Not meaning to sound awkward but music is both to me. If I can't listen to some music at least daily I go a bit potty, always been that way. I need at least a song at volume to enable me to escape. It's pressure valve time for me. Not always because of any particular pressure, but still needed. But it's also excitement, jump and down time and grin from ear to ear time, all the 'shallow' stuff.

Additionally, having been some sort of musician since I was in my early teens I find it really hard not to make music too. Since I moved out to the West Country with my new family and a very long commute the time to make music has diminished greatly. If cash was..freer I would buy a nice little laptop that could handle music making so I could do it on the train. My antique laptop won't do it!

But that too whilst being compulsion and pressure valve is also fun, especially since I've stopped trying to make money from it.

and it is often poppy, light, happy and tuneful.

Then there is stuff I love which gets under my skin and in my senses. It's harder to define why I love it and the stuff I love is definitely a broader spectrum of types and style than the stuff I "only" like.

... I couldn't go a day without music. However now that I am cohabiting, I find that if Mrs G is home before me then sadly the television is on, and as my ipod is buggered and I can't afford a new one, there have been many music free days recently (not through choice).

So I have discovered that music is not the all consuming passion that it used to be. At least not now. Perhaps when I can ipod again it will be. But perhaps not if all the "new" music I hear is actually old music which is unfamiliar.

However a day without reading something? Unthinkable. I do know that that is something I'd go noisily insane about. Oddly enough, I can't remember the last time I had a day without hearing the news either.

but it tends to be the same music I've always loved, with a few newer additions.
I'm still happiest listening to The Band, Dylan, Little Feat, Elvis, Elton, Clapton etc.
I'm not deliberately blinkered but I just don't get crazy excited about new, new and more new.
I should read Mojo really. Got fed up with it.

and continues to do so.

It's helped me to become part of a group, get over a break up, fall in love, dance, get over a bad working day, relax, remember people that have passed away, feel wanted, have great sex, stand in front of a dancefloor filled with hundreds of people who hung on every record I played.

The list is pretty endless and that's why I love it. There is no situation where I can't find a song that doesn't fit the mood or situation exactly.

I would hate for their to be a reason at all, actually. It just is.

I'm always just grabbed by a melody, groove or lyric. Or a mixture of all three. I try not to take it too seriously, and avoid getting bogged down by genre or credibility. I will happily listen to Cher Lloyd's single (sample lyric: 'I feel like I'm on top of the world with your love') followed by The Fall's Greenway (sample lyric: 'I had to wank off the cat to feed the fucking dog').

Think I'm in both camps. Music is certainly part of my every day. I love a great pop song that comes careering out of the radio just as much as I love catching a distant Nick Drake song on a tv soundtrack. And then, bang! something will catch me unawares, caress my very soul and I become a blubbering wreck. Music also defines my relationship with my late parents. As I said on the Gretchen Peters post I can't listen to Bus To St. Cloud without thinking of my mum and smiling (and then going to pieces). Bob, don't sweat it. Both camps are equally valid and I suspect there are more people on this 'ere blog who like the 'irritating surface bit' than you might think. They're just not as vocal.

Is that it enhances the articulation of feelings and has often helped me to understand - or at least put a label on emotions when words have failed me. Given the practicalitiea of being a working family man i fear I may have lost some of my passion for it, but the love is always there: dependable, undiminished.

It's also still bloody great fun and playing music with others is always uplifting.

You're more passionate about the things you like and dont like than a lot of people on here. You're not just a spectator in this really are you? :)

...was my first love
And it will be my last
Music of the future
And music of the past

To live without my music
Would be impossible to do
In this world of troubles
My music pulls me through

Oh, go on, someone had to do it, didn't they?

You're more passionate about the things you like and dont like than a lot of people on here. You're not just a spectator in this really are you? :)

earlier post. I can't play any sort of musical instrument, and my singing is questionable, but once upon a time I was really in to music, and had to have some playing all the time. And then I married Mrs P, who, bless her cotton socks, has many admirable qualities, but an appreciation of music isn't one of them. So, we don't have music on in the house, and it tends to be switched to a talk channel on the car radio, and consequemtly, music has faded into my background. Just occassionally, I'll indulge in my old hobby of listening to something but it's a rare thing.

