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BEATS OF LOVE 

181. Failure is Always An Option: Glorious Adventures on the Beta Band Front Line and Other Tales by Steve Mason

By 1997 I was thoroughly jaded with clubbing, until the Beta Band's Champion Versions EP rewound me all the way back to the first time I heard Loaded. 

I was lucky to catch them live early at the Roadhouse and Uni so witnessed the idiosyncrasy and humour that made them so special up close. I travelled far and wide to fall under their spell of redemptive eclecticism. Getting red-eyed with them at the South bar after their farewell performance in Manchester. I knew they were going to be missed, especially by me, as I was already feeling old by then. 

His best music is fragmented, unselfconsciously so, and the same is true of his best writing. Seeping out in candid tales haphazardly revealing a droll humour. Tales that thankfully encompass more than the Beta Band years. He downplays his own bravery by judging past decisions through a present-day lens, as if the risks he took were obvious rather than radical. His argument that 'selling out' is an obsolete concept stings a little. Quietly dismantling the idealism that made me feel so old by 2004.

He's especially hard on himself when letting us into the drifts of his mind. It's a little too near home but his brilliant gift for story telling makes even the most depressing episodes highly entertaining. The peaks and troughs of his life don't come at you in linear and obvious ways either, instead springing out of the pages in a surprising manner. 

Reading this does what only the best music writing can: it rewinds the music, making it sound new again.