I guess the point I’m trying to make is that watching Rage in those wee hours of the morning (or recorded on VHS if I had one ready) helped open my eyes to a world of music that I wouldn’t have encountered by just listening to commercial radio. In many ways it proved to be an antidote to some of the stuff I was hearing on those stations. Sure, it was the early 90s: grunge was on the rise, probably the two biggest bands at the time were Nirvana and Guns N’ Roses, and there were a lot of bands getting commercial airplay (like the aforementioned Butthole Surfers, White Zombie and Primus) that probably wouldn’t at any other point in pop music history. Yet, there was also a lot of Eurodance, much of which I must admit sounded exactly the same to me, and remains one of the few musical genres I could never really get into. Perhaps my increasing interest in more obscure music choices related to my life at the point. School was almost unbearable, and I was often either actively bullied or socially excluded, both by the students and by the teachers who completely failed in their responsibilities. I had long since stopped going to church by this point and found less and less comfort in religion, and at home I constantly felt like I was failing to live up to my parents’ expectations of me. I was depressed, and filled with self-loathing, but music provided an outlet for those feelings. The mindless bubblegum of Eurodance did nothing for me, but harder, angrier music did. I enjoyed stuff like metal, industrial and goth rock. Bands like Type O Negative, Fear Factory, and Marilyn Manson appealed to me, and I felt like I could relate to the darker themes of their songs better than the radio pop songs singing about partying or dancing or falling in love, none of which I could relate to at the time.

Around 1996 I stopped listening to commercial radio and started listening to Triple J, Australia’s own government-funded alternative music station. It seemed only logical, especially since Triple J has always been somewhat affiliated with Rage. Most of the alternative rock songs I liked on commercial radio were already being played on Triple J, often being played well before the commercial stations aired them and usually complete and uncensored too. Everything else was more like what I watched on Rage: music that was perhaps too alternative, too original and too unique to feature on any of the commercial stations. At least, that’s how it felt at the time. I look back then and there was a lot of unique material being played: beat poet and counter-culture figure Allen Ginsberg had a song that got regular airplay and even made it onto the Hottest 100 that year, as did a lounge cover of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’, and a punk rock version of an old Muppets number. This was in addition to acts like Ben Folds Five, Regurgitator, The Dandy Warhols and others who had a sound that didn’t quite fit on commercial radio (unless they made a song safe enough that it could be safely played on commercial radio). There was so much variety in the choice of songs, perhaps reflecting the creativity of that era, that I don’t think would get played on the station if they were released today. But, I digress. I’d found a station that appealed to my changing taste in music while leaving behind the monotony of the Top 40 stations. I still wasn’t a music fanatic yet, but I was becoming more passionate about what I liked.

Part Four: Pretty Hate Machine

Although I loved music a lot, I very rarely bought a CD in those days. Being still in high school my income was limited to a small amount of pocket money (maybe $100 at most) a month, and at $30 an album I tended to just record what I heard on the radio on audio tape, or possibly borrow one from one of my classmates when they were being less hostile towards me than usual. Around 1995 I remember buying the Mortal Kombat: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack after seeing the movie, especially on the strength of possibly the best fight scene in the movie where Johnny Cage fights Scorpion set to Fear Factory’s epic Zero Signal. Not long after I also received Green Day’s Insomniac album as a Christmas present from my father, who by now had relaxed his anti-modern music biases and also enjoyed their brand of pop-punk rock (I still had to listen to it covertly as my mum wouldn’t have approved of their lyrics). Other than that, though, I was more likely to spend my money on games for my PC than CDs, although occasionally I’d swap an old game temporarily for one of my classmate’s Metallica or White Zombie CDs (once again, only when we were on friendly terms, lest they got returned broken like my old Game Gear did).

