I am a grown man who cycles around playing music out of a Bluetooth speaker. I have been for about the last two years now. I’m not what you’d call a loud person – I’m normally quite unassuming – but get me on a bike and I will upend that by playing Chic’s “Everybody Dance” pointlessly loudly to people who didn’t ask for fizzy disco on a Tuesday morning, thank you very much.
I don’t take the piss. I don’t have a big log of a speaker, just a small palm-sized fun nubbin. It doesn’t pack much bass, but high-pitched instruments like flutes sound decent enough. See me rollin’, and there’s a good chance you’ll get an unsolicited blast of Seventies jazz-funk flautist Bobbi Humphrey, for example. Brittle and mildly coruscating Eighties indie also sounds OK, so in a departure from the usual sounds of the summer, I spent a good chunk of the last season merrily cycling along to Wire, Felt, Pixies and especially The Fall. I don’t think I was being an aloof, attention-seeking weirdo, but honestly, I can’t tell any more.