When I was a teen, music was so important. My music let the world know how I fitted in and how I wanted to stand out. I was a missionary, bringing my King Crimson Discipline album to parties, trying to convince the headbangers that this was what guitars should do and trying to convince the girls that my John Foxx collection was the missing link between Bowie and the New Romantics they loved. Very few converts to either belief.

Then when I started to go to gigs; Aztec Camera - McGonagles, Dublin September '83, it changed again. I wanted to play music and started to appreciate the talent and artistry more. NEw Order, Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen, Waterboys - I went to see all sorts of music especially when I moved to London and I found that I loved things like funk, African guitar, LOUD music like the Fatima Mansions and That Petrol Emotion. I also learnt to enjoy the personalities of artists through their lyrics and their live appearances - from Jonathan Richman to Momus to Lyle Lovett to Edwyn Collins.

I kept playing music and in hindsight am delighted I never really tried to "make it", or even inflict my creations on the world. That way it has always remained fun to play, always rewarding. The world wasn't ready for Gothfunk anyway!

I still go to gigs and I still have a guitar to hand at home and play a little every day, maybe while watching the news and even after all the years of playing, I'm still not that good.

Nowadays, music is a soundtrack. I have it on in the car, in the office at home at least 50% of my waking hours. Usually it's the mp3 player on shuffle - like having a radio station that only plays stuff you like. Still buying lots of new stuff and listening out for new bands. It's not so often when something registers as outstanding but it still happens and I think there's still lots of great stuff to discover. I don't feel like ramming it down anyone's throat anymore but that's age appropriate isn't it?

who travelled around the country every 2 or 3 years either moving to yet another new house or trailing behind my surveyor father into some of the remotest corners of our beautiful countryside, music sound-tracked the rhythms and experiences of my life; from the urban sprawl of North London to the boundless horizon of the Outer Hebrides and pretty much every vista in between.

Music helped me make sense of who I was, where I was and what I had to accommodate to 'fit in' to a seemingly endless journey of new surroundings. It provided a virtual continuity in the absence of a physical one. I suppose music became part of an internal dialogue, an abstract companion that spoke a private and secret language and which filled one half of the void of idiosyncratic behaviour that would have been shared with a brother, sister or long-standing friend and would, maybe in time, have worked through my system. I never played with other 'only childs' and was always drawn to kids with big families. And their older brother's/sister's record collection.

I often think that music was the glue that stuck the neurons together in my brain and opened my mind up to new possibilities and different perspectives that a more conventional or rooted upbringing would have sidestepped or overlooked. It doesn't make me special but my relationship to music is as a result. I can get very odd about music, even just a brief snippet and I forget myself in the company of people and then return to the conversation moments later with some unrelated comment that has been triggered by what I've heard. It's a curse sometimes but more often than not it's been a blessing.

if we're restricting this to 'popular' music as roughly defined by the majority of posts on this site then I have often found and continue to find both high art and visceral joy.

Just don't want to since I love it and find it fascinating as a subject. To me it's equal as an art form to any other, though seriousness about it is likely to be undermined by it's regular absurdity and silly/daft aspect, which makes it all the more lovable and more engaging than some other more supposed 'highbrow' art forms. The characters involved are great to read about since they regularly act very badly. It's not a 'lifeline' though. I reckon most of us here find it both fun and worth treating seriously at times, otherwise we'd most likely not bother to get on our high horses in these parts or be here at all.

I can't play anything; my singing is rotten; I don't know what an arpeggio is or (as was repeatedly referred to with no explanation in this month's issue) a root note; my spectrum of interest seems relatively narrow compared to most on here (I know nothing about classical and jazz, very little about hip hop).

All I know is that I love the music I love, and I love finding new music to love. It's not fairylights - it's more like my own personal lighting rig, shining on and adding appropriate effects to whatever I'm doing, be that moping in my room to Radiohead after a break-up or dancing around the kitchen with my daughter to CeeLo. Without a doubt it has added a fundamental element to my life that would otherwise not exist: my first Glastonbury and the friendships and lifestyle that led to; the gig my wife and I went to the first month we met; the mixtapes and Cds I've made for people I've cared for.