As mentioned before, the mid-90s was an interesting time for music; the alternative rock scene was in full swing, and bands that would never get airplay in any other period could get a hit on the radio. Even decidedly anti-commercial genres like industrial were gaining a mainstream following, even if those audiences were only engaging on a superficial level. Enter Marilyn Manson. He’d already made a name for himself with a sinister-sounding cover of the Eurythmics‘ ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)’, and had just released his infamous Antichrist Superstar album. Of course he was seen as Public Enemy #1 by the morality police at the time, what with his anti-Christian lyrics and supposed links to the Church of Satan. Funnily enough, at a religious school like mine this just gave him an aura of danger and excitement. Sure, the teachers and ‘proper’ students thought he was in league with the devil and disapproved of him (they had other ways to demonstrate their hypocrisy, after all), but that didn’t mean his music didn’t sound cool as Hell (pun intended) to the rest of us. There was one student I remember in particular who let me borrow audio tapes he had recorded of various heavier bands like Tool and Nailbomb. He also gave me a tape of Manson’s latest album, and while I enjoyed it, it was what was on the other side of the tape that had a greater impact on me. You see, one of the other bands this student talked about was Nine Inch Nails, and sure enough there were some of their tracks on side two that spoke to me more than anything else on that tape did.

Nine Inch Nails (or NIN for short) were far from an obscure band at that point. I’d personally known about them since 1991 when I first saw the video for ‘Head Like a Hole‘ on Rage. A cool song, I thought at the time, but it didn’t inspire me to check out the rest of their material. The following year I saw the video for ‘Wish‘ and thought much the same thing, as I did in 1994 with the video for ‘March of the Pigs‘. None of these songs got any airplay on the Australian commercial radio stations I was listening to at the time: that was until ‘Closer‘. ‘Closer’ was different. ‘Closer’ felt edgy and dangerous. Not only was it all over the Top 40 music shows, but it featured a lyric (I want to f**k you like an animal’) that, while censored for commercial radio (uncensored on Triple J, of course), was so obvious in what it was saying that it was instantly popular with every adolescent schoolkid who might not understand what the song is about or even like the music itself, but sure did like that one line. Everyone knew who NIN were and knew that song, even if they knew none of the band’s other material. So when I was given that tape with both Marilyn Manson and NIN songs on it, I had a good idea of what kind of music would be on there. Yet something clicked for me with NIN this time where it hadn’t before. The music was a few tracks from NIN’s The Downward Spiral: mainly the last minute of the track ‘Piggy‘ through to the first verse and chorus of ‘Ruiner‘. The latter song in particular impressed me with its mix of styles and sounds, and my interest was piqued enough to hear the rest of the song. Probably the song on the tape that impressed the most was the song ‘Dead Souls‘, NIN’s contribution to the motion picture soundtrack to arguably the most quintessentially goth movie of the 90s, The Crow. Admittedly at the time I didn’t know that the song was a cover of song originally by Joy Division, and if I had heard that version first I might’ve viewed the cover differently, but for me the NIN version was haunting and atmospheric, and I wanted to check out more of their work.

I went down to the local music store and bought two albums: The Presidents of the United States of America II, which was getting plenty of airplay around that time, and Pretty Hate Machine, the 1989 debut album by Nine Inch Nails. I bought The President’s album mostly on the strength of their single ‘Mach 5‘, and to be fair it was a good, fun rock album. Not exactly deep, but I don’t think they ever intended to be. Pretty Hate Machine, on the other hand, was the album that inspired me. ‘Head Like a Hole’ was on there, which sounded even better on CD than on my old analogue TV, and I thought ‘Down In It‘, a single I hadn’t heard previously, was a damn catchy almost-rap number (and one of only a handful of songs I can somehow recite off the top of my head near flawlessly). But the one song on the album that really knocked me off my feet was a track called ‘Something I Can Never Have‘. The song is probably the closest thing to a ballad on the album: still electronic, but the guitars and drums are absent here, instead just Trent Reznor’s voice backed by haunting synths that sounded almost like a cello. It was a piece of music that at once felt cold and mournful, yet beautiful and familiar too. More than anything else on the album, the longing for something that seemed beyond my reach – love, friendship, happiness – felt so familiar. I listened to the song, over and over. For a while it was my favourite NIN song. If a piece of music could affect me like that, then I had to see what else the band had to offer.

It wasn’t long before I purchased The Downward Spiral, NIN’s most acclaimed album up to that point. The album was much less poppy than Pretty Hate Machine: still electronic in sound, but harsher and angrier. Nothing as dancible as ‘Down In it’ here; this was a much bleaker outing all round, from the brain-driller of an opening track ‘Mr. Self Destruct‘ (complete with an unsettling opening sample of a violent beating, taken from George Lucas’ debut film THX 1138), to the final track ‘Hurt’, a song all about sadness and regret. ‘Hurt’ was a song I was familiar with having seen the live video on Rage previously, and the combination of the lyrics with the imagery of the video always made it difficult for me not to cry (I avoided watching it when anyone was around for that reasons). It’s no wonder that Johnny Cash towards the end of his life did his own version of the song, and the image of an artist looking back on his life with sadness certainly impacted a lot of people enough that many consider it to be the definitive version (I can understand that, although I still prefer the original, which I admit may be bias on my part). It might seem counterproductive to some to listen to depressing music if your feeling depressed, but the truth is it can be comforting to know that someone else, somewhere, is feeling the same way you do, especially when everyone around you seems oblivious to how you feel.

