“I don’t like it.
Why don’t you like it?
I don’t like it.”
It’s a simple enough conversation, played out with a two year old, who doesn’t quite have the language development to articulate what she really wants to say.
Yet they are four words I try my hardest to stop Lauren from actually saying.
Sure there will be things that she won’t like, but it should never be the default position – as it often is with kids – with unimaginative adults; for me.
I was/am terrible at proclaiming my dislike for something. Look, textures, colour, squeamish sensation it leaves – all come before taste in deciding if I will try something. If I think I’ve once had something similar before, it means that I’ll discount everything else from that family of food groups – for life.
But when was the last time I actually tried the things I dislike – and how hampered are my choices based on distant, historical experiences that may or may not have actually been based in reality – or a preconceived view?
Prawns, mussels, sweet German wine, whisky, algebra, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of War of the Worlds – just some of the things that instantly spring to mind. I can’t remember trying them in the last 10 years – so how do I know that I do not like them now?
OK – so the last thing on that list of dislikes didn’t instantly spring to mind, but it is the basis for writing that typically, longwinded intro. I saw a tweet the other week from Jo Borg stating that she was listening to the War of the Worlds album. If you’re not familiar with it, the album is a musical adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Its cast includes Richard Burton, Phil Lynott and David Essex. It is a Prog Rock album.
A Prog Rock album. Hmm.
The reason for the dislike is simple. It was one of those albums that my dad owned. The sort of album that he would play and play and play. Over and over again. He did the same with Tracey Chapman and Dire Strait’s ‘Brothers in Arms’. He still does it with Paul Simon’s ‘Gracelands’. It’s as though he is trying to beat you in to submission, but in reality he does nothing but drive a wedge between you – and the object of desire he is trying to school you in.
He played War of the Worlds in the house. He played it in the car. He drove that wedge; that Prog Rock-laced tale of destruction – between me and Jeff Wayne.
Thanks to Spotify I now have the chance to revisit my youth. To go back and try the albums I thought I once hated – the artists I showed no real interest in – to see if the passing years and varying changes in taste have altered my view on their work.
In the case of the War of the Worlds, the answer is a resounding – not really. Ha!
Actually it is a massive no, but then there are parts of the album that did make me appreciate, or at least view it in a slightly different way. I loved the Burton narrative that runs all the way through it. It makes me want to seek out more of his films, his spoken word work – poetry, prose – that sort of thing. I found that the Parson is played by Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott. He seems to have a strange, almost annoying American accent in it – but he still comes through with a great singing voice.
It made me think about reading the book.
The most important revision was of the musicianship on the album. Most of it is overblown, near nauseating nonsense, but then there’s work on there – bass, keys, percussion – that flirts with a more late 70s disco/funk sound. You’ll find this on the track “The Artilleryman and the Fighting Machine”. All I could think when listening to that track was “how good could this be with a Moroder/Cowley/Kervorkian remix?” How good indeed!
I disliked the lead track “Forever Autumn” in my childhood, and that attitude has not changed. As the vocals kick in I found myself squirming in my bus seat – desperate to fast forward, but refusing; testing this new – can I learn to like it – theory for as long as possible. Albums, in the main, live and die by the quality of their lead tracks. This always kills it for me.
So it didn’t work. But this is not the end of this experiment. Onwards and upwards – or should that read downwards, in to the sea – for fish, most kinds of fish, are something I will readily admit to disliking without trying – without ever going back to.
But then, how do I really know if this view is true?
Why not try your very own War of the Worlds experiment today. Find an album, a food group – anything you can immediately claim to dislike, and see if that view still rings true.


