There are so many memories connected to these records. As I
say, I’ll explain in the fullness of time, but my advice is to search out these
records if you’re in any way drawn to them. There’s gold in them thar hills,
son.
I’m not saying these are the best albums ever made, as such
a distinction doesn’t make a lot of sense. One person’s freedom fighter is
another’s terrorist, after all. No, these are just the albums, and I suppose,
by extension, the groups or artists, that I really love. Every album on this
list is vital for some reason. It may not be perfect - in fact, none of them
are - but something about each of them makes them special and uniquely great in
some way. I hope you listen to them and love them as much as I have, mate.
Lots of love, breathless excitement, sunny days and a
lifetime of discovery,
Dad x
12. The Beatles - Revolver
11. Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
People who don't get this won't get it. Jazz is intentionally 'difficult' music. You're not supposed to get it instantly. It's made either by highly-trained, surgically precise players of a chosen instrument, or by impressionistic people guided by some vague 'muse' (God, heroin, God on heroin etc etc).
Those people are very intelligent and have, by definition, grown tired of orthodoxy. You aren't supposed to get what they mean instantly. That's not the point. Leave that shit to someone easier, whose intentions are more straightforward, like, say, Madonna. You buy a Madonna record, you know what you're getting - pop music.
With Kind of Blue, released to some considerable fanfare in 1959, nobody knew what they were getting. Some still don't. Basically the structures Miles Davis did away with left everyone in the room with a bunch of chord changes to follow, and a couple of melodies that everyone liked, and ran with it. No mistakes, no do-overs, just space, improvisation and great noises. I defy you to listen to track one, So What? and not be drawn in. It's beautiful, instructive and, I think, meditative and spiritual music. It makes me calm but inquisitive, somehow. The fact that John Coltrane, at 22, is keeping up with and in the case of Freddie Freeloader, bossing the great Miles Davis is testament to the younger man's sheer fucking speed on that horn of his. But it's the quiet ones you've got to watch. The star of the show is Bill Evans and his magic piano. What touch that man has. I'd have So What? at my funeral, I like it that much.
50. Frank Sinatra - Sinatra at the Sands
The sassiest, most amusing Mafia-endebted pissup soundtrack in history, right from Frank's immortal introduction: 'Joining us now, live from the bar, Mr Dean Martin...'. Just really good singing, backed up by Quincy Jones at the wheel of Count Basie's ridiculously good orchestra. Delightfully seedy, you can hear the heavyset, slightly worse-for-wear Goodfellas cackling between tunes.
49. Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Terrifying, beautiful, haunting and incredibly well-produced. Fucking dark as the dungeon it may be, but Liz Fraser and Dot Allison, especially, bring the light. Never has an album's atmosphere been better encapsulated by its artwork, either.
48. John Coltrane - Trane Blues
In which the great man takes time off from knocking Miles Davis into a cocked hat to explore the black notes. This is a tough, noisy, angry hour in the company of one of the great talents of 20th Century music, at the height of his powers. Packs more into two bars than anyone, which can get a bit wearing, but technically, he's a master.
47. Television - Marquee Moon
Machine-tooled, precision punk before such things existed. So long and nerdy, the solos are listed inside the album liner notes, like prized, glimmering artefacts in a museum. For all its langorous running time and slow tempos, there isn't an ounce of fat on anything here. Scalpel-sharp guitar, pithy lyrics and a sense of tired grumpiness that every teenager ever can identify with.
46. Led Zeppelin - III
I have to put all three of Zeppelin's opening trilogy in here. I just have to. Whereas Zeppelin 1 is a what-if-aliens-landed touchstone, and II is so iconic they should sell it to the National Trust, III might be my favourite of the three. It's laid-back but not overly prone to that 'my woman, she done me so bad etc' slow blues that grates on me sometimes. It sounds like the best rock band in the world, stoned out of their minds, sitting in a field, busking, at times. It's also got Immigrant Song on it, which will certainly give you a kick in the pants first thing in the morning. Valhalla, I am coming, indeed.
45. Led Zeppelin - II
Arguably one of the greatest albums in any genre. Robert Plant will annoy you. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones will tempt you to take guitar and/or bass lessons, and Bonham will frighten the shit out of you. This is the 'please back up, the biggest, loudest guitar riff in the universe is coming through' moment. My favourite bit of their whole back catalogue is probably the breakdown in the middle of the Lemon Song, where John Paul Jones (their bassist) takes over for a couple of minutes. But my best advice is to get yourself some good headphones and some weed, and stick Whole Lotta Love on as loud as you can stand it. You're welcome.
44. Led Zeppelin - I
Dude. This is the sound of the blues turning into rock and roll as we understand it nowadays. Swaggering, shirtless frontman who looks like a lion. Cadaverous, possibly Faustian smackhead guitarist. Classically trained bass player who's better on the piano. Cave troll on drums. Recorded in three days (!). I have no idea what it might have been like to be into this in 1969 when this came out. The Beatles were terrified of them. Zeppelin sold more records in 1969 than them... and the Beatles... put together. Not bad for a bunch of chancers on their first album, eh?
43. REM - Monster
This is a very personal list, so I'm allowed some doggerel. King of Comedy, track three on this album, is a rubbish piece of music - I admit it. However, about 80 percent of what remains is beautiful, caustic, nasty, danceable and very, very 1995 indeed. It reminds me of house-parties, not talking to girls, and realising I had some great friends. Ask your uncle Jon about REM. Then pull up a chair, as he'll expound as to why they are his favourite band of all time for 21 hours straight.
Strange Currencies is so good it could have been on a Beatles album. Star69 is utter pre-Grindr filth. Bang and Blame is actual fun, despite not having a tune at all, really. And in Let Me In they have a three minute ode that imagines Kurt Cobain bargaining to be let into Heaven. These stars, they drip down like butter, and promises are sweet. Just collossal.
