Rambling around the depths of my wardrobe yesterday afternoon, I was very pleased and delighted to find a Manic Street Preachers tour t-shirt from 1996. Even more pleased that the damn thing still actually fitted, so naturally wanted to give it an airing by wearing it out.

Now, the problem is, is it the "done thing" for a 38 year old man to wear a Motorcycle Emptiness t-shirt with the legend "Baby I'm Bored" on the back. Have to say, I'm nervous. To the untrained eye, it could look like an older guy trying to infiltrate the My Chemical Romance fan base and before you can say "Leader", I'd be assisting with enquiries...

Any other inappropriate t-shirts out there? Sadly and cruelly, my Inspirals Cool as F**k, no longer fits...

During a nostalgic finger through my dusty old vinyl collection whilst attempting to clean out the loft yesterday, I came across my copy of U2's War album. Just glancing at the credits on the back, I noticed that the backing singers used on a number of tracks were none other than...

...wait for it....

Kid Creole's Coconuts!

Which then span my mind into a rather brilliant surreal flip of Bono harmonising "Mama's baby's, Papa's maybe..."

I know the use of the Adriana and co was probably an Island records accounting practice BUT...in the glory days of the big record companies, this sort of practice must have been pretty common.

Anyone else have any examples of surrealistic backing crooning>?

I write this, my virgin blog entry, on the eve of my 38th birthday. I now, for the first time, actually feel old. Married, two children under 7, mortgage, an overweight sufferer of male pattern baldness and greying to boot....I've started to study malt whisky and Dylan session players in far too much detail than is generally healthy.....if single, I'd be a fabulous catch...

Anyhow...the reason for this entry...The musical bones in my body first started quivering at the age of 11 in the last year of junior school. As a kiddie, I'd liked and jived along to the hits of yesteryear (Killer Queen, Tiger Feet, Blockbuster, Bennie and the Jets were, my Mum tells me were particular favourites!) but music was no more than background noise; the radio playing in the living room as my Dad swore at a particular nasty piece of MFI joinery or as my Mum prepared our dinner whilst I flicked through the latest Panini football album. Sometimes after I'd gone to bed, I'd hear my Dad put on his Cream, Zep and Bread albums at a really low volume so as not to wake me or my brother... all essentially background....

I was on a school journey (my very first week away from home) to Swanage and the whole 4th year were gathered round the tv on Thursday evening to watch Top of the Pops. Memories of the line up remain hazy but Madness was on doing either Grey Day or Cardiac Arrest but nothing matched the colour, sound and explosion of vibrancy of Adam and the Ants premiering the Stand and Deliver video. I mean, this was IT...like nothing I'd heard before, a huge adrenalin rush and the realisation that this music thing stirred things within me. Everything changed. Whilst I didn't consider myself either emotionally or physically mature, my interest in football wavered and for the rest of that last year at school, me and only one other person in our year (hello Sarah!) GOT music....she lent me Dirk Wears White Sox (don't listen to revisionist bullshit - it was bollocks then and it's bollocks now - I was suckered into buying the remastered version...) and I lent her Kings of the Wild Frontier and Journeys to Glory.

In the September of that year, I moved up to senior school. A whole new range of people, with different interests and tastes; more interested in music and more capable of verbalising that interest. There everything changed again and this is where I hit the crux of the blog...

I liked POP music. Music, I thought designed and written to appeal to 11 and 12 year olds like me! This is the time of the Ants, Madness, Duran Duran, Spandau etc....big, bright, loud pop - very visual, hammering differing senses. Through my love of the Ants, I hooked up with a guy called Ed, we again swapped records (Home Taping is Killing Music - don't do it kids - Skull and Crossbones on your Woolies inner sleeves!) he lent me Dare, I lent him Absolutely...eventually got round to visiting each others houses for tea...(I loved flicking through the record collections of anyone whose house I visited - still do - taking over laptops if required)

Aside from the Human League and Ants records, I was left frankly stunned by the records he had and listened to. And, just to verify, these were HIS records, not Dad's or Mum's and he listened to them and put them on tapes...this 11 year old had LA Woman, Station to Station, Scary Monsters, Yesterday and Today by The Beatles - the one with the Butchers cover (probably long since sold on eBay!), Hotel California, Never Mind the Bollocks, Blonde on Blonde and I remember this distinctly because it was played to me, fecking Joy Division- he looked at the cover of Unknown Pleasures in awe, I picked up the cover of Dare and looked at the lyric sheet and thought Suzanne Sulley would be a good girlfriend to have.

How the hell do you get that musically mature at the age of 11!!! I still can't fathom it - Just does not compute...Where is the joy and wonder...I didn't "get" Dylan until I was 32 - When I got into the Smiths at the age of 14, he dismissed them as derivative and hunkered back down to Lola vs Powerman....

As a 14 year old, I assumed 38 year old men were weaned off popular music (in a Logans Run type scenario) and sat in front of a top end spec record deck listening to Chamber Music nodding sagely or, if feeling frisky, a little bit of Mozart. Whereas today, amongst the Dylan, Bowie, Manics and Smiths back catalogues, I can still dig the poppier moments of Rihanna, Justin Timberlake and The Feeling.

I lost contact with Ed after I shipped out to university and he went to work in the local branch of Barclays (can't find him on Facebook or Friends Reunited either). Years later, as a student, I went back to some of those records he'd first played me with an older perspective and enjoyed them. Ed got me into Bowie, for which I'll always be forever grateful. I imagine Ed now as 6ft 5 curmudgeonly roadie for Take That, cursing pop music and demanding that Mark Owen listen to Van der Graaf Generator....