Unlike the boys I knew, who seemed to be allowed to like whatever records they wanted, the girls at my school used music as a weapon of domination and control. I remember being interrogated by a girl whose sister was in year eleven, and so lent her a kind of cachet.

�So you like Dinosaur Jr, do you?� she said, looking over her shoulder for an audience. �Which songs of theirs do you like? Can you actually name any?�

�Freak Scene.�

�And?�

I didn�t know any others. It would have killed me to admit it, but my entire taste in music was, at that point, based on �The Best of Indie Top 20� I had bought it in an effort to change myself, to be more like the deranged girls in the sixth form with the dreadlocks and the nose-rings. Everybody�s got to start somewhere, and I was desperate for the kind of authenticity that only years of listening could bring, but on a very low budget. To my friends it all seemed like an affectation, a borrowed eccentricity, and they weren�t going to let me forget it.

I got into the habit of recording the John Peel show after I had gone to bed, so that I could play it the next day while I did my homework. To be honest, I initially found most of it unlistenable, but gradually the songs began to find a focus in my mind, and I came to understand their dynamics, to hear the music through the rush of noise.

One night, he played a session by a band I hadn�t heard of before, Babes in Toyland. I liked the name, so I put my pen down and turned up the volume. I was greeted with a startling sound, a bored American drone over eerie guitars: I know the sugar plum fairy, her name is�Mary. It made laugh, but it scared me too, particularly when the guitars got a lot heavier and faster, and the screaming started.

The whole thing had this unnerving reek of the underworld, a sense of danger and transgression. It was possibly the most marvellous thing I ever heard, bloody and brutal and beautiful. I don�t think I even liked it at first, but it fulfilled everything I wanted it to, and most importantly it was mine, a small obscure corner that I could mark out for myself.

Over the years, my ear has tuned into it, and it doesn�t sound so monstrous anymore, so subversive and impenetrable. I learned to love it and so many other records like it, and now I�m surprised � although quite pleased - when people find it frightening. Nothing�s changed: the women I know now are still as feeble in their musical tastes as they were at school, following the routes of least resistance, the Coldplays and Keanes, every time. But I�m no better, keeping my music away from my friends so that I don�t intimidate them. I sometimes think I learned all the wrong lessons from school.

Catatonic is on Babes in Toyland�s �To Mother� album. Their collected John Peel sessions are also available on CD.

Katherine May is 27 and lives in Rochester, Kent. She studied Social and Political Sciences, and then went on to be - via several fairly random jobs - a Sociology teacher. She's now mainly a lady of leisure, although she keeps herself busy by organising a writing group, The Medway Mermaids. To read her work on the showcase section of this site, click here.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.