Hex enducation by the Fall was recorded in Iceland and Hitchin in 1982 and I used to love to love this record. I loved everything about it ; the aspergers scrawl of Mark E Smith on the cover, the ridiculously dense lyrics, the endless branching off, a meandering riverful of nonsense; the nothing heard before drone and groan of the music, and of course the thick white vinyl.
Now I knew my mate Paul liked it but I didn’t know anyone else who did, and we never talked about it.
It was a private obsession, it spoke to me about my imaginary world , fuelled my own paranoia , writ large my personal consiparcy theories, and provided the dum dum sountrack to my teenage years.
But it all went wrong. 2002 I bought the 20th year CD MAXI bookset thingy…listened to the pointless extra tracks, read the intellectualised sleeve notes. But worst of all read some sad reviews in the Sunday Big sheets (Times, Observeless big thing) where pointless critics wittered on about the album and how it provided the dum dum soundtrack of their teeenage years 
This had the effect of mediating my experience and taking the once personal and commoditising into something to sell. My teenage self had be categorised, packaged, segmented and now sold back to myself and others of similar ilk. And the end result of this I used to love this album but now it just does my head in.
