unsigned music at reverb-tv

It's dark at 3pm, alcoholic drinks you've never even heard of are being advertised on television and the high streets are filled with an atmosphere of barely suppressed panic. Aye, it's nearly Christmas. Some people hate Christmas, and I'm deeply suspicious of them. I don't know why, it just feels right. I've spent the last 22 years coming to terms with the fact I didn't get the M.A.S.K. Thunderhawk car I asked for in 1988, but I haven't let it completely ruin my yuletide spirit. Some people love Christmas, and I'm deeply suspicious of them. I don't know why, it just feels right. If you can't feel slightly depressed by Tesco's current assertion that: "Tyson - The Movie is the perfect gift for Christmas" then spend on my friend, spend on. Granted, writing about my mild indifference towards Christmas isn't the best idea for a column, so I thought I'd talk about the other significance this season has to offer - the end of the year.

I was listening to Absolute Radio the other week (George Lamb was still wreaking his daily ironic 80s misery on 6 music) and heard they were running a vote for The Song Of The Decade. "My my", I thought, "We're right in the middle of a decade, what a strange time to be holding a Song Of Th….oh. Fucking hell." Yep, believe it or not, it's the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Don't ask me where it went, I don't know either.

It seems ever since The Stone Roses first put on flares that pop culture has always had, much to its detriment, had a tendency to look back. And so it was with crushing inevitability that the end of this decade (which, as it will be remembered for reality TV and the rise of the nobody, should be labelled 'The Nothings') was heralded by loads of Album Of The Decade lists.

So, why does the NME think we need to know that Is This It by The Strokes is the best album since Nevermind by Nirvana (their album of the 90s)? Why does the Guardian think it's Original Pirate Material by The Streets instead? The thing about music is that it's all a question of taste. I know that we're all different and we all have the right to like what we like, that's why we haven't all moved to North Korea. But music holds a bizarre place in the art-world in terms of its ability to both unite and divide us as lovers of it. There can't be that many film fans that spend a whole Saturday afternoon buying clothes so they can look just like Owen Wilson. I've never seen a group of teenagers sat in Trafalgar Square and thought "Fuck me, look at the state of them - another load of David Bailey fans". I've yet to see a busking ballet dancer. Next May bank holiday the pebbled beach of Brighton will not be covered with the blood of Dan Brown fans after their clash with avid Iain Rankin readers. Why? Because, in the main, art tolerates art. The art world lets the art world get on with what it does because art needs that space to thrive and evolve.

So, why don't these rules of tolerant indifference apply to music? The worlds of fashion and music have been wound tightly together since the Teddy Boys kicked the fuck out of each other in the 50s Why, as music lovers, do we feel the need to grow our hair like a 1987 Robert Smith? A 1976 Johnny Rotten or a 1965 Paul McCartney to fit in - to show people we are like them? Or more importantly, not like them. We wear clothes on our bodies to tell people what's on our iPod, and not on theirs.

That is exactly what these lists do. They tell us who we are and who we are not. So, if we read the NME should we agree with them? Of course not, but the fact Is This It was noticeably £10 again in HMV this week says a lot of unsure people will. Still, the marketing side of these lists is one that needs to be ignored. We need these lists because music is so good, so relevant, so important to our lives that we need to analyse it, to reflect on it and classify it so we can argue about it. Nobody likes to feel like they've missed out on something so it's nice to see an album you love floating in the top ten. Yet we also need to know the papers got it wrong - can you imagine the horror you would feel it you opened a paper to see your exact top 50 albums of the decade staring back at you? Awful. So we can never win, but that's half the fun. And anyway, we all know the album of the decade was Natural History by I Am Kloot. (Please imagine a winking/tongue out emoticon as I have vowed to never let one leave my fingertips. But maybe I just have. Oh man.)

If music was your first love, not fine art, I think that says a lot about you. As a music lover you are artistically sensitive enough to appreciate when something is beautiful or repulsive, humane enough to need to know other people feel the same and grounded enough to want to get up and pissing well dance to it. Thank fuck for that eh?