I could fill up another 10,000 words or so talking about NIN, so instead I’ll get back on track with the topic. The thing is that my obsession with all things NIN led me to seeking out anything that was even remotely related to the band. I bought the soundtracks to Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers and David Lynch’s Lost Highway, both of which were produced by Reznor and featured songs by NIN (‘Burn‘ in NBK, ‘The Perfect Drug‘ in LH). In addition to watching both movies (I was still a few months off 18 but managed to rent both movies without being carded, along with several other R18+ films I’d been waiting years to see), the soundtracks introduced me to other artists: Leonard Cohen, Diamanda Galas, Lard, Barry Adamson and Rammstein. Around this time Reznor was collaborating heavily with David Bowie, in particular remixing and appearing in the video for his single ‘I’m Afraid of Americans‘. Bowie was an artist that, up until then, I hadn’t really looked at, yet his collaboration led me to look into his work, beginning with his most recent album at the time, Earthling; a drum & bass inspired album that while many would not consider among his best work still impressed me with his willingness to experiment with different genres. I knew about Reznor’s work with Marilyn Manson, but only just heard about a band called Skinny Puppy who influenced both of them (Reznor musically, Manson perhaps more visually) and so I decided to check out their back catalogue. I’d heard people compare The Downward Spiral to Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and after hearing the track ‘Comfortably Numb‘ on the radio I decided to check their back catalogue out. For me, NIN was a prism that showed me different artists and genres, and I wanted to check them all out. I was becoming more fanatical in my search for new music, and at the same time I found this was moving me far away from the tastes of my peers.

Part Five: Go Your Own Way

I never really got along with anyone from my school: even though there were times we got along they were few and far between, and for most of my time there I was an outsider. That said, one thing I did share with many of them was similar music tastes. Sure, there were the Eurodance-loving teenyboppers who I was never going to see eye to eye with, but there were plenty who were into the same alternative rock songs that often featured on Triple J. Very few were NIN fans, though: some were fiercely against anything electronic-sounding, and if any synths could be heard in a traditional guitar-and-drums lineup then they dismissed it outright as ‘techno shit’. Even those who did claim to like NIN only seemed to like one song: ‘Closer’. Play literally any other NIN song other than the naughty radio hit they were familiar with and they’d wrinkle their noses in disgust and call it crap (but still insisted they were totally NIN fans). I must admit I found it disheartening that others didn’t share my taste in music and couldn’t hear what I heard in these songs. I never shared much in common with any of them anyway, so I chalked it up to yet another thing that was different between myself and everyone else.

Fast forward a couple of years: I’d left my school and classmates well behind, and was attending TAFE (similar to college for those outside Australia). I’d been hanging out on a few NIN fan forums online, awaiting the next album. There was a lot of hype for it, a few rumours and hoaxes, but during 1999 we had a title (The Fragile), some details (it was going to be a double album) and even a few singles like ‘The Day the World Went Away‘ and ‘We’re In This Together‘ to give us a taste of what was to come. Then, towards the end of the year, the album came out. I bought it, listened to it, and already decided it was the album of the year. I won’t go into detail about how the songs inspired me as I’m saving that for another blog post, but needless to say I thought the album was amazing and figured others would too. Then I saw the reactions to it. The local paper gave it a 2 out of 5, a pathetic score. Apparently the album hadn’t sold as much as the record label wanted, and so they deemed it a commercial failure, and by extension an artistic one too. Commentators were calling Reznor ‘washed up’ and his music ‘out of date’ in a cultural landscape dominated by the likes of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys.

