Dido changed my life

Dido changed my life.

Dido – Thank You, White Flag, Life For Rent, Stan (with Eminen) – yes, that Dido. She has changed my life.

I don’t suppose anyone – not least Dido herself – would have expected her music to be behind such an epiphany. How did it happen?

It started when I woke up in the middle of a BBC televised Radio 2 Live concert late one night. I’d fallen asleep during a particularly dull Match of the Day and was woken by Dido in full flow. I often fall asleep watching television. I close my eyes, with the intention of simply resting them and listening for a few moments . . . then it’s an hour later. I know it happens but I still do it. More than a few times, I’ve started watching a film, drifted off and woken up and continued watching, not realising until the end it’s a different film with different cast and plot.

Back to Dido. She was singing a song I know now to be called Friends. Dido’s usual gentle, mournful but appealing (to me) delivery was suddenly interrupted by a wild guitar break and even wilder drumming. I was hooked. And that’s always a cue for me to want to go buy it.

Trouble is, in these digital times, it’s been increasingly hard to buy new music. I like it on a physical medium, something I can touch, hold, read and smell – and possess. I’ve bought high-end equipment and so I can hear it at its best. Not for me Alexa or my laptop’s squawky speakers. 

This, some might say, obsession began in my childhood. I have assembled an array of vinyl (it’s too random to be called a ‘collection’) since my first singles at the start of the 1960s, gradually embracing LPs (albums as they became known).

No particular genre, just if it takes my fancy. And it’s probably as diverse as you can get. Sharing shelf space, Jimi Hendrix sits cheek by jowl with Heron Oblivion, Henry Cow, the Herd, Herman’s Hermits and Woody Herman. I also assembled CDs in the Dark Ages when records were few and far between. But in recent times, with the growth of mp3, I’ve missed out. And it’s left me feeling disenfranchised, as there’s a lot of good music out there, even to these ageing ears.

And Dido’s Friends, had taken my fancy. The worry I had was that it would only be available on mp3. So I was relieved to find that it was on a traditional vinyl album and, what’s more, on the shelf of my nearest surviving record shop.

Back home, on the turntable, I went straight to that track. But while sounding smooth and rounded, there was none of the drive from guitars and percussion that I’d imagined on the live show. Perhaps it was the way the record was pressed.

I have noticed that digital recordings sometimes don’t sound so good on analogue vinyl. So back I went and bought a CD version. No go. A little crisper, sharper, but none of what had first drawn me to the song in the Radio 2 session.

Desperate, I turned to YouTube and checked the performance online. The answer stared me in the face. The guitars were additional to the recorded version and the drumming came from a person not a synthesiser.

At first, dismay. And then, the epiphany.

I found I could plug my computer into my hifi’s pre-amp and, wow! The track came to life for me. With a couple of tweaks on the graphic equaliser, it sounded even better.

It was just a small step before I was Googling other live performances and listening to artists with an online presence only. What’s more, I started discovering tracks I don’t own or haven’t the space for. A new world of music previously unavailable to me. At my fingertips. In a decent quality. Online.

So late in the day, I have entered music’s digital age. And I’m excited at the discovery.

Dido, Thank You.

Friends is on Dido’s album Still On My Mind. (And the other tracks have hooked me too and are well worth a listen, I should add!)

Richard Smith’s first novel, Homeward Bound, is available on lone and from bookshops.