News

The Wonder Of The Web

• 31st May 2010

We music fans are a little spoiled these days by the wonder of the world wide web. Sites like this one give us access to instant information on all of our favourite bands.

But it wasn’t always like this.

I first got into music as a teenager in the days when it was very difficult to find out what was happening in the musical world. The radio only played bland chart music, TV offered only Top of The Pops and later The Old Grey Whistle Test and the newspapers only ever covered the very biggest stories, like deaths or major splits.

The main sources of the latest news for us fans were the music papers: Sounds, the Melody Maker and the New Musical Express.

Every Thursday morning we would eagerly head for the newsagents on the way to school to pick up a copy of Sounds. It was the size of a tabloid newspaper but thicker. And we would eagerly scour the first few pages to see who was about to tour or to bring out a new album.

Then later in the day there was the joy of sitting down to study the paper at length. To read the interviews and features that covered such a wide musical spectrum. I can still recall reading editorials from Geoff Barton and articles by John Peel.

It is difficult to imagine the information vacuum that we lived in then. Nowadays you hear when a group has written new songs or is about to go into the studio. You know when a tour is likely to take place. Bands are adept at using social networking and the like to keep fans up to date. And that’s before we even mention the message boards, rumour sites and internet leaks that are all so common.

So imagine the excitement of hearing that tickets for your favourite band’s forthcoming tour go on sale in two days time. Or realising that their album comes out next month. And bad news was sometimes the order of the day too: the first time you heard of the ubiquitous musical differences was when someone actually left the group.

But exciting as it was, I very much prefer knowing everything that is happening. And that’s what makes this site such a great one for a music fan. The web has given us so much, but access to information is perhaps the most important.

Modern life may not be perfect, but it does have some very real benefits!