Listening to Triple J was no better. Sure, they played The Fragile as one of their feature albums, but the audience didn’t go for it. They liked one song: ‘Starfuckers, Inc‘, probably because it had those naughty words that everyone associated the band with, but I remember ‘The Day the World Went Away’ was voted one of the most hated songs by the audience in an online poll: in my opinion, probably because it was more introspective and had no cussing. It soon became apparent that, much like with my former classmates, I’d become estranged from the average Triple J listener’s tastes. They were demanding more music like The Offspring and Limp Bizkit, whereas I felt alienated from that sort of meatheaded, frat boy music. The final straw was listening to a late night announcer interviewing someone at the Big Day Out who, when asked about the best and worst acts they saw that day, listed NIN as his worst, repeating the corporate mantra that Trent had lost the plot and was too old and should quit, before going on to praise popular bands like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. The announcer, who I suspect didn’t even know who NIN were, only offered some weak ‘oh, well, um, you know, sometimes these bands can’t keep up, haha…’ response. I realised that Triple J was no longer a station that spoke to me, much as the commercial stations had stopped speaking to me years earlier.

I stopped listening to Triple J in 2001, and only started listening again many years later. Looking back, I feel that I’ve had something of a love-hate relationship with Triple J for a long time, and I have mixed feelings about my decision to quit the station. On one hand the station is unique in a mostly homogenised radio landscape, playing to its own drum rather than that of what the corporations determine. I also have always admired its support of local artists, with its Unearthed project helping obscure Australian acts get national airplay, sometimes leading to national and even international fame. I doubt an artist like Vance Joy and his song ‘Riptide‘ would’ve received commercial airplay or any awards without exposure from Triple J first, and I certainly wouldn’t have heard any buskers singing it on the Los Angeles metro either for that matter. Yet, at the same time, it did feel like the station was becoming much more conservative in what it chose to play compared to before. Whereas before the station seemed to play a wide range of genres and styles, from the wacky to the serious, now it felt like many songs now had to conform to a certain ‘Triple J’ sound: still independent of commercial radio, but homogenised in its own way. My own tastes were taking me to other places that weren’t covered by the station’s output, and I found I had less time to actively listen, so I stopped altogether. As I said, I have mixed feelings about this decision as I did end up missing out on a lot of music that was featured on the station, yet at the same time I was able to forge my own independent musical journey, uninfluenced by anything other than my own interests, which I wouldn’t have been able to take if I was relying on any radio station to discover new music.

Part Six: Steppin’ Out

So what sort of things did I listen to instead? I’d already mentioned Skinny Puppy, a band who most people outside Canada (and even in Canada) wouldn’t have heard of unless they were into industrial music, yet were influential to several popular bands in the field. Well, why stop there? I’d heard Reznor in interviews mention a band called Throbbing Gristle in the same breath as an influence, and looking them up I found they were arguably one of the first in the genre and even more intense and uncompromising in their sound. Dark, twisted soundscapes like that appealed to me, and so I looked for more. While visiting my friend Erin in the United States back in 2001 we went to Tower Records in New Orleans. Along with TG’s 1979 release 20 Jazz Funk Greats (an album that is neither jazzy nor funky, and doesn’t actually have 20 tracks, but is a damn great industrial record) I noticed another industrial band I’d heard of: Foetus, specifically their 1985 album Nail. I purchased both, and was blown away by Jim Thirwell’s mix of industrial, rock, jazz, big band and theatrical scoring and Broadway-style showtunes (for reference check out the songs ‘Descent Into the Inferno‘, ‘Overture from Pigdom Come‘ and ‘Anything (Viva!)‘, all from the same album. The more diverse the music, the better as far as I was concerned. Why stick to just one style when you could mix in all of them?

So how did I discover new music if I wasn’t listening to the radio? The Internet was one useful tool. Back around the turn of the millennium Spotify wasn’t a thing yet, nor was iTunes. Mp3s, compressed audio files that could play songs and sounds at CD-quality with a relatively small file size (about 1Mb to one minute of audio), were the popular way to download and listen to music in the days of 56k modems. Napster was of course the most common way to find and download mp3s in those days, but far from the only way, so that when the Napster network was shut down plenty of others arose to take their place. Mp3s were controversial as it was argued that downloading music deprived the artists of money made from CD sales, while others argued that free distribution of music allowed everyone to access and discover music without the stranglehold of corporate record labels: music that would have been otherwise ignored or deemed ‘not commercial enough’. While I recognised the former argument, I was firmly in the latter camp as I enjoyed finding different music that I may not have encountered elsewhere. Sharing mp3s among friends could be eye opening: one friend in particular had a particularly oddball taste in music and opened my eyes to artists and groups like The Residents, Renaldo & the Loaf, Jandek, Boredoms and Caroliner, among other acts that, while at times too experimental even for my tastes, were nonetheless intriguing in their sound and approach. Perhaps being shown the extremes of music helped me gain an appreciation for music of all kinds, regardless of genre. Perhaps so, or maybe I’d already gained an appreciation already.

