Stop Buying Records!

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by Stephen Moore

Stephen Moore asks you to stop buying records and, bizarrely, simultaneously listen to more music.

Ladies and gentlemen of the UKMIX audience, I put it to you that you buy too many records. Almost certainly you do. You buy CD after CD or tape after tape, and it's all getting too much for me to bear.

Let's have a quick show of hands.

Who here owns a Steps album?
(I do, actually, come to think of it...)

OK, who here owns BOTH Steps albums?
(Um, I do as well. Is this a bad example?)

Right. Why didn't you LEARN THE FIRST TIME? Eh? What made you think, "Ooooh, another anonymous homogenized little piece of tat I can listen too, be vaguely entertained by, but still really not FEEL anything about! I must buy that!"

I really do want to know.

Well, it's time for some action.

It's time to stop buying badly thought out, unoriginal, BORING music, and in that banner I include:
Robbie Williams
Kylie Minogue (now)
The Vengaboys
Westlife
N*Sync
The Backstreet Boys
Billie Piper
Britney Spears
Christina Aguilera
Mandy Moore
Atomic Kitten

..and any one of a million other bands who (and here's the killer) all sound EXACTLY THE SAME! It's not even a good sound, but merely the sound that has been demonstrated to do the least harm and sell blandly to the largest number of people who ultimately just want that song "off of the radio what I liked."

Well, enough is ENOUGH! Are we fans or are we mice? If a stand isn't taken here and now, then in 30 years time, all we will have is clones of Westlife (assuming that cloning technology can do simple life forms by then). It's time for you all to...

STOP BUYING RECORDS!

Yes, I mean it. Next time you're in HMV and tempted by Billie Spears or Britney Aguilera or whoever it is this week, STOP. Think for a minute. "Will I enjoy this in a year's time; in two year's time? Will I want my kids to listen to this?"

The answer is probably, "No." And you've saved yourself 12 quid or so.

Now for the next stage in my amazing plan to improve music and make you all see what it can be... LISTEN TO MORE MUSIC.

That's more as in quantity of songs, not amount of time. Yes, even you, the fourteen-year-old girl with a crush on the girly one from Five. The first thing to do is to rotate the CDs you're listening to. Take the current chart stuff out of circulation and go and...

..raid your parents record collection.

Really.

Do it.

Go now, I'll wait.

The targets you should look for especially are:

The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Carole King, Queen, Simon and Garfunkel, and, if you're in an extremely odd mood, try The Eagles, Pink Floyd and even... The Carpenters.

"Why?" I hear you cry. Well, simply because they are music. Not all of them are good, and you may not love all of it, but it's real music. It's by real people, and not merely another drum-machine-produced piece of music which all sounds the same but with a different session artist standing in for the pretty girl who can't sing.

This is all music with feeling behind it, which will make you feel something, or think about something. Even if you don't like it, it will broaden your horizons and open your eyes to the other stuff that's out there right now! Music is not all pop, and it's not all ballads. And sometimes the only way to appreciate it is to listen to things which (shock, horror) you haven't heard the like of before.

So go on. Buy fewer records. Listen to MORE music. And perhaps, just perhaps, you'll find something more to like than the sugary diet the record companies are feeding you.

[This has been a public service announcement sponsored by "I hate these chart acts" and "J-Pop is GOOD don't you see"... Thank you for watching]