So, hipsters, how are you?

I am writing this deep inside the bowels of a Sunday morning, 6am if we’re being pedantic; and we are being pedantic. Sunday has always bee a good day for the pop epiphany – I recall many hours reclined in bed, Billy Liar fashion, listening to records on a Sunday morning. Perhaps the greatest of all Sunday morning discoveries as a veritable pop music palaeontologist was this: the first time I heard Abbey Road.

Oddly, whilst my childhood had always been saturated with The Beatles, the records we listened to tended to be collections rather than the actual LPs themselves. In my early teens I went through a period where I eschewed anything I deemed ‘retro’ or ‘old’; indeed, a purging of anything pre 1990 was taking place. I can see the error of my ways now; however, it was necessary in order to build a sense of self, I think. I digress, so, this particular Sunday, I reached over to my record collection and scanned it dutifully, but, to my horror, nothing said ‘play me’ – not The Stones Roses, not Blur and not even Morrissey would do. Feeling not a little deflated, I reclined and just at the point when my head hit the pillow I remembered The Beatles. This may seem a little obvious now, but at the time the Beatles were yet to go through the full-blown post Oasis renaissance they have now; their records were hard to find and the era of the deluxe album and the anthology was some distance away. I recalled the tunes and the time spent as child listening to The Beatles on a Sunday morning: tuning into Dr. Robert not getting it was a song about scoring drugs and listening intently to Yellow Submarine not realising it was a song written by someone on drugs.

So, with twenty dollars left in my wallet and a head full of tunes and memories, I decided to trudge down to the record store and purchase a Beatles LP. Why I chose Abbey Road I can’t recall, but I remembered being amazed by it once I got it home; I listened to it over and over amazed at what was contained outside of the singles. I will leave the story there as I suspect you lot all know Abbey Road by now. But, suffice to say, from that point I never dismissed music pre-1990 as ‘old’ and ‘retro’ again. I still dug the new breed, but my schema now included The Who, Tamla Motown, The Kinks, Love, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, David Bowie and Bob Dylan amongst others. More importantly, it was a cracking way to spend a day immersed in that magical, non linear LP. I think I may just play it now.