Music can beguile as well as surprise. It can seduce over time or overwhelm in an instant.

Sometimes one’s initial instincts can be wrong and confused. The first time – and many times after, that was exposed to the Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’, I thought it was shit. I was wrong. The first time I heard ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ by Phil Collins, I thought ‘what a great cover’. I was wrong. It’s shit – an epiphany which, I am happy say, took very little subsequent time to reveal itself – and, to be fair, your honour, I was only about 12 at the time.

There are slow-burners that worm their way into your consciousness over weeks or months. There are pieces that somehow strike a chord and our apparently forgotten, but yet they remain, rattling around in one’s musical memory until some unconscious trigger releases them to the waking mind. And…

On some occasions, there has been a first listening that has literally been life-changing.

‘First times’ are important. ‘First times’ are seared into the memory – yes, ha ha very funny – let’s move quickly past the sexual clichés – but damn it all – they’re important. In fact, that first teenage snog might have been the most highly-charged moment of your emotional life up until that point, it was, eventually, eclipsed. Unless of course it was a fucking amazing snog.

The point here is that the first time you hear an amazing piece of music, the significance of that moment  is never surpassed. Whenever you subsequently hear it, you can’t help but be partially transported back to that first listening; it’s part of your musical DNA.  Have a snog 30 years after your first one – is a bit of you remembering your first one?

If it is, you need to have a word with yourself – or better yet, have many words with a psychotherapist, but like all those coming-of-age-growing-into-ourselves, self discovery moments – we can all think of some musical firsts.

These three short essays are dedicated to the tunes that were heard, in their entirety for that special first-time moment. This is not about hearing a snatched line or guitar-riff and then discovering the track later. I first heard ‘Solsbury Hill’ in a newsagents in Bournemouth. I heard the opening guitar / keyboard part – and loved it – but didn’t hang around for the rest – because I really needed to be elsewhere quickly, so while I might have the memory of the tune, it wasn’t the whole track so it doesn’t count.

We’ve all got these little complete beauties; here are mine…

Blitzkrieg Bop (from ‘Ramones’ by The Ramones)

There is no better place to start than this. Seriously – This is the one…

Woking Football Club has a very small footnote in musical history. The Jam played an early gig there (in the Social Club – not on the pitch) and a few years later, Weller returned with The Style Council and the club served as the setting for the video for ‘Solid Bond in Your Heart’.

Neither of these moments come close in their significance to a jumble sale that was held in the same room as featured in the video above sometime in the mid-1980s.

I was aware that ‘The Ramones’ were a thing – but in the same way that Iggy Pop and The New York Dolls were a thing too ; part of the whole punk genesis and evolution but actually not that important to actually listen to. Today, all it would take would be a quick search in YouTube or a Spotify – but on that day, the commitment was much greater; it was 50p.

I lived half a mile from the football club and I was walking home past it. Fate ordained that I had nothing better to do than investigate the jumble sale – and lucky chance had it that I had 50p on me.

What is actually extraordinary is that someone had grown tired of their (original pressing) copy of The Ramones first album that they had given it away. This still blows my mind. Someone held this item in so little esteem that they gave it to someone to sell to strangers – for 50p.

As it happened, I bought two albums that afternoon. I also bought a copy of ‘Exercises’ by Nazareth – and honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever played it – because when I got home, it was like I’d bought all the music I would ever need

You know ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’. You know how it starts – you know how those drums, bass and guitar crash-in together in perfect disharmonious harmony- you know how those three chords just…work.

You know those thumping drums – the “Hey-Ho’ call to action – how the bass rumbles in like a biker gang and then the guitars – you know how great that is and how it fits together just right…

But imagine if you didn’t. Imagine if you had walked home, having spent a quid on two albums and just put the first side of the first one one your record player. Imagine….

At that time, I had a guitar – and a bass guitar too. I could play a few chords on the former and had no clue how to use the latter – and here were a band with the same musicianship as me – and sounding….perfect.

‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ proved – really proved – that , like that Sniffin’ Glue fanzine cover (that you never had a copy of) you learn three chords and form a band. For many, Punk was epitomised by The Sex Pistols, but just about any Pistol track is streets ahead in musical complexity – and here was the proof that’ just getting up and doing’ it worked. Really worked.

Five minutes after the first listen, I could play ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’. If I’d owned a drum kit, I’d have learned the drum parts too. And this is why it had such a profound impact. I didn’t need to vogue in front of a mirror with a badminton racquet – I could actually perform this song and the confidence that gave was immense.

Years later I bought Ramones Greatest Hits double CD – but I wasted my money. I didn’t need it. No one needs any more Ramones than that first album – and arguably Side One of it would be enough. The Ramones are / were an inspired one-line joke. A knock-knock routine that spanned three decades. (Knock-Knock. Who’s there? The Ramones. The Ramones who? 1,2,3, 4 Raaarrggghhhhhhh glue, baseball bats, Judy is a punk etc)

Don’t misunderstand me, The Ramones were sensational – but so is cheesecake and after 3 or 4 slices of even the best cheesecake, you’ve had enough, for a while at least.