42. REM - Automatic For the People
The only realistic neighbour to Monster is this, the album that got REM the global acclaim they deserved. Sooo many great songs here. Let's be honest, they're all great, apart from New Orleans Instrumental No.6, and even that's pretty as a picture. Find the River and Nightswimming are, again, up there in the Knocking the Beatles Into a Cocked Hat bracket, and will last 100 years after you shuffle off, mate. Iconic, really.
41. Jon Hopkins - Immunity
40. John Grant - Queen of Denmark
39. Four Tet - Rounds
38. Kanye West - Yeezus
37. Daft Punk - Discovery
36. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
35. Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther
34. Paul Weller - Stanley Road
33. Queen - Live Magic
32. Michael Jackson - Off the Wall
31. The Cinematic Orchestra - Ma Fleur
30. The Cinematic Orchestra - Durian
29. Van Morrison - Moondance
28. Metallica - Hardwired
27. The Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole
26. The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico
25. The Verve - A Northern Soul
24. Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
23. Prince - Sign o’ The Times
22. The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses
21. The Strokes - Is This It?
20. Van Morrison - Common One
19. The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street
18. U2 - Achtung Baby
17. DJ Shadow - ...Endtroducing
16. Lenny Kravitz - Are You Gonna Go My Way?
15. Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon
14. Radiohead - King of Limbs
13. Radiohead - Kid A
12. The Beatles - Revolver
What can you say that hasn't been said about this? How about 'Love To You's a bit shit, innit?' That aside, this has In My Life, Got To Get You Into My Life, Taxman, I'm Only Sleeping, Eleanor Rigby and Tomorrow Never Knows on it as well, so on balance, it's not all bad(!).
Tomorrow Never Knows is the best thing the best band there's ever been ever did, in my opinion. It's not categorically the best single of all time - that's either River Deep, Mountain High or Good Vibrations or, of course, Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane. Uh-oh, I feel another top 20 or so coming on...
But it is, for its sheer bravura, sheer chutzpah, sheer imagination and sheer insistence that speeding Macca up until he sounds like a seagull is a great plan that I love. Nobody in Hermann's Hermits was doing this. Their contemporaries were the Stones, but at this point Keef and his pals were still an awful faux-blues band in unflattering knitwear. They were about to get brilliant in 1966, but the Beatles were already far, far ahead of them. If the Sixties are the Himalayas, all tremendous peaks and next to them, some forgettable valleys, Tomorrow Never Knows is probably K2, and Good Vibrations is Everest.
Question: How do you know if you're Paul McCartney?
Answer: If you made a fairly loose, one-chord dance tune with your mates, covered in backwards bits and chanting, and and 50 years on, people still stop you in the street and tell you it sounds like the future - congratulations, you're Macca. Everyone else is inferior to you as far as songwriting or sonic experimentation goes. Alright, apart from Phil Spector. Maybe.
Yeah - Revolver is good. So good, in fact, that it's slightly better than...
Tomorrow Never Knows is the best thing the best band there's ever been ever did, in my opinion. It's not categorically the best single of all time - that's either River Deep, Mountain High or Good Vibrations or, of course, Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane. Uh-oh, I feel another top 20 or so coming on...
But it is, for its sheer bravura, sheer chutzpah, sheer imagination and sheer insistence that speeding Macca up until he sounds like a seagull is a great plan that I love. Nobody in Hermann's Hermits was doing this. Their contemporaries were the Stones, but at this point Keef and his pals were still an awful faux-blues band in unflattering knitwear. They were about to get brilliant in 1966, but the Beatles were already far, far ahead of them. If the Sixties are the Himalayas, all tremendous peaks and next to them, some forgettable valleys, Tomorrow Never Knows is probably K2, and Good Vibrations is Everest.
Question: How do you know if you're Paul McCartney?
Answer: If you made a fairly loose, one-chord dance tune with your mates, covered in backwards bits and chanting, and and 50 years on, people still stop you in the street and tell you it sounds like the future - congratulations, you're Macca. Everyone else is inferior to you as far as songwriting or sonic experimentation goes. Alright, apart from Phil Spector. Maybe.
Yeah - Revolver is good. So good, in fact, that it's slightly better than...
11. Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
People who don't get this won't get it. Jazz is intentionally 'difficult' music. You're not supposed to get it instantly. It's made either by highly-trained, surgically precise players of a chosen instrument, or by impressionistic people guided by some vague 'muse' (God, heroin, God on heroin etc etc).
Those people are very intelligent and have, by definition, grown tired of orthodoxy. You aren't supposed to get what they mean instantly. That's not the point. Leave that shit to someone easier, whose intentions are more straightforward, like, say, Madonna. You buy a Madonna record, you know what you're getting - pop music.
With Kind of Blue, released to some considerable fanfare in 1959, nobody knew what they were getting. Some still don't. Basically the structures Miles Davis did away with left everyone in the room with a bunch of chord changes to follow, and a couple of melodies that everyone liked, and ran with it. No mistakes, no do-overs, just space, improvisation and great noises. I defy you to listen to track one, So What? and not be drawn in. It's beautiful, instructive and, I think, meditative and spiritual music. It makes me calm but inquisitive, somehow. The fact that John Coltrane, at 22, is keeping up with and in the case of Freddie Freeloader, bossing the great Miles Davis is testament to the younger man's sheer fucking speed on that horn of his. But it's the quiet ones you've got to watch. The star of the show is Bill Evans and his magic piano. What touch that man has. I'd have So What? at my funeral, I like it that much.
10. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
I went through a phase of buying a lot of albums on spec in 1999-2001. I was in a job I loved - reviewing games for hardly any money - and living at home in New Milton. Essentially, I was a big kid. 21 years old, still getting ID'd in pubs all the time, smoking like a chimney, skinny as a rake. All my food shopping was taken care of for me by my mum. I had no debts, and a strictly 9-4.30 job.
Paragon Publishing were paying me 10,500 a year (first six months at £10k!) and I was clearing about £750 a month. £100 a month in rent. The 0808 train cost £5.40 return, and got me from New Milton to Bournemouth for about 0840. I'd then jog down the hill to Paragon's offices on St Peters Road in town, opposite a horrible shiny bar called Bliss which, I hope, no longer stands. Lunch would be in the shops or the office, procured from one of the sarnie shops nearby. I was off on the tick of 5pm, the better to make my train at 1721. I got home at 1800 most nights, to a plate of food on the table. I was, in short, fucking lucky.
I'd roll in a 0855, burn my fingers on a horrible free instant coffee from the machine, and go and slouch at my desk. My mag team were arranged around me in a square, as if my editor Roy was at the 'head of the table' distantly opposite me, and Paul the Staff Writer (charming, but stank like a dying horse) sat to my right, but at right-angles to me.
On my left, a very beautiful Graphic Designer called Nicky. A woman with a twinkle in her eye. A woman with impeccable musical taste. A woman who loved comics, and Chuck D, and Star Trek: The Next Generation, and jungle, and cutesy Japanese stuff like the Powerpuff Girls. Nicky Bartlett ruled. She probably still does.
At 26, she was also waaaaay-hey-hey out of my league, Give-up-go-home out of my league. She didn't live with her pazzers. She lived in a little flat in Bournemouth. I couldn't even drive. No chance. But what 21 year-old is going to let that get in the way of a good old-fashioned infatuation, eh? Not me. I duly set about getting obsessed, taking care to fall into all the same crappy self-delusions I had done previously, to all-but guarantee my mission's eventual failure.
Nicky was A Proper Woman. I was A Boy. She also arrived with a preinstalled in-office relationship - with a Proper Boyfriend called Steve. Steve was nice. Tall, good-looking, clean-limbed. Fit. Looked a bit like a surfer. Wore a lot of Carhartt shit. Mind you, didn't we all?
Steve was Better. He was also Good at His Job. He was older than Nicky by a handful of years, and senior to her, and this gave their relationship a conspiratorial, weirdly mutually-beneficial, quid pro quo edge I couldn't read at the time.
I always thought they were breaking up, but they never did. He was inattentive some times, I thought, to what I considered her incredibly-important needs. I loved Nicky, ergo, I hated Steve. But I couldn't possibly replace him in her mind because I'm, well.. I'm me. You get the idea.
There was no tension in the air, because, even though I had been to Nicky's house up the road from the office for dinner, I had been out with her socially, and I knew and liked her friends. She even met, and liked, many of my friends. As these things do, slowly dawned on various people that I was into her.
But, there was always Steve. Steve knew his stuff. He was better than me, to a laughable extent. I knew I had no game where Nicky was concerned. I asked her out once, though, just so I could cry a lot about it, I think. Nicky played a pivotal role in helping me to exist when Lucy was ill. She is an incredibly emotionally astute person like that. Nicky told me to try out Bob Dylan, and DJ Shadow, and we shared a copy of The Avalanches record.
Anyway, she said no. I spent a year moping, physically not being comfortable in the same half of the office as her; avoiding her in town; not comforting her when, briefly, she broke up with Steve. Congratulating them both when they reconciled. Eventually, I couldn't take being around Nicky any more. Even going out with someone else while I worked at Paragon didn't work. My mum got sick of my moping, and said I could always think about leaving, because the job was shit anyway.
Eventually, I volunteered for joblessness, poverty and worry, rather than watch Steve and Nicky being happy. I gave up the glow around her because I knew I had to find one of my own. Just eight years later, in 2008, I did.
So anyway, one lunchtime I was bored so I popped into a music shop around the corner in St Peters Road and bought the newly-released Discovery by Daft Punk and Highway 61 by Bob Dylan, simply because Nicky liked the former, and the latter had a cool cover.
Both are immense, happy records that make me a bit wistful and maudlin. I can't listen to either without thinking of either Lucy, who died six months prior to that shopping trip, or Nicky, who opened my eyes to dance music and what it might mean to wake up in the morning and want to see someone, just to say hello, or talk about last night's TV, or whatever, so much that it physically aches in your chest.
If that feeling persists, as it did in my case, you need to change things before you go mad. In my case, I had to take my whole life apart like a fucking broken radio to turn that feeling off. Then I had to resign, get drunk for a day or two, cry, and get over it. Then I had to spend six months looking for a new job, find a new job in London, move there, get made redundant, spend another four months wondering what to do, go and teach kids English in Asia for six months, get homesick, find a job in Bath at Future, and move into a B&B for a month before I found a flat.
On my first full day at Future, a familiar voice said: 'Ello - what are you doing here?'. Yup - Nicky worked in the building. I actually laughed out fucking loud at how poetically awful fate can be. Then I started to think about fate in the same way that other people do about God. I still do. Twas meant.
Nicky and Steve had, while I was away, left Bournemouth and relocated to - yes - Bath, where they worked in a larger, faintly better version of the old office on St Peters Road. Me and Nicky were civil, but the cat was out of the bag, really. I saw her around, but we lost touch. I haven't spoken to her since about 2005, and I haven't missed her, as such, but I know she's still with Steve, and happy, and doing her Nicky thing. I think of her sometimes, fleetingly. I probably always will. I'm sure people carry these bits of their lives around with them, replaying bits randomly to themselves in their heads. When I do that, the songs in my head are by Bob Dylan, the Avalanches, DJ Shadow and Daft Punk.
