
Friday is Rock'n'Roll London Day! Join the Rock'n'Roll London walk this (and every Friday) afternoon at 2:00p.m meeting at Tottenham Court Road Station
Ahead of the his Rock'n'Roll London walk, Daily
Constitutional Editor Adam writes…
I swore I'd never say it, let alone go to
press (as we journalists used to say before blogs came along) with the
following phrase…
"It was different in my day."
And so the sound of clicking and tapping
resounds like a firing squad as you leave this blog post in your droves… BUT
WAIT!
This isn't some old fart complaining that
modern life is rubbish. Not this time, anyway.
This is a celebration.
In my day music was hard to find. Just
hearing mention of the names of, say, Howlin' Wolf, or Ma Rainey, was tough enough.
Actually hearing the music was like a quest out of Greek mythology. Pocket
money had to be saved, speciality record shops in distant towns had to be
located. Even then, there was no guarantee that said record shops would have
the required records in stock and another interminable wait had to be endured
while they ordered it in and then a further trek to pick the thing up. And then what if you hated the music?
Sure there was always the local library but
there really wasn't much call for Ma Rainey round my way back in the dim and
distant (but mainly dim) 1980's.
I can barely imagine what it would have been like in the pre-recorded music era when, as Howard Goodall once put it, it would be unlikely you would hear your favourite piece of music more than three or four times in a lifetime.
I can barely imagine what it would have been like in the pre-recorded music era when, as Howard Goodall once put it, it would be unlikely you would hear your favourite piece of music more than three or four times in a lifetime.
Today a universe of music is literally at
our fingertips. It has its downside, of course: new artists struggle to find prominence, big companies no longer nurture careers (not that record labels were
ever charitable organisations (!)) but as a fan I cannot help but marvel at the
ease with which we can access music from every period.
My own 8-year-old daughter made a Spotify
playlist last week as part of her homework. Her class is learning about the
North of England and for her project on Sheffield, she did some research and
found out all about Sheffield-born composer William Sterndale Bennett and added
him to her
playlist…
…alongside The Arctic Monkeys and ABC!
She is a great example of my point: music
is more accessible than it has ever been.
This is reflected in the faces on my
Rock'n'Roll London tour on Fridays.
The folks who join my tour tend, in the
main, not to show up on any of my other London Walks tours. This is not
exclusively the case, of course, but the bulk of my Rock'n'Roll London Walkers
are music fans and musicians first and foremost – which is lucky for me as
music fans and musicians are among my favourite people.
Their age range is the broadest on any of
my London Walks bar Ghosts of the Old City) where the Walkers range from
eight-to-eighty.
The stand-out demographic on the Rock'n'Roll
London walk is teenagers and students. Sometimes they are travelling (I've met
Floyd fans from Chile and Coldplay fans from Israel) but equally they are with
their parents and can hold forth on The Who and Bob Marley and Sabbath and
Janis with the best of us oldsters.
Rock'n'Roll music, it seems, is still a
young person's game – even old person's Rock'n'Roll music is a young person's
game! They know it all, it's there at the touch of a button. And I, for one,
think it's great.
Over the coming months I'm looking forward to welcoming a great many music fans to my tour on Fridays
and debating the comparative merits of John's Children with Les Fleur De Lys.
What do you mean you've never 'eard of 'em?
They're just a click away. Have a listen and we'll discuss it on the walk
someday.

A London Walk costs £10 – £8 concession. To join a London Walk, simply meet your guide at the designated tube station at the appointed time. Details of all London Walks can be found at www.walks.com.









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