Do I need it? No. I could live without it fine, but I'm glad I have it.
Do I have to be able to bounce to it? No - I just need to enjoy it in some way. Even a really gloomy way.
Do I only like the surface stuff? Um...possibly. I'm not certain what that is. I certainly don't enjoy it technically like my musician friends do; not in the same way I savour great books.
Am I rambling too? Yep...

I think part of this is about intensity and passion, as opposed to music per se.

Bob, you not only write on this blog displaying huge enthusiasm (or otherwise!) and musical knowledge, you also play and record your own (terrific) material, and you compare music to something beautiful and life-affirming.

I think that means you have quite an 'intense' relationship with it, but it doesn't seem so because it doesn't feel exhausting or like a chore - in the way that liking only cool stuff was, back in the day.

For me, music is an obsession because it ticks all my boxes. I'm a musician, so I like listening to the parts and trying to hear what all the players are doing. I'm a collector-nerd, so I love having a record collection. And I suppose I'm a bit a frustrated creative (I write for a living, but financial/corporate stuff) so writing and playing somgs gives me that vital outlet.

So I don't think I could do without it, no.

I don't think anyone truly knows, which is why so much music writing is about the ephemera surrounding it rather than what it sound like or how it makes us feel. I guess to find out you'd have to look at the reasons why you got into music in the first place.

As an only child growing up in a reasonably big house in the middle of nowhere, I think I just used music to fill the spaces. Although I've never felt that I need it, I soon get uncomfortable if in an entirely silent environment by myself.

What is a little different, is that I very rarely go to gigs, nor do I often feel the inclination to. I'm not sure why this is; it could be that I don't want to "share" my favourite artists and songs with strangers. As much as I adore music, I only talk about it at length with people who I know well (or on the internet, it would seem). Perhaps it's a way of avoiding ridicule, or, if ridicule is forthcoming, it's from someone on a computer, so I don't lose face.

Like football, it also appears to the part of me that fixates on facts and figures. When I first discovered the Guinness Book of Hit Singles, I read it cover to cover as if it were a novel. I love the trivia surrounding pop music and I find unusual patterns on the singles chart riveting. Every Monday, Music Week publish an analysis of the week's charts, featuring comparative statistics and sales figures. I think that would be my ideal job.

But the strongest reason of all is that indescribable feeling that a song can give you when it really resonates with your time, place and situation, that defies all logic and science. The fact that there are infinitely many more of those moments to be discovered means my love for music will never fade and I'll always be looking to discover records that I've never heard before.

...like the other four elements, it's just there - always, if not from an external source, then from the internal iPod. I grew up - well, grew bigger, anyway - in the '50s and I've posted here about the first record that blew me away (Little Richard's The Girl Can't Help It). After that it was Elvis and Buddy Holly but by the time the '50s clicked over into the early '60s, I was more than a little taken by Chess R & B and blues and listened to little else. The problem, of course, was finding it; Luxembourg didn't play it much but AFN was better. Another problem was that no one else was remotely interested; not my parents or my sister, while friends disdained it. So it was a solitary pursuit not helped by my disdain for most British music, a disdain that grew to embrace Motown and most pop. I would only listen to American material, particularly after discovering The Perfumed Garden and Beefheart et al.

I stopped proselytising when I realised that no one cared much, or not nearly as much as me, anyway, and seeing friends' eyes glaze over was depressing. Things didn't change much until I met my magnetic north in 2003 - a woman who has opened me up to all kinds of new influences and shares (some of) my love for my enduring passions - but not jazz or modern classical such as Reich, Adams, Riley and Glass. I guess we are both ultra-critical and both need music as a constant; from our collections, from 6 Music or wherever. I can't imagine this changing; nor can I imagine my love of art, design, architecture and motorcycles, all of which come close to music in absorbing me, changing much either. It can move me to tears, to laughter, to making the hairs on my neck stand up

I would give up most things and most people before I could do without my music. It's just the way I am. I would challenge any friends to talk about me for more than 60 seconds without mentioning music.

the music in me.

I have come to the conclusion that music is an anti-depressant for me. If I go any time without it I begin to feel low. Interestingly, it doesn't matter much what it is. Even current Top 40 dreck does the trick, though I prefer "good stuff" (discuss).

beats thinking about how shit life is every time. Then every once in a while you hear something new or something you've forgotten (Kings of the Wild Frontier currently, fuck it's fun and exciting) and you realise that it is something that just holds everything together somehow. I could live without it of course but I absolutely wouldn't want to.