I went through a phase of buying a lot of albums on spec in 1999-2001. I was in a job I loved - reviewing games for hardly any money - and living at home in New Milton. Essentially, I was a big kid. 21 years old, still getting ID'd in pubs all the time, smoking like a chimney, skinny as a rake. All my food shopping was taken care of for me by my mum. I had no debts, and a strictly 9-4.30 job.
Paragon Publishing were paying me 10,500 a year (first six months at £10k!) and I was clearing about £750 a month. £100 a month in rent. The 0808 train cost £5.40 return, and got me from New Milton to Bournemouth for about 0840. I'd then jog down the hill to Paragon's offices on St Peters Road in town, opposite a horrible shiny bar called Bliss which, I hope, no longer stands. Lunch would be in the shops or the office, procured from one of the sarnie shops nearby. I was off on the tick of 5pm, the better to make my train at 1721. I got home at 1800 most nights, to a plate of food on the table. I was, in short, fucking lucky.
I'd roll in a 0855, burn my fingers on a horrible free instant coffee from the machine, and go and slouch at my desk. My mag team were arranged around me in a square, as if my editor Roy was at the 'head of the table' distantly opposite me, and Paul the Staff Writer (charming, but stank like a dying horse) sat to my right, but at right-angles to me.
On my left, a very beautiful Graphic Designer called Nicky. A woman with a twinkle in her eye. A woman with impeccable musical taste. A woman who loved comics, and Chuck D, and Star Trek: The Next Generation, and jungle, and cutesy Japanese stuff like the Powerpuff Girls. Nicky Bartlett ruled. She probably still does.
At 26, she was also waaaaay-hey-hey out of my league, Give-up-go-home out of my league. She didn't live with her pazzers. She lived in a little flat in Bournemouth. I couldn't even drive. No chance. But what 21 year-old is going to let that get in the way of a good old-fashioned infatuation, eh? Not me. I duly set about getting obsessed, taking care to fall into all the same crappy self-delusions I had done previously, to all-but guarantee my mission's eventual failure.
Nicky was A Proper Woman. I was A Boy. She also arrived with a preinstalled in-office relationship - with a Proper Boyfriend called Steve. Steve was nice. Tall, good-looking, clean-limbed. Fit. Looked a bit like a surfer. Wore a lot of Carhartt shit. Mind you, didn't we all?
Steve was Better. He was also Good at His Job. He was older than Nicky by a handful of years, and senior to her, and this gave their relationship a conspiratorial, weirdly mutually-beneficial, quid pro quo edge I couldn't read at the time.
I always thought they were breaking up, but they never did. He was inattentive some times, I thought, to what I considered her incredibly-important needs. I loved Nicky, ergo, I hated Steve. But I couldn't possibly replace him in her mind because I'm, well.. I'm me. You get the idea.
There was no tension in the air, because, even though I had been to Nicky's house up the road from the office for dinner, I had been out with her socially, and I knew and liked her friends. She even met, and liked, many of my friends. As these things do, slowly dawned on various people that I was into her.
But, there was always Steve. Steve knew his stuff. He was better than me, to a laughable extent. I knew I had no game where Nicky was concerned. I asked her out once, though, just so I could cry a lot about it, I think. Nicky played a pivotal role in helping me to exist when Lucy was ill. She is an incredibly emotionally astute person like that. Nicky told me to try out Bob Dylan, and DJ Shadow, and we shared a copy of The Avalanches record.
Anyway, she said no. I spent a year moping, physically not being comfortable in the same half of the office as her; avoiding her in town; not comforting her when, briefly, she broke up with Steve. Congratulating them both when they reconciled. Eventually, I couldn't take being around Nicky any more. Even going out with someone else while I worked at Paragon didn't work. My mum got sick of my moping, and said I could always think about leaving, because the job was shit anyway.
Eventually, I volunteered for joblessness, poverty and worry, rather than watch Steve and Nicky being happy. I gave up the glow around her because I knew I had to find one of my own. Just eight years later, in 2008, I did.
So anyway, one lunchtime I was bored so I popped into a music shop around the corner in St Peters Road and bought the newly-released Discovery by Daft Punk and Highway 61 by Bob Dylan, simply because Nicky liked the former, and the latter had a cool cover.
Both are immense, happy records that make me a bit wistful and maudlin. I can't listen to either without thinking of either Lucy, who died six months prior to that shopping trip, or Nicky, who opened my eyes to dance music and what it might mean to wake up in the morning and want to see someone, just to say hello, or talk about last night's TV, or whatever, so much that it physically aches in your chest.
If that feeling persists, as it did in my case, you need to change things before you go mad. In my case, I had to take my whole life apart like a fucking broken radio to turn that feeling off. Then I had to resign, get drunk for a day or two, cry, and get over it. Then I had to spend six months looking for a new job, find a new job in London, move there, get made redundant, spend another four months wondering what to do, go and teach kids English in Asia for six months, get homesick, find a job in Bath at Future, and move into a B&B for a month before I found a flat.
On my first full day at Future, a familiar voice said: 'Ello - what are you doing here?'. Yup - Nicky worked in the building. I actually laughed out fucking loud at how poetically awful fate can be. Then I started to think about fate in the same way that other people do about God. I still do. Twas meant.
Nicky and Steve had, while I was away, left Bournemouth and relocated to - yes - Bath, where they worked in a larger, faintly better version of the old office on St Peters Road. Me and Nicky were civil, but the cat was out of the bag, really. I saw her around, but we lost touch. I haven't spoken to her since about 2005, and I haven't missed her, as such, but I know she's still with Steve, and happy, and doing her Nicky thing. I think of her sometimes, fleetingly. I probably always will. I'm sure people carry these bits of their lives around with them, replaying bits randomly to themselves in their heads. When I do that, the songs in my head are by Bob Dylan, the Avalanches, DJ Shadow and Daft Punk.
