I was sat listening to Supertramp's first album the other day, and whilst that might sound like a weird way to open a blog post about the band worriedaboutsatan, it actually got me thinking loads about everything. Y'see, we used to listen to this album very specifically on the way either to or from gigs - we'd have CD wallets bursting with the most random stuff we could find to make the journey go quicker - stupid novelty songs, random long forgotten nu metal albums, and after I raided a bargain bin for 50p, Supertramp's first album.
It's actually a nice little thing, just fairly inoffensive 70s folksy prog sort of stuff - very 'Canterbury Scene', but it soundtracked quite a large chunk of satan's gigging life. So when it came on again, I instantly remembered driving up the M1 at 3am after a gig, or stuck in rush hour traffic in London, or empty motorways in the dark - it's bloody vivid stuff, this Supertramp album haha.
But as much as I loved those days, it also came with the realisation that you have to put those behind you, or risk being swallowed up in nostalgia completely.
I can sit and think about how driven the band was back than - how much we wanted to push everything and how we'd have lazer focused goals of getting on in 'the biz' and things like that, but now as a balding, portly 41 year old, it smacks you in the face at how much those days are just no longer there. And that's fine! These things always tend to go this way - you can't stay on the road forever, you can't keep harking after a music business template that simply doesn't exist anymore, and you have to move on and change.
It's hard, re-wiring your brain, no-one wants to do that, it's nice living in your memories, and having ideas about stuff, but sooner or later, you'll have to do it or you'll literally go insane. Your priorities change, your ideals change, your idea of 'making it' changes, it all changes - you just have to be ahead of the curve in that change. For me, it's meant having gigging take a back seat and just focusing on making records and just selling them to people who find it.
If you'd have told me 10 years ago that it goes this way, I'd be horrified, but now I'm here, it's alright y'know. Just keep buying the records, lol ;)
