Jan 1: Welcome to a new blog for 2026

Music has always been part of my life. I have always been to see as many concerts as I can from an eclectic mix of bands (although life events have reduced their numbers over time due to reduced availability, plus the ever increasing cost of concert tickets compared to when I started going to live events in the 1980s). 

Having said that I've now got used to paying close to (and occasionally over) £100 for a ticket for some big-ticket gigs, but I wouldn't go to the extent that some fans recently did to secure Oasis, Radiohead etc. tickets.

The ticket below was from a concert which had perhaps the best opening of any live concert I've been to...

Peter Gabriel ticket from 1993 - Alan Parkinson - shared on Flickr under CC license

You can watch it here... treat yourself to six minutes of joy, and incredible vocal performances.

I used to have a very large collection of vinyl which sadly mostly had to make way when I last moved house in 2011 to a house with less storage. I think it would have been worth a lot of money had I kept more of it as there was a good range of albums, although they had mostly been played to death.

Ah well. 

Perhaps I'll go back to buying vinyl again when I retire... I still have a turntable and some decent speakers and amplifier - but nowhere to put it out at the moment.

I have a fairly large collection of CDs, which I mostly play in the car, or on my Bose sound system. I will still buy about 10 CDs a year for this purpose when I want to have a decent sound and not the compressed streaming option.

I subscribe to Spotify, and have done for well over a decade, which means I own less physical media than I might otherwise have done, but have also been able to access a range of music from artists who I would not have 'risked' spending money on - thankfully I didn't make too many 'mistakes' in my time buying physical media. I've had a few trials of Apple Music too. There are some people who point out issues with relying on such services for our music - the algorithm, the politics, the lack of proper payment for the artists involved.

There is also Bandcamp, where I can obtain higher quality downloads and buy CDs direct from artists, which lets them see a fairer proportion of the value of what is purchased.

In this blog, as the year goes on, I shall be sharing memories of bands I have seen, and also music that has been of particular importance to me. Many of these songs and albums date back to a particular period of time, or connect to particular places. 

They include Glastonbury, which was an experience... and for a week or so the largest settlement in Somerset.

Glastonbury from the hill - Alan Parkinson - shared on Flickr under CC license

I'll also share some pictures of some of my old tour t-shirts, and post on the anniversary of some of my favourite gigs or notable dates in music history or personal memories.

There'll often be connections to geography too of course... in the lyrics of the songs, the theme of the songs, the origin of the album (or musicians), the changing nature of gig-going, the venues, the politics and some other personal connections. 

Hence the name of the blog 'World of Music'. This will include a look at the music from particular countries, or which have connected with politics, the environment, particular places or landscapes or other geographical processes. 

One thing that is different to my other 20 blogs is that this one will very much welcome guest blog posts. Get in touch if you have an idea for something you'd like to write about and I'll send you a few more details of how you can do that.

I've already contacted a whole range of geographers and asked them to share their own musical memories and connections and will be filtering those in too. Carl Lee has already sent me the first tranche of a whole series of eclectic posts, and others have promised to share a guest post during the year ahead.

I'll also be adding lots of polls and Google Forms to compile a 'compilation tape' of your own geographical ideas. There'll be lots of potential for you to get involved and share your own musical stories - we all have them. 

Ultimately I hope this may lead to a resource exploring musical geographies that could be shared more widely.

It's good to know that my daughter also shares my love of live music, including a trip to Copenhagen last year to see one of her favourite bands: The Wombats, and Paris for Charli XCX, plus Latitude Festival of course (a very geographically relevant name). My son also has accompanied me on several recent gigs, and we are off to a few more during this year. My wife is very much an 80s girl and has seen the Pet Shop Boys many times over the years in particular.

For more details on musical connections, come and see Matt Podbury and I's session at the GA Conference in April 2026. More on that in a few day's time.

OK, let's press play on the blog, and drop the stylus into the groove. 

Oh, and there won't be any of that noise that the younger generation calls music... just proper stuff...