9. The Beatles - Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
I didn't actually own this until everything went digital for me in about 2006. It was, however, part of the fabric of my childhood. It contains Sergeant Pepper's, which I think my Mum played a lot when I was in the womb, because I've always known both that, Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane for what feels like longer than I've been on the Earth.
There are many obvious highlights to this, but A Day in the Life and, especially, Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite are my favourites.
I had a paper round for two years, when I hauled myself and 144 copies of the New Forest Post around Barton on Sea once a week for a princely £4.36. That paper round made me extraordinarily fit, tired, and hot a lot of the time. I got through it thanks in no small part to my cassette copy of disc one of The Beatles 1967-70, otherwise known as The Blue Album, which is basically the best compilation album ever made. On it, you had most of the big hitters from Pepper. Even now, if I listen to Penny Lane on a hot day, I am back there, hauling newspapers nobody wants up Barton Common Lane in stifling temperatures.
Once I got hold of the full album I realised the best bits weren't even on The Blue Album, and I even have a screenprinted replica of the original poster that inspired John Lennon to write Mr Kite. It's (hopefully) up on the wall somewhere in Hillpark, sending out good lysergic vibes, ready to be goggled at when you're old enough.
There are many obvious highlights to this, but A Day in the Life and, especially, Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite are my favourites.
I had a paper round for two years, when I hauled myself and 144 copies of the New Forest Post around Barton on Sea once a week for a princely £4.36. That paper round made me extraordinarily fit, tired, and hot a lot of the time. I got through it thanks in no small part to my cassette copy of disc one of The Beatles 1967-70, otherwise known as The Blue Album, which is basically the best compilation album ever made. On it, you had most of the big hitters from Pepper. Even now, if I listen to Penny Lane on a hot day, I am back there, hauling newspapers nobody wants up Barton Common Lane in stifling temperatures.
Once I got hold of the full album I realised the best bits weren't even on The Blue Album, and I even have a screenprinted replica of the original poster that inspired John Lennon to write Mr Kite. It's (hopefully) up on the wall somewhere in Hillpark, sending out good lysergic vibes, ready to be goggled at when you're old enough.
8. David Bowie - Blackstar
I can't listen to all of it, but the opening ten minutes of this - a space-jazz career-retrospective plea for clemency from cancer itself - are some of the best, saddest moments in music. To orchestrate your own demise so elegantly, and to fill the resultant album with brave, jazz-inflected songs about mortality - recording entirely in secret with one of New York's leading jazz drummers - is just so Bowie. He hid in plain sight, a hugely well-known enigma to the end. Look at the artwork of this album under the right light and you'll see the constellations on the sleeve that are referred to in the lyrics, too. Amazing.
Every year on Bowie's birthday, some sort of release appears from the vaults. A couple of years back, No Plan - a heartbreaking little ballad clearly written and designed to be released after his passing - appeared. It seems that Thomas Newton came back, set up a shop where Bowie used to live, and just... lived quietly. The man was a fucking genius, and the world is a more stupid, literal and boring place without him in it. RIP.
My favourite bit of that is at 6:12 - when the song finally ends. There is a second and a half of stunned silence, which is the sound of the paradigm shifting slightly, and Radiohead becoming the best rock band in the world.
The album it is part of is uncompromising, beautiful, complicated, worried, optimistic and bleak. I hated its maudlin, whiny guts from 1997-1999, when, one night, I listened to Subterranean Homesick Alien, and it all fell, rather beautifully, into place.
That said, I think King of Limbs is an occasionally better, frequently more accessible record, but the risks being taken here, the newness of it, and the fact that their follow-up, 2000's Kid A, was even braver, makes them artists in the truest sense. Radiohead are a jazz band, an uncompromising electronic group, a proper rock band with big-festival choruses and delicate, acoustic balladeers, all at the same time. This song contains all of their facets, but works brilliantly. Fucking hats off, lads.
Every year on Bowie's birthday, some sort of release appears from the vaults. A couple of years back, No Plan - a heartbreaking little ballad clearly written and designed to be released after his passing - appeared. It seems that Thomas Newton came back, set up a shop where Bowie used to live, and just... lived quietly. The man was a fucking genius, and the world is a more stupid, literal and boring place without him in it. RIP.
7. Radiohead - OK Computer
The Darker Side of the Moon, basically. Pre-millennium tension really was a thing, and in 1997, it was crystallised by this, an seven-minute, four-movement fear-suite called Paranoid Android. Bastard-hard to play live, Radiohead did so regardless for the first time on Later... with Jools Holland. No-one had heard it before this performance, and up until this point, Radiohead were known for being a promising, noisy indie band with big ideas and one enormo-hit that nearly broke them. It's fair to say things changed fairly rapidly for them after this:
The Darker Side of the Moon, basically. Pre-millennium tension really was a thing, and in 1997, it was crystallised by this, an seven-minute, four-movement fear-suite called Paranoid Android. Bastard-hard to play live, Radiohead did so regardless for the first time on Later... with Jools Holland. No-one had heard it before this performance, and up until this point, Radiohead were known for being a promising, noisy indie band with big ideas and one enormo-hit that nearly broke them. It's fair to say things changed fairly rapidly for them after this:
My favourite bit of that is at 6:12 - when the song finally ends. There is a second and a half of stunned silence, which is the sound of the paradigm shifting slightly, and Radiohead becoming the best rock band in the world.
The album it is part of is uncompromising, beautiful, complicated, worried, optimistic and bleak. I hated its maudlin, whiny guts from 1997-1999, when, one night, I listened to Subterranean Homesick Alien, and it all fell, rather beautifully, into place.