Music is there all the time. I have had no telly for 10 years now, so it's all music. As soon as I get up / come home, the stereo is on and it's playing something of my choice, and I've got plenty of choice racked around the room. And when I'm not at home, there's always music going on in my head, prompted by the world around me, road signs, conversations, headlines which might trigger a lyric. That and eating are the two things which I can always multitask with something else. I'm whistling or singing (not necessarily out loud) as I'm travelling, waiting, working. I've tried to work out whether I am sometimes multitasking the music in my head and that I have more than one tune going on at the same time, but maybe that's just a prog rock thing. So, stitched through the fabric of my life? Definitely.

My annual calendar is anchored by festivals and punctuated elsewhere by a lot of live music. Deep? Shallow? I don't recognise the distinction, though I know that my educators and family would say my tastes were shallow, while my friends would say, No, he's in deep. What I do know is that this week, I've had my head full of shit and anger from stuff at work, yet I've just come home from seeing the Halle play one Ravel Piano Concerto; I've got in and played the other concerto on CD and by the end of the first movement there was a massive Cheshire Cat grin on my face. It's the same joy whether it's Ravel, Joni, Supergrass or a really tight ceilidh band.

I am sure this joy is the equivalent of Bob's 'visceral', but it certainly doesn't have to make me want to dance. Simple? I'm not so sure. I don't play an instrument myself, but I know enough to understand just how much goes into making the wonderful stuff I consume by the bucketload, especially really decent vocals, and I have deep, deep respect for the people who bring it to me. So I don't see the music itself as simple, but my relationship with it is. I really don't have to try very hard to get off on it. There's no tough or difficult surface to break through. It's all there to be enjoyed in its mindboggling variety.

"It hasn't escaped my attention that my musical likes and dislikes aren't a perfect fit with the dominant tone of the blog"

You and me both Bob! But it doesn't really matter, and while there is a definite Classic rock/Roots vibe that predominates (blame the demographic and the Magazine we're attached to!) I'm often surprised when someone pops out of the woodwork and we end up talking about Autechre, Demdike Stare, Wire, Ghost Box, Swell Maps...I can bond with quite a lot of folk here over The Beach Boys, XTC, Prefab Sprout and 80s Chart Pop and all sorts. It's not all Bruce Springsteen and the (inexplicably lauded round these parts) Crowded House.

Music is a huge part of my life but it's not a soundtrack to everything. I can't go on a train or tram journey without the iPod, indeed I cannot leave the house without it. Mainly because a bit of a walk or a transport journey is such a great opportunity to immerse yourself in some music it's too good to waste.

However, working and generally doing stuff there is no music and sometimes the Sound of Silence is on heavy rotation. I'm not one for background music...I like to listen and I like music to be a treat rather than a constant thing.

I'm still very much on a quest for new stuff, partly because I have a regular DJ-ing gig and partly because I love seeing Live bands and there is nothing like catching a band who are just on their way up..way more fun than going to yet another revival or reformation.
At the back of my mind always is Peel, in his 40s at some gig by the latest Indie darlings, in an anorak a Band t-shirt and shorts. That's me that is. (minus the shorts...long trousers always).

To quote Billy Connolly: "Give me one in each hand and pour one over me". Billy was talking about something else (drinking, probably), but that's how I feel about music.

If I'm not listening to music, I'm reading about it, or talking to someone else about it (sometimes it's possible to do two of those things at the same time).

It's the oxygen that keeps me alive and I can't imagine any kind of life without it.

For example, I annoy the crap out of the GLW whan we're watching TV by naming the records playing in the background on, say, Coronation Street and then giving her chapter and verse on the band in question.

To repeat something I wrote on a different thread - music to me is art just as much as any other art form (like literature and painting)and all art I see as essentially just entertainment. Entertainment that can be difficult, challenging, moving and uplifting or just interesting and intriguing enough to give you a bit of a buzz each time you go back to it. It's an absorbing welcome distraction from the humdrum and maddening everyday world. Within every art form there are arguable important works and you can get pretty serious about it all if you want. Without it I think life would seem rather plain.

