For more than four years I’ve wanted to write about the first LP I bought.

Over a year ago I finally squeezed out a first draft. Didn’t really like it and the file sat there on the desktop staring dolefully back at me whenever I glanced around for blogging inspiration.

The second version stripped back some of the waffle weighing down v1.0, but remained stilted and somehow inauthentic. How, after so much music and memoir writing could I not manage to extract something living out of this life-changing experience? My first ever album!

Perhaps the problem was, it was a bigger story than I’d thought and I just wasn’t acknowledging that. So version three created sections—numbered in suitably pretentious roman numerals—to define the essential themes.

I

Existential Theme 1

The first album I bought was entitled Death Walks Behind You. Being now in middle life, the theme of mortality…