The other day I was digging a hole and listening to Midge Ure and for some reason this made me think about the church I used to go to in the 1990s.
There's something about the digging of a hole - the slow, relentless progression of it - that lends itself to a kind of meditative reflection. The mind is freed to wander over old memories and ideas and, hang on, you've got your hand up. Yes, what is it?
Why was I listening to Midge Ure? Oh! Really? That's your question? Not, "Why were you digging a hole?" or "Why did you go to church?" Or even, "Will there be a break during this story or are we here for ages?"
Why was I listening to Midge Ure?
In truth it's not a bad question. And I'm quite relieved not to have to answer the one about why I was digging a hole because I don't have an answer to that. Loads of people have asked me, and the best answer I can come up with is that I'm in an abusive relationship with soil. It has a hold over me that I can't explain. Ahh, soil. You earthy, crumbly mistress.
Where were we? Oh yes. Throughout that sunny afternoon, as I chipped away at the rocky ground and sieved out an inexplicable amount of stone, I did so to a playlist I'd specially made of Midge's solo albums. I called it 'Mature Cheddar' after an excellent joke in the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special, and I don't mind saying I was having a lovely old time.
The playlist was a thing of simplicity and elegance: all the solo albums, in order, starting with 1985's The Gift and running through to 2014's Fragile. Not a best of, not a curated list. Just a logical, chronological progression. I think there's something Midge would like about that. He strikes me as someone with an eminently logical brain and I reckon that if he'd been there on that hot Summer afternoon, watching me worry away at the edges of my excavation, he'd have nodded approvingly at my choices.
He'd have spoken encouraging words, in that intoxicating, gentle Scottish burr, saying things like, "Good work on that hole, Rob" and, "This is a very well organised playlist," and "It's very hot. Shall I go get us some Mint Cornettos from Tescos?" That would be ace. Yes please, Midge Ure.
There's something about a chronological trip through a series of albums you know well. It's impossible not to be drawn back to the time of their first hearing. Simple triggers hit; one song ends and the first notes of the next one chime in your mind before they sound in reality. Associations rise up: Midge's first album, The Gift on vinyl, wobbling on my dad's turntable. Pure on cassette tape, fluttering away as I sat on the floor of my student bedroom with a girl who wasn't that interested in me and didn't have much time for Midge's third album either. Breathe spinning on CD as I painted the walls of my first house. Fragile, twinkling out of an iPod in the same garden where I would, years later, dig an inexplicably massive hole.
These albums are burned into very specific times from my past. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is this:
Midge Ure is not an artist who gets a lot of airtime. You might hear If I Was on the radio now and then, but that's your lot. I bet most people reading this have never heard of the albums I've mentioned and are backing slowly away, thinking, "He's making this up. I bet he does think Midge Ure watches him digging in the garden, and he probably talks to him as if he's there, and draws pretend albums on cardboard with crayons."
This does look like I drew it myself, doesn't it? But it's real. No, it is!
The second reason is this. I don't really play his albums that often either. I know - it feels rude to say so, doesn't it? Especially after Midge went for Cornettos. Sorry Midge. I feel like we can be honest with each other, though, after all we've been through. These are not albums I put on that often, and so their primary association has remained in the past, their melodies interwoven with the hopes and failures of my younger self.
And as I listened on that hot Summer afternoon, and dug deeper and deeper into my garden, I wondered why that was. Here I was, having a perfectly lovely time listening to the synth based rock/pop stylings of 'Answers to Nothing' in the afternoon sun, all the while knowing that this was a brief phase. What's up with me? Do I love this music, or not?
Well, the answer can be found, I think, back at the beginning of this piece where I said it reminded me of the church I used to go to. Back in the late 80s and early 90s I was part of a church that had a quite straightforward - some might say naive - view of the world. We were pretty sure that everything inside the church was pure and brilliant and full of virtue, while everything outside of the church was a right old mess that needed sorting out. We, of course, were the ones best qualified to sort things out.
This was, in retrospect, a staggeringly arrogant way to look at the world. There was no room for consideration of other cultures, or of a more complex appreciation of what might constitute 'truth'. There was just a sort of underlying assumption that people's lives were terrible if they didn't believe the same sort of stuff that we did. When I think back on the version of myself that practiced that brand of faith, I'm filled mostly with shame and regret.
However, there is something I miss about those times. Yes, it was often outweighed by insensitivity and a misplaced confidence in the power of thrusting leaflets at people and shouting, "Beware Satan!" But one thing was good, and that was this: We believed in something, and we were unashamed about that belief.
As I've got older I have, I hope, shaken off the single minded arrogance of that version of Christianity. But perhaps in doing so I've also thrown away some of that joyous, naive freedom that lets you just believe in stuff. That freedom to be uncool and unafraid of how things look.
Those Midge Ure albums are a long way from the tangled mess of my experience with the church. But they are full of belief, and a kind of unselfconscious desire to make the world better. Song after song proclaims ways to be kinder, to strive for peace, to trust and hope for the future. And he does it in the simplest of ways. There never seems to be a point where Midge stops and thinks, "Hmm, is this line a little basic? What will David Bowie think?" He just throws it in there, saying things in the most direct and passionate way he can imagine.
There's a sort of charming, earnest politeness to most of Midge's songs that just delights me. It doesn't matter what he's talking about - new love, the madness of war, the need for us to understand one another in a divided world - he approaches it with a sort of wide eyed optimism that I find beguiling. He's comes across as a very nice man with a guitar, saying, "Hey, how about we try being nice to each other?" in a variety of ways.
And that's why I both love these albums and struggle to fully embrace them. They are so very sincere and polite and uncool. And while I like that about them, there's a foolish bit of me that needs things to be dirtier and more complicated. I listen to simple messages of hope and for some reason find myself embarrassed. I threw that bit of me away when I left that church.
And yet here it lingers, in these gentle, wilfully naive pop songs.
The hole is dug now. No, I'm still not sure what it's for. And these albums will drop away for a while, as this phase passes. The ghostly presence of Midge Ure will fade from my garden, melting away like a Mint Cornetto on a hot day.
I hope that one day I'm strong enough to be properly uncool. Until then, Midge, please don't stop doing this. I don't know if there is anyone else.
I've edited down the playlist, in case you're moved to check out some of what I'm talking about. You can find it here: Mature Cheddar
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