I discovered something great in that jumble sale that day. Nobody – not one, solitary person had ever said to me ‘You heard that Ramones album?’ This was a selection based on no recommendation and therefore it was truly mine. And despite it’s subsequent ubiquity, it always will be. Sorry folks, it belongs to me. Just me. It’s mine.

I Wanna Be Adored (from ‘Stone Roses’ by The Stone Roses

I have never been cool. Ever. I have never spotted an emerging trend and adopted it before everyone else’, I have never influenced a single goddamn person in my life.

But that’s OK because music is a mass-media thing – or at least once it gets recorded and commercially released, it is – and certainly if your local ‘Our Price’ has copies of it all over their shelves.

It’s 1989. It’s the last year of college and I am studying about as far south in the UK as it’s possible to go, right down on the Sussex coast. A couple of hundred miles north, Manchester is busy changing the world and who knows, maybe if I’d got better A Levels, I might have been at the Haçienda wearing enormous flared jeans and a Joe Bloggs T-shirt cultivating an interest in Detroit house , while wide-eyed on E. Possibly….

It’s actually a highly unlikely scenario – I wouldn’t have known I was at the epicentre of a phenomenenon – I would have kept my straight trousers and have ingested nothing stronger than Stella Artois. I naturally reject the crowd anyway – If I’d been at Manchester Uni in 1989, I’d have seen the next 30 years telling anyone who’d listen how amazing it was – when in all probability, I’d have sat out the whole affair.

Anyway – It’s 1989 and the aforementioned branch of Our Price has copies of this album featuring cover art of citrus fruit. This was, of course the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut. Even though I was a student I very rarely listed to music radio – not even Peel – and with no other contact with anything like an underground scene – I’d heard about the Stone Roses – but never actually heard them.

So, like with ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, fate intervenes. While passing Our Price, I had nothing better to do than have a browse – and having nothing better to do with £5.99 – on impulse and out of curiosity, I went home with a, no pun intended, stone-cold classic.

The all important first listen was, in it’s own way, a classic too. I got back to the halls and was joined in my room by a bloke called Mick; he’d never heard ‘Stone Roses’ either – and this fact is important.

Mick was sat on the bed as I sorted out a drink and the needle dropped on a frantic heavy bass-line soon followed by a busy, spiky guitar line. We nodded to each other at mutual appreciation of the speed and economy; these Mancunians might have some questionable fashion choices – but they’d not lost their post punk edge; we could have been listening to Wire ten years earlier.

We were, of course not, not listening to Wire copyists (we did when Elastica happened) but were listening to the Stone Roses… at the wrong speed.

The. Wrong. Speed. If you’re John Peel – fine. If you’re not; not cool.

CDs put an end to this and you can’t play a download at 45rpm. Maybe with vinyl’s recent resurgence, it’s no way as much of a thing as once it was – but it could have severely burst the bubble.

Fortunately Mick was not one to judge. Even more fortunately, neither of said anything that would have betrayed even more uncoolness. Even more fortuitously – ‘I wanna be adored’s intro provided enough time for the mistake to be realised before the vocals. If my first introduction to Ian Brown had been ‘I don’t need to sell my soul / he’s already in me’ sung like Alvin & The Chipmunks, the moment would truly have been irretrievably lost.

This intro is also going on a bit…. The story here is another of discovery. ‘I wanna be adored’ is a perfect opening track; it is enigmatic, memorable (of course…) and instantly shows the musicians’ abilities as clearly as the direction and statement they are making.

That opening bass-line – another ode to low-frequency simplicity – that leads to the guitar line that slashes into the track but with the controlled finese of a Samurai’s blade rather than that of the crazed marauder. It wasn’t long before the axiom that John Squire was the first non-macho guitar hero was not just a clever piece of word-smithing, but somehow a design for life. If ‘Toxic Masculinity’ had been a thing in 1989, he would have been the very antithesis and it fitted the loved-up mood of the country perfectly. The Stone Roses helped to make many young men of the time much, much nicer people.

These words are perhaps more about the album than the track. ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ is indeed a great opener – but nowhere near as good a closer as ‘I am the resurrection’. ‘Waterfall’ enchants, ‘She Bangs the Drum’ has a suggestion of insouciant violence – and ‘Elizabeth My Dear’ has violence in no way veiled – shooting The Queen? Christ, The Pistols sung about saving- who are these people?

The answer is written in history. Another Four Lads who Shook the World. Each member of The Roses were properly cool. Ian Brown’s vocal ability may not have matched Squire’s virtuosity. The singing wasn’t as great as the perfectly delivered looseness-within-structure of the Reni/Mani rhythm section, but Brown’s overall image perfectly personified the emerging Manchester scene and forever put them as the avant-garde, the new to be aspired to; it gave them founding-father status something that has quite righty not been forgotten as decades later, the history of the times is told.

