I was listening to an unofficial French double album of Camel’s live performances from 1972 and 1974 and I absolutely loved it. Sometimes I forget how good a band is, especially one that I listened a lot to a long time ago.
Anyway, I was thinking while listening to ‘Homage To The God Of Light’ which was recorded live at the Marquee in October 1974 that, my God, this is 50 years old. 50... I don’t know about you but I couldn’t have conceived of 2024 when I was 13. It seemed impossibly distant. But here we are. It’s a very different world in many ways but it’s also remarkably similar. More similar than we could have imagined. Though try explaining the internet to your 13-year-old self.
And it got me thinking about what music would be played 50 years from now and I’m not sure there is any. I’m sure there’s some good music being recorded but it comes to the market as a disposable item. It streams in and you don’t feel anything about it as a product to make it stick the way it used to.
Even if it is new vinyl, it seems to lack permanence, it’s just another product. I think we’ve been rewired for disposability whereas I cannot explain just how much reverence I had for records in 1974. They were sort of magical and now, so many years later, they hold that sparkle and magic.
All those people who were at that Camel gig in 1974 will have felt part of an essentially youth culture which we can’t really appreciate now. The idea of my dad, in his early 50s at the time, going to see Camel is laughable. It was so alien to him, this, what he often called ‘bang bang noise.’ Now, music is transgenerational. Which is good in a way, but removes a specialness we felt as kids.
I’ve just made the decision to sell the remnants of my CD collection, including many box sets. This despite my hoarding tendencies. It’s a big thing in my life to do but I haven’t played a CD for at least 7 years. And even though many of these are hard to get now, if I don’t have them, I won’t miss them. This is the disposability gene in action. Did anyone ever really, really care about a CD? There’s something cold and inadequate about them for me.
The value to the industry of the old music so handsomely wrung out of us at least 3 times, now seems exhausted. For all the trumpeting about vinyl sales, they amount to about a month of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours sales alone, in the UK.
I think the lack of permanence is endemic in everything and we are the last generation to feel it is even worthwhile.
Sometimes I forget how good a band is...
