of beer and cigarettes, which were good for you back then, and let's go into the ether together and come out cleansed somehow.

I paid Spotify $12.50 this month for access to almost every single note made by any human anywhere ever.

How can anyone value music anymore?

It's cheap.

But the live musician?

She has it still.