The beauty of music, no, really.

I walked into the sorting office, not really knowing what the package was. I collected it. I opened it.

I hadn't expected it. It was a year since I was sposed to get hold of it.

A vinyl album; a double album; a beautiful gatefold sleeve; heavy 180gm vinyl.

And I burst into tears.

It was the 28 Costumes record, Adventure Stories, which was originally meant to come out on Spank Records in 2006 or thereabouts. It didn't, and the tapes were hotly debated as to who owned them.

The band re-recorded it and self-released instead. It wasn't nice.

I didn't cry cause of that tho. It was that I was reminded of Jon, my friend, and record label boss, who loved the band and the people in it and died too young.

A reminder of some wonderful, and I mean wonderful, times at Spank Towers, his house-cum-office-cum-waifs-and-straysville.

And that awesome period in the early-mid 2000s when we all were right in amongst it. I mean, it is just incredible to think how embedded we all were in the music scene there. Every night really we could go out and see bands that we knew, or were on our label or a friend's label, and the unity and excitement and potential seemed endless.

Today, about a month after I picked up the record that was issued as a tribute to Jon - a beautiful tribute, in every way - I managed to bring myself to listen to it. It was too painful before today. There's a song called Hymn on it, which sounds like Beach Boys, and that is bringing me tears again. 

I don't mind the tears. It means that things mattered to me and us and that they still do.

Amidst all my angst and confusion at being alive this is a powerful reminder that we mattered, collectively. And, that I do too.

It is a privilege to be present in the company of this wonderful art. To be able to experience all these things, and to see in my mind's eye the people and hear the music and remember the first time I heard Inside/Outside at a gig in the Masque Theatre and how amazing a song it was and is. And somewhere, underneath the clutter of all the hours and days and months and years and decades I can still hear the buzz in the audience. The snippets of conversations. The cheers and claps. The clinking of glasses.

The look shared by me, and Jon, and Tracey who was managing them on that day, of sheer joy. These times, man, they're precious. There's no reason to ever know at the time that this is something you'll remember for your whole life. Music - art - doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists only because there are humans that are moved to make it, and to share it, and humans to be moved by it in turn. Humans can do so many beautiful things. And sometimes transcendent things. It is often the only thing that keeps me optimistic. And easily-forgotten.

I won't let any politics, any dunderheaded bullshitters, any dogmatic intolerant wankers, ever obfuscate this laser truth. Because nobody can own it, and that's what makes it so precious and precarious.

I raise my glass to creation. The one thing that humanity can really be proud of, because it encapsulates all the empathy, wonder, potential, skill and love in the world, and because it is always different and new in its way. I raise my glass to my friends; when music exists, nobody really ever dies do they. I see my friend in my sleep often. We talk sometimes. It's real. It feels no different to that moment at that gig. Maybe that was a dream, too.

(I don't really do record reviews anymore - I've written probably 500 in my career, or more - but it strikes me that perhaps I've just written one.)