Concerts and music festivals were another good source of discovering music, and a way for me to experience music differently compared to listening on my own. My first concert was avant-garde musician Diamanda Galás in 2000 at the Perth Concert Hall. An unusual choice for my first live music performance, and the music of Galás is certainly not for the faint-hearted, but unusual (and sometimes downright frightening) music appealed to me. The next concert I can remember going to was Tool at the old Perth Entertainment Centre: possibly one of the last concerts played there before they knocked the venue down. I was still very uncomfortable around crowds, but managed to stay calm enough to enjoy the show. My social awkwardness and fear of crowds would be a big factor I needed to overcome in order to pursue my newfound enjoyment of live music. I worked up the courage the courage to go to the Big Day Out in 2000, mostly to see Nine Inch Nails live, of course. At the time I felt uncomfortable and intimidated by the festival crowds, and wouldn’t return to another festival for years, but all these experiences did show me how different hearing a band live was compared to hearing it on my headphones in my room. Different atmosphere, different aesthetics, even completely different sounds compared to how they sound on the album. If I was to pinpoint the exact moment that I felt something special at a live performance, it was hearing the song ‘Nutshell‘ by Alice In Chains at the Soundwave festival in 2009. I’d enjoyed AIC in passing over the years but never truly explored their music, and this song, and this performance, just as the sun began to set and a cool wind blew across the festival grounds, made me not only buy their entire back catalogue the following day, but made me a devotee of the music festival circuit, which I remain to this day.

Word of mouth, or at least words on online message boards and the like, were a useful way of finding new recommendations. I remember finding out about VAST’s amazing debut album Visual Audio Sensory Theater through one of the NIN forums I frequented, and although the lead single ‘Touched‘ did get some radio airplay I don’t think I would have checked it out if I hadn’t listened to recommendations for it first. Perhaps the same could be said of Devin Townsend, an artist outside the mainstream yet with a huge cult following. I purchased two albums by Devin after hearing him recommended online: City by his band Strapping Young Lad, and Biomech: Ocean Machine released under his own name. The two albums could not be more different: like night and day. I was intrigued by this artist who could put out some of the thrashiest metal ever and also some truly beautiful sounding music while never taking himself too seriously that he’s not afraid to venture into the unusual and the plain silly. Over the years it’s fair to say that Townsend has become my other favourite musician alongside Reznor, and I might not have even heard of him if not for listening to a few downloaded mp3s online based on recommendations on an internet message board.

As for other places I’ve encountered new music, walking into any music store or games store, or cafe or bar, or anywhere that music was playing and chances are I’d hear something that might pique my interest. The Shazam app on my phone came in handy on such occasions, and helped me identify songs by The Jezabels, CHVRCHES, and Nero, allowing me to follow up on those artists. Playing Songpop, an online guessing game about identifying artists and tunes quickly, also introduced me to artists like M83 while also helping me identify songs stuck in my head that I hadn’t heard in years and couldn’t recall the titles or who they were by. Online radio stations via Shoutcast and the like provided another useful source, as did downloads of BBC music-based comedy shows like Lee and Herring and Chris Morris’ Blue Jam. In the end I really didn’t need any radio station to tell me what songs to listen to or bands to check out. I managed to collect enough of an online music catalogue that I started to run out of space on my 160GB iPod classic. At times people would scroll through my iPod, commenting on how I had so much music that they hadn’t heard of. This was often said in judgemental way: like, why did I have music that they were unfamiliar with? Why couldn’t I have a normal playlist of current radio hits like everyone else?

