Brierly Hill 90210

In 1987, I moved from my parents in the sleepy Cotswold Hills into a rented three-bedroom house in the sprawling metropolis of Cheltenham Spa. I wasn't earning much money but I found enough for beer, records, cigarettes, gigs, sausage & chips and watching the non-league football of Cheltenham Town. We even scraped enough loose change together for the band to record a couple of sessions in the studio. A personal highlight was meeting this gentleman at the bar at one of his gigs...

I was 19 as 1986 began. Technically an adult, drinking in pubs and even had my own car; a 1968 Mini Clubman estate, blue with fake wood side panels. I still lived with my parents even though my YTS placement had turned into a full-time job, albeit a very low paying one. I worked alternate weeks on a night-shift until 11pm but that was OK, I listened to Janice Long and John Peel while I worked, writing down what caught my ear to buy at the weekend. When not working, evenings were spent rehearsing with the band, down one of the local village pubs and, at weekends, Chedworth discos! The idyllic life of a teenage Gloucestershire country bumkin!

Stephen King said that, if you want to be writer you must do two things; read a lot and write a lot. The same is true with music. Any budding musician must listen to a lot of music. I'd been playing in a band for a few years but we weren't very good. Zero-talent Madness wannabes if truth be told. But, in 1985, from listening to so much new, good music, something clicked. Stripped down to just the two of us and a drum-machine, we found our own sound that we liked. Nobody else seemed to care for it much, but we really didn't care.

I had left school in the summer of 1983, a year early and to the disappointment of many, not going onto university. Instead, I became a “Computer Room Operator” for a replacement door and window manufacturer in Cheltenham, earning the princely sum of 25-pounds a week on the Youth Training Scheme. I was still living with my parents (apart from a brief period of roughing it in an old farm-house) and 25-pounds seemed like a fortune. I was absorbing new music like a sponge and could have spent nearly all of my income on records and beer each week. And I did.

At the start of 1983, I was 16. Still too young-looking to get served in pubs and, to be honest, I wasn't that interested in it anyway. I'd stayed on at school with the intention of completing some A-levels and heading off to college. But by Jan '83, that was a plan that was already looking a little iffy. I was starting to drift and loose focus... except on what was in the NME and what John Peel would be playing that week.

When someone asked John Peel what the best year for music was, he said “this one”. I've been recording a podcast focused on new music for 15 years so I understand and agree with that sentiment. But, if pushed, I would choose 1982 and, it's interesting... I would be wrong! 1982 was a significant year for me musically because it was when I started listening to the John Peel radio show and broadened my musical horizons. I'd been listening to late night radio for a while, with head and radio under the covers so that my parents couldn't hear. I'd tried Peel's Radio 1 show but found it too frightening. I preferred the satirical humor and radio theatre of Radio 2 and Radio 4. But in 1982 I realized what a terrible mistake I'd made and the likes of the Farmers Boys, The Higsons and the Cocteau Twins were to be cherished, not to be frightened of. But in compiling this episode, I realize, sure... that's when it started. But it was the discovery of the Festive Fifty at Christmas time (when Peel's listeners voted for the

In some ways, 1981 was the last year of my childhood. I started 5th form so it was the last year of school for some of my friends. They would be going out to the real world while, though I didn't know it at the time, I had only one more year of school to go. 1981 was also the last year when my world of music was centered almost exclusively on what was in the charts. A group of us started keeping a tally of the records we played at home and totaled them into our own chart each week. Madness was number one most weeks as I recall. Happy days...

As a teenager in the Gloucestershire countryside, financial opportunities were few and far between. The only way to indulge my fledgling love of music was to buy a handful of 7” singles a year with saved up birthday and Christmas money. The cheaper alternative was to record songs to cassette tape from the radio. The Sunday night chart show was essential listening, with finger poised over the record button should something good come on, hoping the DJ wouldn't talk over it. That would have been Tony Blackburn in 1980. Or, if you were lucky enough to have a whole tape spare, you'd record the entire show and pour over it afterwards. Music was a valued distraction from “the troubles” and “Thatchers Britain” that seemed to take up most of the time on grown-up TV. Meanwhile I tried to find something to fill that last 3-minutes of side 1 on my latest C-60.

I became a teenager in 1979 and my passage to manhood was marked by switching my weekly comic subscription from Beano to The Crunch while still deciding if the world was better served by Match or Shoot magazines. Almost passing unnoticed to the young Miller, punk rock moved aside to make way for post-punk and new wave. Nobody knew what that meant then and nobody knows now. As happens most Januaries, the year started in winter. But 1979 started with a winter of discontent.

In 1978, James Callaghan was Prime Minister of Great Britain while leader of the opposition, Margaret Thatcher, hovered in the wings. The brutal Khmer Rouge regime led Cambodia under leader Pol Pot. But in the sheltered world of the Gloucestershire countryside, I was 11 and, at the turn of the year, had been at “the big school” for 6 months. I was becoming aware of the importance of music and that it gave me an identity that was more than just “child of my parents”. Unfortunately, as I would only learn later in life, my choices in music did not mark me out as “one of the cool kids”. See if you can spot which music I liked at the time and what I learnt to love later in life. Musically, the year started with an ending...

This series rediscovers a period of music and the news, TV and other sounds that formed a back-drop to it. Each new episode will continue the chronological series, building onto a story that is both personal and global. But why start with 1977? Two reasons really... First of all, I turned 11 in 1977, left Northleach CofE Primary School and started Westwoods Grammar School in September of that year. I made friends there that I discovered and created music with. Secondly, 1976 ended with an event that may seem insignificant and irrelevant. London families were settling down for their tea in-front of early-evening regional television when something unimaginable happened...