30 years plus later, I would still contend that ‘Stone Roses’ is the greatest debut ever – and possibly the greatest album ever made.

So ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ opened a door. I never wore flares, I never took E – and in my whole life, I’ve only been to Manchester once (4 days sofa surfing there and in Liverpool with added football: MCFC 2, WHUFC 0 / TRFC 2, BRFC 2, Easter Weekend 1992, if you’re interested…) It was alright as it happened, good laugh. I I saw an E that weekend. The person who owned it, the flatmate of one of the sofa-owners was going to drop it in the Hacienda queue. Not that I’ve had got in, dressed as I would have been – but I sometimes wonder where my life would have gone if I’d asked to go with her…*

The opened door allowed me to appreciate The Mondays, The Charlatans et al. It also helped me to separate the wheat from the chaff. While some embraced anything with 18 inch bottoms and a baggy jumper, I’d joined the scene at the top – and therefore was able to spot that, even though ‘Weekender’ is a tune (and an even better video) the likes of Flowered Up were shit in comparison.

So what started as a metronomic fast-paced frenzy, one it was slowed-down, turned out to be something much more interesting and engaging. Once it was slowed down…

Slow stuff down to experience things better; what a great metaphor for life…

*she would have definitely told me to fuck off. She was cool – I’ve covered my own relationship with that human quality/attribute earlier.

Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft from ‘George Best’ by The Wedding Present

This one happened in the same room as the Stone Roses one – and not too far apart time-wise. Something else was happening in ‘The North’ someone from those parts gave me a cassette and said ‘listen to this’.

Who could not be intrigued by a cover like this? Perfect iconography – everyone, literally everyone who sees it knows the name – and in the true sense of an icon, the added meanings and associations just come flooding in. Perfection.

The fact that the was on tape is significant. I didn’t have a tape deck, so the noise came out of a little tape player – stereo – but certainly no ghetto blaster. But what a blast….

In fact, not a blast – but an intake of breath…. and then it began. Listen closely – you’ll hear what I mean…

I wasn’t in a band at the time. But if I was, I would have just heard exactly how I wanted that band to sound. It was like my imagination had been stolen and set to music. An absolute revelation, but couldn’t help a slight sense of disappointment that I was going to have to start a whole new set of daydream projects – there was no point in carrying on with this one; it has been made real. By someone else.

The people concerned? The Wedding Present. Them that had previously been only a passing glance in the NME or perhaps a curious second look at a someone’s T-Shirt in town were suddenly in my room.

I knew exactly what would happen as the track played. The bass undulating solidly underneath the scratchy guitars and at the chorus, when scratchy becomes jangly, it really was if my subconscious was controlling what was coming out of the speakers.

The tune fades out with the guitar left alone to play out it’s delightfully simple-but-effective three chord and thrash. And then the silence. Until Track Two (What Did You Last Servant Die Of?) and we’re off again.

Three chords? Thrash? We’ve been here before – and yes, there are similarities. Like The Ramones, The Weddoes (as they were often referred to) had a template that they pretty much stuck to. It took me a while to realise that while Dave Gedge’s lyrics of love, loss, jealously, betrayal and inadequacy might have summed up my teenage love-life pretty succinctly – it does a get a bit much pretty quickly.

I shared a flat that summer with a friend – who, after not very long decided he hated The Wedding Present because of their negative take on relationships and offered Frank Sinatra’s ‘You Make Me Feel So Young’ and an antidote. I thought he’d lost his mind, but actually it was a pretty good counterpoint.

Gedge’s lyrics really were pretty bleak. All about being dumped – or never getting a chance to be dumped. Always the bridesmaid – ironically. He perked up a bit as time went on – he even had his girlfriend in the band for a while…but, unsurprisingly, it didn’t last.

Just like ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, ‘Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft’ defined what I wanted to be musically at that precise moment. I knew I had no hope of emulating John Squire’s guitar playing – but Peter Solowka’s way of doing things was much more within reach and in fact I can do a pretty decent acoustic version of ‘Give My Regards to Kevin’. Maybe I’ll put it on YouTube. Maybe…

The Wedding Present payed a Brighton gig not long after and they delivered well enough. They then went ‘this is the last song – we don’t do encores’ , played said song and then really did just leave. I had only ever seen this with New Order (Leaving Blue Monday on the drum machine and buggering off) and frankly felt cheated on both occasions.

‘What’s with the no encores?’ I asked a more long-term Weddoes veteran. ‘Just their thing’, he said. ‘Tossers’, I thought.

Well – they do come back, occasionally – but these days I can see though the misery for what it is. Sometimes a bit of Dave Gedge’s desperate love life is just what is needed, but in smaller doses. Despite the gloom – the whole album is a real transport to a different time where one part of my life was coming to an end and another to begin…..all together now…‘You make me feel so young’…