I’m sitting in a rainy northern dutch town listening to some Manchester stalwarts discuss the music culture of that rainy northern English town. It’s a weird and interesting thing to be listening to this here, and it makes me feel both proud and a bit embarrassed too. Clearly the town has a great heritage and a very sophisticated music community which continues to bring excellent new artists to the world, sucking a great deal of the north west in and spitting them out all cocky and confident and rounded. Still, there’s something not entirely comfortable about shouting about your home town (I do trade on my own identity being from the north west).
That said, the room is full and people are listening intently to Graham Massey, John Robb, Fiona and Ruth Daniel, and Peter Parker.
I can’t help thinking that people’s experiences are and, that they’re all individual. Pretty interesting though, I have to say. Glad they’ve started to discuss how the heritage can suffocate the current scene, which is vast, and amazing.
