Cocker Happy by Joe Cocker 1971

Joe Cocker's Cocker Happy was a number one album in Australia in 1971; it was an album you couldn't avoid. Especially at the start of summer, around December, when I found myself with another crew to hang out with. South Box Hill and hanging out with Sharpies wasn't working out. Warm beer and late nights when I was only fifteen were just painful.

I had a friend who lived on one of the new estates. I'd go round to his place and listen to records, then wander around all the new streets and houses. We met a couple of girls and started chatting to them. I quite fancied one of them. Her name was Bernadette.

We became kind of friends, and I would go around to her place a lot. Her dad was a teacher who made his own ginger beer under the house. She taught me to play canasta. She played Cocker Happy on repeat.

One day near Christmas, she let me kiss her in the long grass behind her house. And then she came to the New Year's Eve party with her new boyfriend, who was taller and cooler than me. I was devastated.

I didn't go back to her house. But I bought a copy of the album. 

Live by Bob Marley and the Wailers 1975

 I was living at my brother Tony's place in Blackburn South in 1977. My mum had gone back to the UK to live and Tony and his wife Carol let me live at their place. My brother had a great record player. A Marantz with these huge speakers. Really it made everything sound good. Late evenings we would have supper which was our custom and always included toast. Tony would toast two pieces of bread together to make his own thick sliced. With lots of butter. He would put a record on. More often than not something I didn''t really want to listen to. It didn't matter. It was cool hanging out.

One night my mate Chris Hunter came around with the Bob Marley Live! album and some funny smelling cigarettes. Everyone was bringing these cigarettes back from Bali and his girlfriend had done the same. Didn't taste them . The smell put me off. Chris asked to put the record on the Marantz. This was my introduction to Bob Marley. One good thing about music. When it hits you you feel no pain. 

I had never heard anything like it. I was completely immersed in the sounds. They just jumped off the record. This record became my early evening Saturday night soundtrack. I would listen to it before I went to gigs. I quickly copied it onto cassette and we would pile into the Volkswagen Beetle and head into the city with Marley blasting out of the speakers. It would be playing as we returned home in the first light of morning. It was all we had until the punk albums starting turning up. The Clash. The Jam. But for a time Bob Marley and reggae was the sound of my 77.

Drop Out With The Barracudas 1981

 "I Wish It Could Be 1965 Again!" Because for a while there we did! Wish it was 65 or 66 or 67. Well, anything but 1980 it seems. The Mod movement in Melbourne was starting to move along with scooters appearing fast and furious. Especially when the South Melbourne council decided to sell off all their Rabbit scooters that were scooped up by several Mods who couldn't afford or get their hands on a Lambretta or a Vespa. We looked for sixties suits and shoes in Charity Shops at a time when they were full of cool stuff. I was dressed totally in second-hand clothes. Where else could you get button-down shirts?

We were listening to soul and ska and the new Mod bands from the UK. My band had morphed from a  pop punk band into a Mod band without bothering to change our name.

And with the action starting to gather speed, this record came out. For some, it was just a joke. Which was not helped by the horrible front cover. Luckily on the back, they looked cool. But for a few of us, it was a party record summing up our new strange experience of digging up the past. In retrospect, it fits more into the scene about to happen with the paisley brigade of the early eighties and bands like the Hoodoo Gurus. But I loved this album It was a three-minute of everything cool about the sixties. California style.

I loved this record. It is jam-packed with great songs. 

One weekend a few years back I bought a surfboard at a garage sale. Maybe my band should do a similar pose to the cover.

Propaganda by Sparks 1974

 I first heard Sparks "This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us' driving along Surrey Road in Blackburn in 1974. I was in the back seat and I implored the driver to turn it up. It sounded amazing. I had already read about them. Roxy Music's little brothers I think they were coined as in NME. Or Roxy on helium. Whatever it was I had to to have it and duly bought Kimono My House. Which I liked but didn't love at the time. It was jostling with other records for my attention.

At the end of 74 I went back to the UK and the first thing I saw on television was Sparks performing "Something For The Girl With Everything' off their new album Propaganda. Russell was wearing gloves and a Christmas jumper. Ron looked like Hitler behind the keyboards. The sound popped right out of the TV. 

A little while later I was at WH Smith. The newsagents but also a record store. There was a massive record sale. The whole upstairs was full of records. Even recent hit albums at great prices. I couldn't believe that Propaganda was amongst them so even though I had only heard the one track I bought the album. 

