Is it possible to no longer appreciate music?

I never liked music as a child. This is probably because I grew up in the 1980s, a decade when Top of the Pops would play the unholiest trinity of Bananarama, Culture Club and UB40, bands I would be more inclined to identify with, if they were from recently-reclassified dwarf planet Pluto.

I had a slight soft spot for Queen, enjoyed the occasional Rolling Stones track (Paint It Black, since you asked) and even liked the Folk Music of the Spinners and the Dubliners (I was a strange eight-year-old) but by-and-large, I would rather have watched a Bruce Lee movie than listen to Bono wailing on about Pride (In the Name of Love).

Of course now, with a more refined musical palette I'd rather Bruce Lee Nunchaku me to "death by a thousand Chuks" than listen to Bono.

I just couldn't understand how people connected with music, how they had songs for when they were happy, songs for when they were sad, and songs for getting ready for a night on the lash.

To me music was in three categories:

1) Rubbish American rock by people with long bleached hair and leather singing words like "Baby, baby ahhhh lurve you yeaahhhhhhhhh".
- How could a Wigan lad whose interests included Ninjas (purely in a platonic sense) and the girls in the Kays catologue (purely in an onanistic sense) identify with that?

2) Really camp gay men dressed as girls. I refer you to my interests of Ninjas and underwear models.

3) Rubbish pop by people in denim. See above.

I went through my entire high school years thinking music (apart from Queen who obviously never fitted the category of really camp gay men dressed as girls) thinking music was all just cock rock, nancy boys and prissy poptarts.

Then there was the music my dad liked.

1) Eric Clapton. Old man with beard. Jacket sleeves rolled up, playing 167 minute guitar solos. Not good.

2) Actually, he only seemed to like Eric Clapton.

And then I discovered Oasis, though not as lucratively as Alan McGee discovered Oasis.

One listen and I feel in love with their music...

/I hate the books you read and all your friends
Your music's shite
it keeps me up all night/

/She's got a sister
And god only knows how I've missed her
On the palm of her hand is a blister
And I need more time/

/So I start a revolution from my bed
'Cause you said the brains I had went to my head
Step outside the summertime's in bloom
Stand up beside the fireplace
Take that look from off your face
You ain't ever gonna burn my heart out/

/I know a girl called Elsa
She's into Alka Seltzer
She sniffs it through a cane on a supersonic train
She done it with a doctor on a helicopter
She's sniffin in her tissue
Sellin' the Big Issue/

This was music that really spoke to me. Music from the Northwest of England, most of all music from the heart. Music about girlfriends having rubbish records, girls whose sisters you fancied, music about things I actually knew like Gin and the Big Issue, not things I could never experience in a million years like the things that occured on the back of a Harley in a Bon Jovi video.

This was music written by people like me for people like me (scruffy northerners who used words 'shite' and never called girls things like 'honey' or 'baybee'). And I liked it. And I wanted more.

I discovered Pulp, and lo-and-behold (as my mum would say) I found more songs I could identify with, like the one about the posh girl wanting to act all working class and stuff.

Finally I had sad songs, happy songs and even getting ready songs. At last I was a music fan, still some four years away from plucking up the courage to buy something as poncey and southern as the NME but a music fan nonetheless.

And then came the second era of my life as a music fan...