Part Seven: Hold Your Head Up

I started to notice a pattern in regards to music and how people often approach it. I had come to believe that music was there to be discovered, to be appreciated, to be absorbed and retrieved again for the right occasion. Others didn’t seem to see it the same way. For them it seemed it needed to be pre-digested, and spoon fed to them by corporate record labels and radio DJs. Anything remotely ‘unfamiliar’ to them, and they’d spit it out and cry for the same old formula. I remembered the school kids who claimed to be NIN fans based on one song and one song only, something reflected in the average Triple J listener at the time who claimed the band was washed up because they weren’t playing that one song over and over like they expected. To this day I’ve encountered certain people who refuse to listen to ‘old’ music (i.e. anything made before 2000) and put down anyone who does. I’ve also encountered people who criticise bands and artists at concerts and festivals for playing songs they aren’t familiar with (I remember one who went to see Metallica live once but left early because they were mostly playing their ‘old stuff’ and not the newer songs they heard on the radio).

Maybe I’m being judgemental here, but that’s because I’ve been judged myself on my tastes. While I knew what I liked when it comes to music, it was always part of my ongoing isolation. You don’t make too many friends having a broad taste in music, just weird stares. ‘You shouldn’t be listening to music I don’t know about!’ their reactions seemed to imply, and in a way I believed them. Liking non-mainstream music meant I liked crap music, and therefore had awful taste in music. Sitting on a Contiki coach in Europe and the guide starts a ‘worst song competition’, and people on the coach start mentioning my name and saying I have an iPod full of them. Considering how much I loathed myself back then, I accepted that it was just another flaw that made me a freak. It became part of why I could never connect with anyone.

I’m not sure what changed this perception of myself, and how I began to see my passion for music as a strength rather than a curse. It was probably around the time I started using Spotify, and I started making daily playlists of the songs I’d listened to over the course of each day (I began my first playlist on November 1, 2013 and have done one for each day since). I figured no one would listen to these playlists but myself, but it felt good to create a public record of my listening habits. I guess I felt that I’d had enough of apologising for who I was and what I liked, and should instead embrace it all. I still got resistance from some people, but those people never had any respect for me anyway and weren’t worth trying to placate.

Accepting my passion for music as something to be appreciated rather than criticised was part of the process to accepting myself as a whole. I’d never been able to conform to what society deems as ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’, and for a long time I thought that was a fault on my part, until I realised that what society considers normal is an artificial construct and I didn’t really need to fit in anyway. I suppose it was around 2015 that my sense of self started shifting, particularly after learning about theories regarding discourse and performativity at university. In terms of music tastes, this just meant that those who disapproved of my interests were merely conformists who disapprove of anything outside their own experience, and that the fault lay with them, not me, for being unable to accept it.

Conclusion

So, what has being a music fanatic given me? A broad appreciation of different kinds of music for a start, obviously, but where has it lead me? Well, as mentioned earlier, seeing live music has been a huge motivator for me to get out and experience things for myself. Once upon a time the thought of attending a music festival would have filled me with horror, and yet in 2019 alone I attended five of them (in order: Falls Festival, Download, Coachella, Splendour in the Grass and finally Falls again). In a way that has helped me overcome some of my fear of crowds and to appreciate the atmosphere created by the music. Plus traveling to the other side of the world for Coachella has been on my bucket list for over a decade, so it was great to tick that off my bucket list.

I continue to find music through various sources. Spotify has playlists of new music that are updated weekly, and through that I’ve found quite a few artists that have become my favourites like Drab Majesty, Tropical Fuck Storm, and Slaves. At the same time I’ve made peace with Triple J and have been listening to them again since 2017. Coming back to the station there were a lot of artists and songs that I wasn’t familiar with, but I feel more open to it now than I did in 2001 (thankfully now with a lot less Limp Bizkit). While I probably don’t see eye to eye with the average Triple J listener (my votes in the annual Hottest 100 poll always reflect this) I still think there’s plenty of good music on the station (Eves Karydas, Confidence Man and Baker Boy being just a few examples), and I consider it an additional source of finding music now, rather than something competing with my tastes.

I’ve been able to use my interest in music to write some articles for an online music publication. In the end I don’t think I was the best fit for the publication: my reviews were decent but I was never very good at conducting interviews, which seemed to be the only type of work being offered after a while. Still, it was a worthwhile experience at least, and something I’m trying to do more of here on this blog without restrictions on genre or geographic location. In the end, I don’t know if my journey has specifically influenced my passion for music or if it’s just a reflection of my personality, but I guess my path to self acceptance has also included recognising that an obsession with music isn’t something to hide or be ashamed of, but something to be celebrated. For as long as I’m alive there’ll always be new music, as well as old music to be discovered, and being open to it all makes life much more worth living.