Most of those copies went adrift as I moved between residences, and would probably be worth a mint now, but one item that still graces my bookshelves and is regularly used as a reference is ZigZag founder Pete Frame’s Rock Family Trees, worth every cent of the $US20 you’d pay somewhere like Amazon (last time I looked $25 through the antipodean Fishpond). There are, predictably, ways to revisit those magazines, but I’m currently disinclined to shell out the $US200 they’re asking for a twelve month subscription to Rock’s Back Pages.
Those sources pointed me towards plenty of stuff I was already familiar with, along with the latest developments in areas that didn’t have the same appeal, but when I managed to find something interesting, it wasn't exactly easy to get hold of. Around the time I was finished at University and back at work, the place I'd been buying my music closed down its downtown operation, shifted to the suburbs for some reason, and died a lingering death.
On top of that, the budget wasn’t totally conducive to eclectic extravagance in the music department and the loss of the old circle of acquaintances meant that if I wanted to hear something I was going to have to buy it myself.
There were other interests getting in the way as well. School principals arriving on the doorstep have been known to herald significant changes, first with a transfer to the Palms, and at the start of 1975 I found out that I was going to be coaching the Year Six cricket team. But Alec, I protested, I know nothing about coaching cricket.
Don't worry, came the reply. You'll learn.
And learn I did.
In retrospect, some of the same personality quirks that promoted Music Freakdom kicked in. Where someone else might have been content with taking the more or less mandatory two practice sessions per week, and stand out in the middle for two hours on Friday afternoon, I found myself becoming intrigued by the finer details of Australia’s national game, the way you might embark on a quest to run down, for example, a complete set of bootleg recordings from a Neil Young or Bruce Springsteen tour.