Of course, something like SID music, or gameplay like Wizball, was alien to ears and eyes less impressionable than ours. That added to the mystique. I think it still does.

 

After all this time, my attempts to convert people to SID-dom generally end in “ooh, it’s blip-blop music”. Which is grossly unfair to it, but it’s such an entrenched position, even something as groundbreaking as my own “Crystal Dreamscapes” album, fails to dislodge the prejudice.

 

Today’s music is boring. Today’s films are mediocre. Today’s personalities are anodyne. It’s not because they’re crap, so much as they play by the rules. Back in the 1980s, there were no rules about how Computer music was meant to be. The genres were fluid. Anyone had a chance of changing the rules to suit themselves and beating the system. Every issue of Zzap!64, someone changed the rules. Personalities were more important than the software houses that hired them. They named their price, and it was paid.

 

God, I miss those days.

 

So I try to recreate them. But I only have limited success.

 

Why?

 

Because it’s impossible to convey the excitement I have to get it into people who weren’t there. The most we can do is try to break a rule here and there, or subvert some rule and have a giggle. But the money required to change the world is a lot more than it used to be.

 

Back then, a maverick could beat the system, and the system was worth beating. These days, the system itself is a load of sh*t. In the 80s, the top ten meant something. In the 80s, record companies were proper record companies. Now a Maverick can go his own way and stick two fingers up at the system: but the system is so complicated now that there’s no way you can achieve anything like your goals. 

 

There are more TV channels.

 

There are more newspapers.

 

The big record companies have become meaner, more conservative and more frightened.

 

The alternative is scraping a living selling through a dirt-poor indie label, where even success is measured in hundreds rather than thousands of copies of something. Or uploading your tune into a download-sale space that’s got millions of tracks in it.

 

It’s even worse in games. Developing for minor platforms with a dubious revenue share and so much competition it hurts. Every man and his dog thinking he can program or do music.

 

The world sucks. Go be with your family and be happy. It’s the only thing that really counts.