Latecomers, You’re All Right: On Discovering Music After Everyone Else

In the year Jeff Buckley was sucked into a Mississippi slackwater channel and drowned, the masses mourned, sparrows spontaneously fell from the sky, bells out in the church tower chimed and Richard Kingsmill wept into his microphone. Me? I’d never heard of the guy. At that stage, the sophistication of my music knowledge was summed up by my CD collection: my most recent purchases had been that Chumbawumba single and Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. But the cool kids had started listening to Triple J, and now, lemming-like, I had started to tune in too.

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