Introduction

I spent much of 2018 writing a blog about The Fall – The Fall in Fives – and am moving on to a new blog looking at the albums called ‘You Must Get Them All‘. The album project is likely to feature longer, less frequent posts, as I intend to do a bit of proper research to support what I write (rather than the largely ‘spur of the moment’ opinions that were the main feature of Fi5). Whilst I am in no way tired of either listening to or writing about The Fall, I thought it might be interesting and stimulating for me (and, in an ideal world, readers) to have a little side project that looked at other artists.

Hence, Never Quite Got / (Re)discovered (and its snappy abbreviation NQGRD, which I’m sure everyone will be referring to as ‘nuh-qug-urd’ before too long).

I’ve always written a lot about music, although before Fi5 this was largely confined to music forums and communication with friends. One of the things that I really enjoying doing is reviewing mixes/playlists – something I’ve often done on both the Fall and Wedding Present forums. Reviewing a set of (mostly) unfamiliar songs is always an intriguing pleasure.

Also, I was at least partly inspired by Jamie’s Oh! Blogger site, in which he recently wrote (very well – I recommend the blog) about an artist that I’ve never really connected with (see my first ‘proper’ post, up before too long, hopefully). I’m sure many of us have artists that we just don’t “get” somehow: those that others rave about, appear on ‘best of…’ lists, etc. but make you feel like you don’t quite see what the fuss is about. So that’s partly what I want to write about, but I didn’t want to limit myself to that: hence the “(re)discovered” part, giving me the opportunity to also write about things that are new to me or that I’ve lost touch with and returned to.

Not exhaustive in any way at all, but here’s a completely off the top of my head and rather random selection of artists that fit into my ‘never quite got’ category. I don’t necessarily dislike their work, but I’ve either never had the inclination to investigate properly or haven’t been much taken with what I’ve heard:

• Frank Zappa
• Pere Ubu
• Fairport Convention
• Scott Walker
• The Replacements
• Gang of Four
• Echo & the Bunnymen
• Arctic Monkeys
• British Sea Power
• St Etienne
• Blur
• Throwing Muses
• Sufjan Stevens
• Nick Drake
• The Stranglers
• Guided By Voices
• LCD Soundsystem
• Devo
• The Cardiacs
• Leonard Cohen

If anyone has a burning desire to point me in the direction of an album that they feel might help me ‘get’ said artist, then please do share it with me and I’d be delighted to have a crack at writing about it. But the first one is already earmarked…

As my followers on here and Twitter, etc. are all Fall fans (I presume!) at the moment, then any sharing with non-Fall-loving acquaintances would be much appreciated. Cheers!

Here’s a list of the posts so far:

NQGRD #001: Wire – Pink Flag
NQGRD #002: Throwing Muses – The Real Ramona
NQGRD #003: Public Image Ltd – First Issue
NQGRD #004: 40 Minutes (January 2019)
NQGRD #005: 40 Minutes (February 2019)
NQGRD #006: thank u, next
NQGRD #007 – black midi
NQGRD #008 – A Mix Tape From mutatedpony
NQGRD #09 – Bruce at 70
NQGRD #10 – Pere Ubu (Turn of the Century)
NQGRD #11 – Relationship Songs / Nostalgia Playlist