That said, I think King of Limbs is an occasionally better, frequently more accessible record, but the risks being taken here, the newness of it, and the fact that their follow-up, 2000's Kid A, was even braver, makes them artists in the truest sense. Radiohead are a jazz band, an uncompromising electronic group, a proper rock band with big-festival choruses and delicate, acoustic balladeers, all at the same time. This song contains all of their facets, but works brilliantly. Fucking hats off, lads.
6. David Bowie - Station to Station
Nazis! Dead Nazis! Undead Nazis on coke! The occult teachings of renowned 1920s Satanist Aliester Crowley! Weimar Republic-era fascist imagery everywhere! Babbling about Jewish mysticism while keeping samples of your urine in the fridge for the witches who regularly freefall past your windows in the middle of the night! The return of of the Thin White Duke, throwing darts in lovers' eyes - a horrid creation who nearly drove Bowie mad! The Duke is sustained by the adulation of his zombified followers, and is rendered numb and incapable of love by the cocaine he takes to keep himself alive! All to a deathly, corpse-funk backing track that sounds quite like Chic, if Studio 54 was a crypt, not a disco! And that's just track one! Jeeeeeesus! Ooops, my nose is running.
Many books have been written about Abbey Road, and the best is Revolution in the Head by Ian Macdonald - which I have a copy of somewhere. I suggest you check it out. The last 24 minutes of this album are still the high watermark of British pop songwriting, as well as being amazingly well-made, played and, ideas-wise, absolutely teeming. It's a lovely thing. I envy you, as you have yet to listen to it, love it and keep little bits of it in your heart. Also, if ever anyone says Ringo wasn't a good drummer, the drum solo at the end is proof he was no slouch.
Nazis! Dead Nazis! Undead Nazis on coke! The occult teachings of renowned 1920s Satanist Aliester Crowley! Weimar Republic-era fascist imagery everywhere! Babbling about Jewish mysticism while keeping samples of your urine in the fridge for the witches who regularly freefall past your windows in the middle of the night! The return of of the Thin White Duke, throwing darts in lovers' eyes - a horrid creation who nearly drove Bowie mad! The Duke is sustained by the adulation of his zombified followers, and is rendered numb and incapable of love by the cocaine he takes to keep himself alive! All to a deathly, corpse-funk backing track that sounds quite like Chic, if Studio 54 was a crypt, not a disco! And that's just track one! Jeeeeeesus! Ooops, my nose is running.
5. Oasis - Definitely Maybe
Oh, well, if it isn't the album that set me on the path to righteousness :). Purchased entirely on the spur of the moment, purely because Some Might Say proved that they could write songs that I liked and didn't always sound like the Beatles, this record changed my life.
It is the reason I am friends with my friends. It soundtracked my first proper kiss (thanks, strange girl in Berlins Nightclub, Bournemouth). It taught me guitar and bass, as well as how to walk like a cool motherfucker, how to dress, what haircut to have, what to smoke, what to drink, who to care about, who to talk to, what job to have and a lot more besides.
It is, from track one to track nine, absolutely the best debut album since the Stone Roses' first one five years earlier. It's ferociously loud - purposely louder than anything else on your pub jukebox on release. It has a devil-may-care positivity and plenty of outright malevolence. Like Exile on Main Street, it passes the alien test easily. That is to say, if aliens landed and needed to know what 'rock'n'roll' was, you could just play them the first ten seconds of Exile or Definitely Maybe and they would need no further instructions.
Perhaps best of all, it has Liam in full-on battering-ram mode throughout. It also contains the only truly great solo in the Oasis canon in Live Forever. If you don't want to learn that, sell your axe immediately. I have been trying for 24 years and still don't know it.
Definitely Maybe was a godsend, creating a scene, and a legend, almost instantly. It has been surpassed many times since, but to be 16, into rock music and have this thing fall into your lap was pretty special.
My generation had its Woodstock moment two years after it came out at Knebworth, and I was there too. You should Google that. If it was a goal, this album would be a 35-yard thunderbastard. It is the sound of five kids dreaming of becoming the best, coolest band in the world, and then only going and doing so through sheer force of will and volume. I love it.
4. Miles Davis - Bitches’ Brew
Bit showy, this one. But I genuinely love it. I don't know enough about Miles Davis, but this and Kind of Blue I understood the moment I first heard them. The opening track on this is electric, dark, has bits of guitar I could hang my hat on right away, and does that mysterious swinging thing I've grown to love. It's also fierce music, and the production sounds oppressively hot, somehow - like it was all played under great strain. The musicians here are working hard, their knitted brows clearly audible. It's dark, strong stuff, this - all car-chase funk guitars, heavy brass and bass, and portent.
It is the reason I am friends with my friends. It soundtracked my first proper kiss (thanks, strange girl in Berlins Nightclub, Bournemouth). It taught me guitar and bass, as well as how to walk like a cool motherfucker, how to dress, what haircut to have, what to smoke, what to drink, who to care about, who to talk to, what job to have and a lot more besides.
It is, from track one to track nine, absolutely the best debut album since the Stone Roses' first one five years earlier. It's ferociously loud - purposely louder than anything else on your pub jukebox on release. It has a devil-may-care positivity and plenty of outright malevolence. Like Exile on Main Street, it passes the alien test easily. That is to say, if aliens landed and needed to know what 'rock'n'roll' was, you could just play them the first ten seconds of Exile or Definitely Maybe and they would need no further instructions.
Perhaps best of all, it has Liam in full-on battering-ram mode throughout. It also contains the only truly great solo in the Oasis canon in Live Forever. If you don't want to learn that, sell your axe immediately. I have been trying for 24 years and still don't know it.
Definitely Maybe was a godsend, creating a scene, and a legend, almost instantly. It has been surpassed many times since, but to be 16, into rock music and have this thing fall into your lap was pretty special.
