If the categories discussed in Hughesy’s Music Classifications seem slightly perplexing it’s probably because they’re an attempt to make sense of something that I, personally, find perplexing.
Several years ago I was sitting at the pub, expounding on some musical matter when The Rod Man fixed me with a flinty glare. Hughesy, he wanted to know, why don’t you like normal music?
Which, of course, begs the question of what constitutes normality anyway....
Interestingly, I regard the stuff I like as normal music but that’s where I, as an unashamed and certified Music Freak, part company with the majority of the population.
In The Rod Man’s musical universe Normal Music probably approximates what Hughesy would label as Mass Market and Mainstream, which is where the majority of the population supposedly land some time in their mid- to late-twenties.
Once they’ve gone through the regular preliminaries in the process of growing up (sequentially, Kiddie Stuff, Teenage Noise, Something For The Girls To Dance To and Mating Rituals) most people have other fish to fry and music understandably takes a back seat.
After all, for most people the important issues probably involve career paths, mortgages and raising two-point-something kids. Given those considerations, most people are probably happy to absorb whatever the major players in the Music and Entertainment Industry decide to dish up.
On the other hand we can probably sort the remaining portion of the population who aren’t satisfied with that situation into three categories, the Music Freak and two related species, the Obsessive Fan and the Collector.
There’s a fair degree of overlap between the three, but there are also fairly clear distinctions between each of them and either of the other two.