Intro. Talking Music, Eating Biscuits.

INTO THE MUSIC is a celebration of the pleasures of recorded music. We are building a series of audio montages for broadcast or podcast drawing on new written work, music and the sound of the town of Barrow In Furness and its people.

I'm John Hall, I'm the lead artist on this project, I work with narratives, text, archives and collections and recorded sound to tell stories. Here, we are looking at the role of music in our lives, in the grand narratives and the small, quiet moments. 
 We are looking at how music is received and experienced, how it has featured during different times in our lives, via radio, records shops, discos, downloads, pub jukeboxes and mixtapes and in the background noise of our everyday lives.

We will draw on personal and shared experiences of music, on its role as a soundtrack or an aid to memory, as a source of identity and as a means of comfort and connection...the way music gets into our sonic environment and into us, and the places it reaches.

I'm working with writer Geoff Cox and some members of MIND in Furness. We've been meeting every week for informal chats, recording conversations, making notes, getting a sense of each others experiences and tastes and working towards something that, while not a full stop in any way, will give a flavour of where each of us are now, and how music has helped to get us there.

The sessions so far have been great...Will, Neil, Arnie and Glenn are  smashing blokes to spend a couple of hours talking with. Music is really important to us all, and the talk is serious, funny, honest and always leaves you with a feeling of time well spent.

We began by asking for a short playlist from everyone...it could include the first music that we thought was ours, or something that's with us now...something that marked a point in time, something that got in and stayed there...

Arnie...Talk Talk: Life's What You Make It 
            REM: Electrolite
            Guns n Roses November Rain

Glenn   Happy Mondays; Wrote For Luck
             Talking Heads: Road To Nowhere
             Pixies; Where Is My Mind?

Will...   London Grammar; Strong
           Kodaline; All I Want
           U2: I Still Haven't Found What Im Looking For.

Geoff...Bob Dylan: Changing Of The Guard
            Counting Crows: Mrs Potters Lullaby
           Van Morrison; Astral Weeks.

Me     Beatles: This Boy
          Charles Penrose: The Laughing Policeman
          Simon And Garfunkel: Bookends

Neil    Gang Of Four: Damaged Goods
          Jethro Tull: Thick As a Brick LP
          Gentle Giant: Knots

We've talked about the sudden realisation that what you think of as "your"  music is actually  shared, how that can change your relationship with live music or  strengthen a bond with recorded versions...
What else...the atmosphere in record shops, the anticipation on entering a second hand record shop....the territorial nature of fandom, the emotional investment in a sound or a performer, the radio as a bridge or gatekeeper to an experience, or a discovery.


Our thanks to all at BarrowFull, Barrow's Creative People and Places Project....









              





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