3 Colours Red - Beautiful Day

|
This is one of a handful of songs that I recall as being the first MP3 I ever downloaded. I'm not 100% sure what the first one was; there are a few possibilities downloaded a few weeks apart which have kinda blurred together in my hazy teenage memory.... I will post them all, over time, with a view to working out which one was 'my first'.  It'll be like that show 'Mama Mia', except without the old troll who conquers menopause by singing every inane thought that comes into her head whilst leaping deftly around a Greek villa like an advert for Tenna Lady.



3 Colours Red were a UK band I had only heard once on a late-night music show.  We didn't have cable TV at home (this is back when there was only one 'MTV' channel, and it still showed music videos - just about...), but I would stay up late filling my musical boots whenever asked to sleep over at a mate's place, remembering the songs I liked and then noting them down to look up online when I we next 'logged on'.


So my musical awakening (or something less gay sounding) happened around the same time as I discovered MP3s, which probably makes me the poster boy for illegal downloading.  You know when they talk about all the kids growing up not realising that by downloading music we're stealing artists' livelihoods? Or how 'we wouldn't steal a car so why would we download a movie'? Well, that's me.

Downloading an MP3 was like finding money.  You almost couldn't believe you had gotten away with it.  Here's this beautiful noise coming from the tinny PC speakers (this was WAY before the iPod was a twinkle in Steve Jobs' eye) and you hadn't even paid for it....well.....apart from the cup of coffee it'd cost to get into the local internet cafe; our 28.8k modem just couldn't hack MP3s, but they had an ISDN line.  128k, I think.  PER SECOND.  Blazing!

For the first time, I wasn't constrained to having my musical taste drip-fed to me by Radio 1 (which, in those days, actually played some pretty bitchin tunes... Kevin & Zoe on the Breakfast Showwww...........).  I could download a song by a band I'd only heard of, and decide whether I liked them enough to go seek out their latest album in the local Our Price...

So, here's maybe the first song I ever downloaded:

0 comments:

Post a Comment