My generation had its Woodstock moment two years after it came out at Knebworth, and I was there too. You should Google that. If it was a goal, this album would be a 35-yard thunderbastard. It is the sound of five kids dreaming of becoming the best, coolest band in the world, and then only going and doing so through sheer force of will and volume. I love it.
4. Miles Davis - Bitches’ Brew
Bit showy, this one. But I genuinely love it. I don't know enough about Miles Davis, but this and Kind of Blue I understood the moment I first heard them. The opening track on this is electric, dark, has bits of guitar I could hang my hat on right away, and does that mysterious swinging thing I've grown to love. It's also fierce music, and the production sounds oppressively hot, somehow - like it was all played under great strain. The musicians here are working hard, their knitted brows clearly audible. It's dark, strong stuff, this - all car-chase funk guitars, heavy brass and bass, and portent.
3. Radiohead - In Rainbows
The a capella bit in the middle of Reckoner makes this Radiohead's best album... if that doesn't get you, nothing will:
'Because we're separate, like ripples on a blank shore. Reckoner, you can't take it with you.'
Utterly hopeless-sounding, but at the same time pretty groovy, and, yes, danceable even. This is Radiohead swinging it. Tersely, with black armbands on. Possibly at a wake. But still swinging it.
The preoccupations that follow Radiohead around - death, technology-driven collapse, physical limitation, claustrophobia, our moral passivity etc etc - are all here. Codex is as direct an entreaty to suicide as I've heard, but knowing them, it's probably not about suicide at all.
But Videotape, with its 'secret beat' and hope that the gates are open when you get there, and 15 Step, which should just be called Profoundly Unsettling, really, are modern masterpieces. There's even - whisper it - a dash of outright sexiness in Nude and, especially, Jigsaw Falling Into Place. But it's Radiohead Sexy: all anguish, guilt and regret. They want to have sex, but might cry afterwards. Or potentially, during.
And then there's Weird Fishes (Arpeggi), which is the best song about drowning, alcoholism, rebirth, hope, fear and/or shipwrecks you'll hear all year. The sheer complexity of the playing, both in Weird Fishes and throughout the album, is worthy of your time on its own. Then there's the fact that amid all that 'difficult stuff' there are simple songs about love, life, youth, hope, boozing, fucking, dying and the simple pleasures of a swim in a lake... It blows my mind. In Rainbows is a masterful piece of work, and I could not go more than, ooh, two weeks or so without listening to a bit of it.
The a capella bit in the middle of Reckoner makes this Radiohead's best album... if that doesn't get you, nothing will:
'Because we're separate, like ripples on a blank shore. Reckoner, you can't take it with you.'
Utterly hopeless-sounding, but at the same time pretty groovy, and, yes, danceable even. This is Radiohead swinging it. Tersely, with black armbands on. Possibly at a wake. But still swinging it.
The preoccupations that follow Radiohead around - death, technology-driven collapse, physical limitation, claustrophobia, our moral passivity etc etc - are all here. Codex is as direct an entreaty to suicide as I've heard, but knowing them, it's probably not about suicide at all.
But Videotape, with its 'secret beat' and hope that the gates are open when you get there, and 15 Step, which should just be called Profoundly Unsettling, really, are modern masterpieces. There's even - whisper it - a dash of outright sexiness in Nude and, especially, Jigsaw Falling Into Place. But it's Radiohead Sexy: all anguish, guilt and regret. They want to have sex, but might cry afterwards. Or potentially, during.
And then there's Weird Fishes (Arpeggi), which is the best song about drowning, alcoholism, rebirth, hope, fear and/or shipwrecks you'll hear all year. The sheer complexity of the playing, both in Weird Fishes and throughout the album, is worthy of your time on its own. Then there's the fact that amid all that 'difficult stuff' there are simple songs about love, life, youth, hope, boozing, fucking, dying and the simple pleasures of a swim in a lake... It blows my mind. In Rainbows is a masterful piece of work, and I could not go more than, ooh, two weeks or so without listening to a bit of it.
2. David Bowie - Low
Zavid features quite heavily in this list, as well he might. His death - discussed variously elsewhere - rocked me quite a bit. I have to confess, while he was alive, he seemed important, a bit of a visionary, all that jazz - but not pivotal, for some reason.
In death - and in particular in the release of Blackstar - his true ability to seize the zeitgeist returned one last time. This man, I suddenly realised, was extraordinary. His constant revision of what it meant to be a pop star, the endless striving for something outside the mainstream but equally accessible by it, made him iconic. He had a knack for bringing high-concept art and middlebrow culture together, and making everyone suddenly take an interest in odd, outre things - kabuki theatre on Aladdin Sane; Weimar totalitarianism in Stage and Station to Station; dancing your arse off in stadiums with Let's Dance. The man did what he wanted with bits of culture that he found interesting, and made us all fans of it, once we'd processed a bit of what he was doing. I am still discovering just how truly great he was.
I would argue that Bowie was the equal, creatively speaking, of the Beatles, but he was far more radical than the Fab Four, too. By 1965, Nans liked the Beatles. By 1975, I'd wager that the vast majority of Britain's Nans were absolutely fucking terrified of Bowie.
He was also, let's not forget, a singular, solo act - no brothers in arms-style buddies to fire ideas at a la John, Paul, Ringo and George. Bowie intentionally stood apart, and was often completely alone in what he was doing, betting his reputation on the notoriously fickle Cultural Futures market.
He was a rare contradiction indeed: a massively popular outsider, a barometer of cool; a perverse, poetic, wonky-eyed, snaggle-toothed rebel; a disco wraith, off his literal baked potato on the finest Bolivian Chatty Powder available to mankind, eschewing sleep for weeks at a time. In the process, he sold millions of catchy singles while simultaneously being essentially unknowable and, when he flitted out of the public eye, completely anonymous.
