unsigned music at reverb-tv

Turning 30 is a funny old time. Ten years ago I was fretting over tuning 20 and in ten from now I'll be doing exactly the same about turning 40. What's frightening is that I can remember word for word conversations I had on my 20th birthday. Ten years previous to that I was ten years old and have no idea whatsoever what was going on then. Well, I'm sure plastic cars, musical chairs and jelly were involved somewhere along the line, but details are scarce. The speed that the decade between 20 and 30 has passed compared to 10 to 20 is plain terrifying. And it's only getting faster with each year. So, before I know it, I'll be dead. And so will you.

I know all this metaphysical angst is based on the fact we have evolved ten lumps on the ends or our hands, and, after all it's just a number. But of course, I would say that, I'm the one whose 30.

Still, whether you like it or not the transition from being 29 to being 30 inherently brings with it a certain amount of reflection. Where you've been, where you are and where you're going. Looking back over the trials, tribulations and other clichés of the past 520 weeks I came to the realisation that the decade could be broken down thus: 20-25 stoned, 25-30 pissed. There, simple as that.

Now, it doesn't take an expert in the analysis of statistics to tell you that those aren't the strongest foundations to be building an adult life on. The brief months of abstinence I forced upon myself over the last few years brought with them incredible bursts of creative vision and clarity. Ones that were just as easily washed away with ten cans of Kronenberg and ten Camel Lights soon after. I finally came to the grim and inevitable realisation that if I wanted to accomplish anything in this brief glimpse of light between to planes on infinite darkness (beyond lung cancer, cirrhosis of the liver and sending the owners of off-licenses all over North London on luxury cruises) then I was going to have to clean up.

Having a month off the booze, or whatever your poison of choice is, can be a strengthening experience - one that cleanses the mind, body and spirit. It provides a glimpse into the toxin-free world you once inhabited under the age of 16. But that world can be a disturbing place filled with demons of lost hope, forgotten dreams, deflated ambition and wasted potential. After about four weeks, a clear tilt at the world and the realisation of all we could do if we just actually, well, tried becomes a little too much to take. The impending welcome relief of an alcohol soaked brain, tar stained lungs, stranger kissed lips and a kebab filled belly are too much to resist and the whole messy thing kicks into gear again. And again. And again.

After a few years of this binge/purge nonsense I decided to listen to the part of my brain that hadn't been killed off by strong booze and cheap weed and confront that lost teenage world of ideas and possibilities, but now with the ageing mind of someone far less interested in Northern Uproar.

It seemed a good idea to start to clear the poisonous fog of the past fourteen years by returning to the world of a sixteen year old. Turning up at my now married ex-girlfriend's house seemed like a bad move as did re-applying for my Saturday job at McDonalds. So, as usual, I turned to the trusty musical world of strums, wails and beeps to help me get a bit of perspective. It was time to get reacquainted with my nascent teenage record collection. This would surely give me some respite from the pressures of the world of adulthood and help me make the first few steps on the path to finally accepting responsibility and hopefully even explain where I went wrong.

Whilst both body and mind were writhing, spitting and twitching with withdrawal, my weakened spirit was aching for a reason I had been poisoning myself for so very long. I assumed that my fertile teenage mind was responsible for all of this, and more so the musicians, writers and directors who were filling it up at the time. So, beginning at the beginning, I loaded up Definitely Maybe, skipped on to track eight and let the tape hiss of Cigarettes & Alcohol take me back to a time when consumption of both was technically illegal.

I wanted and waited to experience some kind of revelation, some exposed root reason of why I'd not been arsed to be arsed for all these years. But, try as I might, I couldn't blame Noel Gallagher. No matter how many times his brother mentioned living for fags and booze and dropping out with white powder, the one overriding message of that record is "you've got to make it happen." Which I hadn't.

With Noel and Liam surprisingly off the hook, it was time to delve a little deeper. What other bands had forced me to drink, smoke and take drugs? The drummer from the 60ft Dolls was a piss-head - wasn't that why I was? Surely Rick Witter's 40 a day habit had made me smoke? The Stone Roses' love of dope surely made it fine for me to do the same? But, dredging through the hit-list of virtually every band that passed through the doors of the Manchester Academy in the mid 1990s only served to show me how many terrible acts were around then. Maybe I did turn to the numbing power of booze halfway through that Cast gig. But that felt like a cop out. Nothing felt right. Something was missing and it wasn't a plastic glass of warm Fosters and an Embassy Number 1. The past suddenly felt like The Past; something distant and different. That foreign country L P Hartley talked about.

The bridge to my youth wasn't there any more. So where was it? Had it really rotted away under the piss created by 873,000 pints of strong lager? I couldn't blame musicians; I couldn't blame Irvine Welsh, Danny Boyle or Chris Evans. There was only one person I could blame, and that was me. And in that sobering moment of realisation, one thing became abundantly clear. I had, finally, grown up.