I actually think there are quite a few regulars with distinct ideas of music they love that does not fit with a supposed notion of a Massive preferred selection. Some with their 80s fixations, others with a more chart pop, bored with guitars slant and those for whom heaven is long, instrumental improvisation that would never trouble any conventional view of popularity. Then again some of us (the smart ones of course!) can enjoy all those things. Perhaps a sense of a 'dominant tone' is a bit of a myth.

I was thinking about this. Who actually is the perfect fit?

I suspect that my likes and dislikes are further from the dominant tone than yours, Bob: plenty of people here will support you in your love of Beyonce or Gaga; I think both are humdrum at best. I've been acutely conscious ever since my first post that I am at the more mainstream extreme of the spectrum here (though strangely, in the real world many people I know would consider me to have quite obscure tastes) in my acceptance of the likes of Coldplay and a general rose-tinted view of early 90's indie pop.

When I first discovered The Word I was amazed at the love for acts I'd always considered desperately middle of the road - Springsteen, Genesis, Pink Floyd. But loads of you love them, and - while you haven't converted me - I like the fact that you do. But is it YOUR tastes that set the tone?

Which of you can stand up and say "I am Word?". Or do we all feel that we're a bit left of centre?

I find that whether we like it, there is an inherent musicality to life.
Whether it be the clanking or hammering from builders, the humming of freezers, bird song or the sound of the sea, there is something inherently soothing about sound in the world, whether that be intentional man made music or not.

Tom Waits on writing at the start of his career said: "I started writing down people's conversations as they sat around the bar. When I put them together I found some music hiding in there." In an interview for Anti- Records, he lists a number of his favourite sounds, many of them, such as "hungry crows" and "mockingbirds" are from nature. A list that he follows up with the sage words that "The world’s making music all the time."

There is musicality in the poetry of words, a rhythm can be produced, music emanating from within. Even if we can't necessarily play instruments or sing, I would say that all of us have a fundamental understanding of the rhythm of sound and words, some of us just have the ability to arrange the two elements better than others.

Waits again: “I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”

Music enhances feelings already in place, as Vorgongod mentioned above. Whether that be some late night wine and jazz, Sunday morning warm folk, a party atmosphere with beats, music evokes what is already there but can express it in such a way that, to me, listening to nothing, or worse - Radio 4, ever could. Things such as Sigur Ros' "Heima" recordings evoke a sense of nostalgia and longing for a place I've never been to, the Asylum years of Tom Waits conjure images of rain-sodden streets and late night eateries in a downtown America, that again, I've never visited. Whether it be the deep South inducing tones of Leadbelly or Nina Simone, chanson of Edith Piaf or the Brooklynite street poetry of Jay-Z or Mos Def, music can take you places, bring you back to home, make you dance, make you cry, make you think, or in the case of Rick Wakeman, make you laugh. It's a fundamental part of my life, a life I feel is all the richer for it.

But on the other hand? Does my taste get reflected by the Massive? Usually no, but does it matter? No. My relationship with music is just that - my relationship. For those who choose (or have) to go without music, good luck to you, but for me, it's just not an option any more.

(burp) but a thought or two, for now:

Bob, I wonder if a small part of you isn't reacting against your past construct of yourself as a "music nerd"? I think you care a great deal about music, and life. I wish I could summon a tenth of your passion (and eloquence).

As a teen, I was unbelievably intense, dogmatic, snobbish, and fixated regarding the music I listened to, which I inevitably saw as my possession - something of mine that my family and the outside world couldn't touch, steal or own. I was that troubled boy, obsessing over the Doors or the VU, listening over and over to "The End" or "Heroin" in a darkened room.

Gradually, I grew away from that. Now, I find, to my surprise, that I genuinely don't care too much whether I listen to music or not. At the same time, it matters more and more to sing, play and watch other people singing/playing. Like Vorgongod, I love the experience of doing that communally, far more than hearing new music, listening to classics, whatever.

I also find that music is less and less about anything other than pure feeling for me - whether it's the simple joy of a silly 70s bubblegum hit like (say) "Daddy Cool" by Boney M, the quiet, oddly unsettling, detachment of Nick Drake's "River Man", or the furious blast furnace roar of Husker Du's "New Day Rising".

