I’m not disagreeing, but hasn’t every previous generation said the same thing? Of course, they were wrong and we’re right, but how do we actually go about proving that?

I recently caught two bands I’d never heard of because I was in a strange-ish town with nothing better to be doing. One were incredibly young kids making perky leftfield pop and brilliant. The other were in their thirties doing brooding alt.country and also excellent. TBH had the ages been swapped around, I suspect that neither band would’ve seemed quite right. (specific to those bands, not the type of music.) So, why can’t we all just get along – age be damned.

Of course, I’m looking forward to the next bunch of 10 year olds making music that sounds like 80 year olds I stumble across.

Oh, absolutely. You can’t predict what people will like and it’s pointless to even try. You’d just end up making stuff that doesn’t do it for you, and that doesn’t do it for anybody else either. Much better to do stuff that you’re pleased with, even if you’ll decide it’s crap ten minutes later.

Professor Batty: I think surf music’s probably one of the most entertaining kinds of music to play :)

I still make music, you know. The band ended when I left Scotland, but I think we were at our peak, and it would have been downhill from there. We got to play with The Fall, and the last CD we did was fantastic – I’m not sure we could have bettered either of those things. I think I might have got bored with it and forced MLG to do an industrial album, or demanded we get a string section, or something stupid like that.

Like yourself, I like pissing about at home with computers. That’s how I started making music. An awful lot of the stuff I start never gets finished, because there comes a point about halfway through, where I can tell what it’s going to sound like when it’s finished, so there’s no need to actually do it.

As for playing live – I find I’m indifferent about it. I loved gigging, and can honestly say I never had stage fright. But these days I’m making music that can’t be played live, and don’t feel the need to do it (despite being asked to now and again).

You’re right about life getting in the way as well. The best stuff I ever did was put together in a few weeks just before I left Glasgow, when I was living on my own with no money, no job, and tons of time on my hands. For once the music came out like it sounded in my head. But there’s no way I’ll ever be that focused again.

I think to make music for yourself, you’ve got to be quite Buddhist about it. Never even consider, far less worry, what other people will think of it. The Residents had it right with their “Theory of Obscurity”. The pop star thing isn’t an issue, because I gave up on that *very* early on. Each and every experience I had with “the industry”, no matter how tangential, left a bad taste in the mouth. I’m no salesman, and promoting my music was my equivalent to your stage fright. I found it easier to promote other people’s. My own website is so unpromoted, even I forget it’s there sometimes.