When I was at university the internet existed, but not to the extent that you had it in your student house. Maybe a couple of times a week an email would arrive from a friend or a tutor, so I’d drop out of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 ‘Who can score the most points in one go?’ competition that Tim would normally be winning anyway and wander up to the computer building to check. The fresh air also made a change from the fug of weed smoke, though arguably the belching factories of late eighteenth century Manchester would have been fresh in comparison to our house on Alexandra Road in 2000.
While in the computer building I’d wander round the internet, and pretty soon I’d discovered the website allmusic.com, which had biographies of artists and helpful star ratings for each of their albums. Crucially though, it had links from an artist to other similar artists, and it was this way that I found a lot of my music.
I know I hadn’t heard of The American Analog Set before, so it must have been one of these links that sent me to them, possibly from Pavement or something similar.
To be honest, this album sat mostly unlistened to after I bought it. A few nice moments here and there, but nothing to get excited about. It was only a couple of weeks ago that a song from it popped up on shuffle and I thought ‘That’s good, what’s that?’ and then played the album all the way through. Turns out that’s the secret to it — it creates a mood that lasts throughout and you have to buy into that to get the most out of it. Perhaps in time it’ll grow on me some more.