He had an outright otherness that is seldom matched, and a nose for what's next that remains unparalleled. I bet he was a nightmare to live with. Imagine it being your job to get the man through an airport, or to the optician's. Who did his tax returns for him? Who'd be this bloke's PA, I wonder? Jeepers.
So anyway, Low. There he is, in 1977, living with the notoriously ascetic Iggy Pop, enthusiastically spannered on coke, pissing about with synthesizers and ambient noises courtesy of Brian Eno and (according to this), not much Tony Visconti.
I love the sense that 'a new music' is being formed as this album goes along: it starts out as pretty standard-issue rock'n'roll, albeit modern and beautiful, but by Always Crashing In The Same Car (about Dave's inability to negotiate his way out of his apartment's parking garage for whatever reason) things have started to get right odd.
By side two, we've got made-up languages, entirely instrumental synth pieces and a sense of something blankly unsettling being hinted at, but again, not illuminated or explained to the listener.
Lodger and Heroes, the other two records in the so-called Berlin Trilogy, crystallise things further, and he'd go on to basically invent the fucking future for the next 15 years. But this is the still-skint, make-up-caked trier getting clean, getting fucked up again and creating something so defiantly odd in the process that his label refused to fund it, and asked where the real songs were. That's when you know you're out-there. An amazing achievement, in the circumstances, and as a bonus, he looks incredible on the cover. The original vinyl version I've left you cost £4. £4!
1. The Beatles - Abbey Road
To be honest, this beast of a record only really starts to reveal itself once Come Together and Maxwell's Silver Hammer are out of the way: Maxwell is fun, underrated and technically very clever, but it's McCartney showing off, too, and is a bit on the saccharine side. Things start to get really fantastic because of the collection of half-finished ideas that starts with She Came In Through The Bathroom Window, speeds through Mean Mr Mustard and Carry That Weight, and ends up, predictably enough, at The End.Zavid features quite heavily in this list, as well he might. His death - discussed variously elsewhere - rocked me quite a bit. I have to confess, while he was alive, he seemed important, a bit of a visionary, all that jazz - but not pivotal, for some reason.
In death - and in particular in the release of Blackstar - his true ability to seize the zeitgeist returned one last time. This man, I suddenly realised, was extraordinary. His constant revision of what it meant to be a pop star, the endless striving for something outside the mainstream but equally accessible by it, made him iconic. He had a knack for bringing high-concept art and middlebrow culture together, and making everyone suddenly take an interest in odd, outre things - kabuki theatre on Aladdin Sane; Weimar totalitarianism in Stage and Station to Station; dancing your arse off in stadiums with Let's Dance. The man did what he wanted with bits of culture that he found interesting, and made us all fans of it, once we'd processed a bit of what he was doing. I am still discovering just how truly great he was.
I would argue that Bowie was the equal, creatively speaking, of the Beatles, but he was far more radical than the Fab Four, too. By 1965, Nans liked the Beatles. By 1975, I'd wager that the vast majority of Britain's Nans were absolutely fucking terrified of Bowie.
He was also, let's not forget, a singular, solo act - no brothers in arms-style buddies to fire ideas at a la John, Paul, Ringo and George. Bowie intentionally stood apart, and was often completely alone in what he was doing, betting his reputation on the notoriously fickle Cultural Futures market.
He was a rare contradiction indeed: a massively popular outsider, a barometer of cool; a perverse, poetic, wonky-eyed, snaggle-toothed rebel; a disco wraith, off his literal baked potato on the finest Bolivian Chatty Powder available to mankind, eschewing sleep for weeks at a time. In the process, he sold millions of catchy singles while simultaneously being essentially unknowable and, when he flitted out of the public eye, completely anonymous.
He had an outright otherness that is seldom matched, and a nose for what's next that remains unparalleled. I bet he was a nightmare to live with. Imagine it being your job to get the man through an airport, or to the optician's. Who did his tax returns for him? Who'd be this bloke's PA, I wonder? Jeepers.
So anyway, Low. There he is, in 1977, living with the notoriously ascetic Iggy Pop, enthusiastically spannered on coke, pissing about with synthesizers and ambient noises courtesy of Brian Eno and (according to this), not much Tony Visconti.
I love the sense that 'a new music' is being formed as this album goes along: it starts out as pretty standard-issue rock'n'roll, albeit modern and beautiful, but by Always Crashing In The Same Car (about Dave's inability to negotiate his way out of his apartment's parking garage for whatever reason) things have started to get right odd.
By side two, we've got made-up languages, entirely instrumental synth pieces and a sense of something blankly unsettling being hinted at, but again, not illuminated or explained to the listener.
Lodger and Heroes, the other two records in the so-called Berlin Trilogy, crystallise things further, and he'd go on to basically invent the fucking future for the next 15 years. But this is the still-skint, make-up-caked trier getting clean, getting fucked up again and creating something so defiantly odd in the process that his label refused to fund it, and asked where the real songs were. That's when you know you're out-there. An amazing achievement, in the circumstances, and as a bonus, he looks incredible on the cover. The original vinyl version I've left you cost £4. £4!
1. The Beatles - Abbey Road
Many books have been written about Abbey Road, and the best is Revolution in the Head by Ian Macdonald - which I have a copy of somewhere. I suggest you check it out. The last 24 minutes of this album are still the high watermark of British pop songwriting, as well as being amazingly well-made, played and, ideas-wise, absolutely teeming. It's a lovely thing. I envy you, as you have yet to listen to it, love it and keep little bits of it in your heart. Also, if ever anyone says Ringo wasn't a good drummer, the drum solo at the end is proof he was no slouch.
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