We’re experiencing a late summer weather boom. The nights and early mornings are crisper but the temperature rises to the early 20s on most days. The sun still shines and it’s September, which is cause for celebration.
When I was little, September 1st marked the day autumn officially started. Sure, we might have a week or two of sunnier weather when we first started back at school. But those days would quickly give way to the gray and windy autumn afternoons.
I wallowed in nostalgia earlier this week. Moving back home is bittersweet. Friends and colleagues have moved on. People are leaving London, starting families. So I reverted to the music I was listening to 10 years ago, when I first moved to London.
I used to discover all my new music through blogs. So I was surprised to see a lot of familiar names in this article. For a start, I had no idea the Hype Machine was still around.
Even better, the site has a “time machine” function which enables you to go back to the most popular tracks from the last ten years.
I remember hearing The White Stripes for the first time when Hotel Yorba was featured. I also remember hearing the much buzzed about Cloud Nothings’ track ‘Hey Now Now’ and being very underwhelmed.
That was the problem with music blogs. Every new track had to be ‘seminal’, ‘outrageous’, or ‘the best track of x year so far’. Which made everything underwhelming.
I went back through my old favourites the other day. Unsurprisingly, very few of them are still around. The Modern Age moved to Denver and became a food blogger. Her writing was how I discovered the Strokes’ backstory. In Eastbourne in 2004, lonely and bored in the computer lab. Wishing days of my life would move faster.
Nothing But Green Lights has disappeared. Brooklyn Vegan is still going (they were way ahead of the vegan thing) but is mostly just a listings site these days. Perhaps what I was most amazed about is that the Hype Machine hasn’t changed its gaudy layout at all.
These are the types of blogs I miss on the internet. Before everyone rushed to drive traffic and sell ads and make money off the weird esoteric thing they were into. Back when the writing used to be interesting.
You can still find them, if you poke around in the outer reaches. This one and this one and this one are my favourites. It’s all in the minutiae.
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On with the show.