Via The Magnetic Fields email list, I came across Alistair Fitchett. Via Alistair, I came across his Tangents webzine. And via Tangents, I came across The Aisler's Set.
After that the timeline gets a little concertinaed. I thought I bought the CD on the strength of Alistair's writing and recommendation alone, but my records say I bought it on 5 April 2001. Meanwhile The Aisler's Set's Peel Session was broadcast on 1 April (or was that the date it was recorded?*) — I have a minidisc recording of it somewhere, but I'll never find it. (Could it be on one of the tens of unmarked discs? Or might it be on one of the ones with helpful markings like "Lift to Experience etc" or "Peel stuff"? Despite promising myself every few years to work through this nearly-decade-old backlog, I doubt I shall do so before Music Arcades is over.) And I dragged Tim along to see them play at the Casbah (now defunct) in Sheffield on 4 April 2001. So it looks like a little more research went into the purchase.
I know I bought it from Forever Changes (now defunct) on Ecclesall Road. I would have got an approving nod from the proprietor — indeed we must have discussed the gig of the night before since he would certainly have been there. (I'm pretty sure I saw him at The Clientele's gig in Kilburn ten days ago, and, had I got close enough to have a word, I would have asked, "'ey up, aren't you the bloke that used to run Forever Changes?" but I didn't, so it's just a scurrilous rumour I'm starting.)
A month and a half later, I found myself in San Francisco — home of The Aisler's Set — for five days, staying in a hotel on (I think) Van Ness and Chestnut. Each morning I would buy a copy of the Chronicle from one of those street-vending stacks, and walk up the steep four blocks to get an espresso in the cafe of the San Francisco Art Institute. Just about every student I saw there looked like they might have been in the band. Lovely spot.
The minidisc playlist combined album and Peel Session, and over the next couple of months it became a bit of a favourite — especially the album's title track and a new song, Mission Bells, from the session. I may be imagining this, but going back to The Clientele, I've always thought there are a couple of bars in Since K Got Over Me, between the second and third lines of the chorus, that quote from Hit the Snow.
…
[Later that day]
OK, I had another rifle through the minidiscs, and struck lucky, finding one with "Aislers Set" written on the spine — bit of a giveaway, that. Turns out, not only does it have the album and session, but also four or five distinctly bootleg-quality songs from the Casbah gig. At the end of one of the session songs, Uncle John offers one of his classic summing-up-for-the-jury opinions,
If you were in one of your difficult moods, you could probably argue that there are lots of bands making that sort of noise, particularly in the United States of America. And you'd say, "Well why are Aisler's Set better than any of the others?" And I'd have to say, "Well, I don't really know, they just sort of are."
Quite so, m'lud.
One more thing. When I got the CD I saw Alistair Fitchett had actually written the sleeve notes, at least for the UK release on Fortuna Pop. He starts with a more impressionistic account of the first time he heard the band referenced earlier, mixing it up with the artists' work he has seen the same day in the Bilbao Guggenheim. It's a tremendously evocative portrait of the moment of discovery. If you know Alistair's work, or that of the writers he links to on his blog, you may wonder why I bother at all. Probably not as often as I do.
My justification, if justification were needed (it's only a blog FFS; self-indulgent intent is a given), is that I'm doing something different from music writing. Never been a music writer, never aspired to be one. Yeah, there were those two essays that got me mentioned in a Neil Young biography, but that was twenty years ago, and just a few thousand words. No, my intent is not to add to, or guide, anyone's appreciation of music. I'm just documenting the quotidian detail of how music-as-stuff got acquired, collected, curated, forgotten, re-evaluated and woven into memories and relationships at the fag end of the 20th century and turn of the 21st. Like I'm a participant observer in some ethnographic study, handing over my fieldnotes. If it all comes across as a little pedestrian and unimaginative, well, that's because it is! Poets don't always make the best researchers.
* When reading out the tour dates, John Peel doesn't mention any before 11 April, which kind of suggests the Casbah gig was before the broadcast of the session. The session comes first on my minidisc, but tracks are easily moved on those discs and I probably wanted to keep the decent quality stuff nearer the front.
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