I don't care too much how it makes me feel, as long as it *does* make me feel.

Also, having been through the mill of depression, therapy and all that boring crap, I've started to understand that music is also a refuge, a comforting hand on my shoulder. It helps to get me through the day.

Aaahh... this was going to be such a succinct, pithy, post.... Enough already.

My father was a classical musician, from him I got a love of classical music and opera, and also jazz and some folk music from around the world that he brought home when he'd been on tour.
My mother loved the theatre and besides all the straight dramatic plays and comedies that she took me to she would also take me to see musicals and light operas every year growing up, just the two of us, singing the showstopper on the way home.
I had two much older sisters who left behind their albums from the 60's when they moved from home. They also brought home boyfriends from all over the world, and their music with them.
The radio in Sweden in the 70's when I was growing up (before commercial radio stations were allowed) was very varied, and I would carry around a small transistor radio everywhere. Music from every decade since the invention of sound recording was being played in a gigantic shuffle of the complete music archive it seemed.
And there were specialist shows for every known genre in existence, teaching me to appreciate some really odd stuff.
My brother wasn't really interested in modern popular music, but when he started studying music he and his new friends would introduce me to arty stuff and proggy noodlings.
Meanwhile I was growing up with new musical styles evolving all the time. From glam to disco to punk to hip hop to new wave to indie to...well, you were there. All kinds of interesting music to follow from beginning to, in some cases, the end.
I started reading music magazines. Schlager, Smash Hits, Pop, Bibel, the Word. And books about music. The writers who could make me feel their own enthusiasm for the artists they were writing about inspired me to buy and try music of very different kinds.
(For a while I also wrote music of my own, until other interests took over. The music I wrote was very odd, perhaps the result of an infinite and eclectic input. They definitely didn't sound like ordinary pop songs...but I guess my lack of training in how to play musical instruments had a hand in that as well!)

All of it gave me a very open mind towards music. I'll give anything a go.
Just give me a great rhythm, a beautiful heartbreaking melody or an injection of raw energy. I'll like it. No, I'll love it.
Any genre is welcome, old or new, obscure or top of the chart.

I love the chase. Finding new music that you never knew about and feeling that first passionate love that makes you play the same song over and over again for weeks.
I also love the long term relationship with music. That album you fell head over heels in love with as a teenager, how has your feelings changed during the following years ? Maybe you don't listen to it for twenty years and fall in love all over again when you hear it again by chance. Another album stays with you, always, but in your forties you start to love other songs than you did in your twenties. That song you always used to skip, suddenly it comes up on shuffle and you're blown away by its beauty. You sit down and listen to the album with fresh ears and hear a completely different album!

Could I live without it ? Why would I want to ?
No, I couldn't. But I do enjoy silence as well...in moderation!

I can do without drink, I gave up fags 8 years ago but I couldnt possibly give up music nor would I want to. It has been there through the birth of my kids, the divorce from my first wife, my relationships with all of my girlfriends and the love of my life. It has helped me when I have lost loved ones, it unwinds me when I have had a shit day at work. For me it is pretty indispensible. I have few friends who understand my obsession and certainly my wife thinks I am far too intense about it but humours me and allows me to pursue the passion I guess because it is less threatening than a mistress!! My affection for this site is because by and large I am corresponding with like minded individuals. We must all be of a similar mind which is why the mingles are so well attended. I love football but couldnt for one minute consider meeting with a bunch of football fans in a pub - good thing about music is it is not tribal and welcomes all.I would be much more interested in talking to someone who loves music but none of the stuff that I like than someone who is not remotely interested in music.

Neither is the adition of salt to food. But, as the addition of salt makes food more palatable, so the addition of music makes life more enjoyable.

about three or four times a year. For example in November and December I listened pretty much daily - every commute, washing the pots etc was soundtracked by music. It was largely discoveries made here, or two steps removed from here, from Cher Lloyd, to Concrete Blonde, to Battles, to Holy Fuck.
This month, January, nothing. Podcasts or audiobooks only. Non music podcasts at that. Listened to a couple of youtube clips and that's it. No idea why.
Could I live without music? Quite probably. Don't think I could live without any form of aural entertainment at all, though.