Music shops

There's a great film called 'Dogma', which features Alan Rickman playing the 'Metatron' (the voice of God, if I remember correctly). As an angel, the Metatron is unable to swallow alcohol, so he has to take a mouthful, savour it, and then spit it out.

In a strange way that I'm not going to try and explain - in case the analogy doesn't hold - this is what music shops are like for me. I find them exciting and arousing. They make me want to pick things up, to play them, to buy them and take them home. But I'm not a musician.

This hasn't stopped me buying, over the years: a radio microphone; a guitar; an amplifier; a compressor; two digital effects units; a keyboard; a four-track recorder; and a sequencer. Some of these, admittedly, were to facilitate recordings by a nameless band that I was in that wrote eight or nine songs that no one liked* (except, thankfully, us).

But for the most part, the purchases were manifestations of a desire to be a musician that didn't actually extend to including the patience and work required to learn an instrument. After thirty years I can (just about) play Talking Heads' 'Heaven' and Nick Cave's 'The Ship Song' on the guitar. And I've been able to play those for years.

I'm pleased to say, though, that all of my children bar one are excellent musicians (and the one was good but didn't like her piano teacher). Between five of them, they play thirteen different instruments. Abi has, quite recently, taken up the saxophone and shown a real flair for it and today she and I went down to Morecambe to buy her some reeds.

As soon as we walked into the shop - the intoxicating Promenade music - I was consumed once again by a vague and unfocussed yet powerful desire to possess the instruments. While Abi explained to the chap who served us exactly she wanted, my eyes roamed the store, enviously taking in the handful of people trying out different items of musical equipment.

In the end, the only pale satisfaction I could take from the visit was this photo of some guitars in the hope that they might appeal to Ash and Manse, two friends of mine who are talented guitarists and have every justification for their own large guitar collections. (And, I suspect, I haven't got this choice of photo quite right as they are both electric guitar players.)

*This might sound like false modesty but Bob, an unflinchingly supportive friend of mine, said that the song that I sent him to listen to sounded like I was singing the vocal to a different song over the top of it. And I'd sent him the one I thought he was most likely to enjoy :-/