In the UK winter of 74 and 75 I lived at my Aunt Sheila's house. Most days I was alone in the house until my cousin Neil came home at lunch and played Band on The Run or Simon and Garfunkel's greatest hits before going back to work. So a lot of the time I sat, read books and wrote letters and listened to Propaganda. Start to finish and without skipping tracks. Trying to sing along. Often hurting my throat with the high notes.

45 years later I'm in a venue in Tokyo with Sparks on stage and Russell sings ""Hello soldier boy," oh boy, she's spewing out her Propaganda" And a chill runs up my spine. Absolutely brilliant!

Moon Safari by Air 1998

 In 1998 I was open to all kinds of music. The first release on my record label was a trip hop album by my friends in Bloom. They had played me the demo tapes of the music and I was knocked out by the songs and the sounds they were making and it gave me the impetus to kick-start the label. So while I was still firmly entrenched in loud sixties alternative indie type music I had a leaning towards and a soft spot for dance music. I was running the Lizard lounge which played all kinds of pop music. If it had a good tune and a beat I was into it.

And at the start of 1998 we started hearing about this French band called Air that were striking out in a somewhat different direction. And the names of Burt Bacharach and Serge Gainsbourg came up. And of all people. Little Murders ex and future drummer Mick Barclay told me about this groovy band from France. It was the name on everyones lips that summer so much so that I went down to Mighty Music Machine in Prahran to score myself a copy only to be told they had got a shipment in and had sold out but were expecting another shipment the following week. I couldn't find it anywhere else so I just had to wait.

A few weeks later it was in and I picked up the CD. For waiting the owner also gave me a massive Pulp "This is Hardcore" poster that was too big for him to display. It's now on my kitchen wall. And in retrospect the music of that Pulp album and Moon Safari fitted well. As the summer of early 98 came to a close. the Air album was a constant on my CD player filling up the spaces of my house in Elwood. Early evenings and Stolleys vodka and a French band in the background. Brilliant.

New Wave by Various Artists 1977

 In 1977 it seemed like I was rebuilding my record collection from scratch. While I was quick to buy the first Damned album and just about anything punk my shelves were still crowded with a lot of records I didn't want to listen to anymore. Bowie, New York Dolls and Lou Reed/ Velvet Underground fitted in well but not a lot more. The sixties kind of fitted in but a lot of my records were more the commercial pop bands like the Searchers  although The Troggs had their place.

So a compilation record like this was really welcome. A few of the songs I had heard about but never seen down the record shop. I discovered Mystery Girls from the second Dolls album. Sonic Reducer by the Dead Boys. Talking Heads, Even The Runaways Cherry Bomb made a lot more sense in the context of this bunch of tracks. And best of all it had the song Shake Some Action which I begun hearing down the Tiger Room when the Keith Glass Band would play it on Wednesday nights. Me and my mates would be down the Tiger Room (or was it Tiger Lounge) every Wednesday night to hear Keith's band and to see which punk/ new wave band he would have support him. JAB, The Boys Next Door and more. Just fantastic nights.

As for the album, of course there were one or two clunkers but they didn't detract at all from my listening pleasure. And although this might have been one of the first compilations I ever bought it might be responsible for the dozens of other comps I have bought over the years. I just love compilation albums. I might often start a search now in the various artists second of the record bins.

The B-52s by The B-52s 1979

 In January 1980 I was in Paris, France with Leonie, my girlfriend at the time and we were wandering the streets after dinner taking in the cold night air as you do. It was early evening and as we passed a record shop down tucked into one of narrow streets this strange music came bouncing off the walls. It was other worldly but definitely pop music. But of a different kind. It reminded of Roxy Music and Yoko Ono all at once.  

More importantly I thought I had found a French band. Which would be exciting. To take back to Australia something no one had heard yet from a slightly exotic country. It was exciting buying the Specials debut in a French department store the day previously but this topped that. In the record store the man behind the counter explained that they were an American band and the album was fabulous but he was playing his very own copy. They had no more. Sold out. So I left Paris without the B-52s.

I didn't matter because when I got back to Australia they had just started playing Rock Lobster on the radio and the B-52s were about to become a hit making machine.

On my first visit to Missing Link Records when I was back in Melbourne I saw they had  the B-52s record in their racks, The cover just jumped out. Great I could buy it here, I was in Missing Link to see Bruce from Au Go Go. A UK distributor called Stage One were starting a record label and wanted to put the first Little Murders single out as their debut release. I was at the counter when Nick Cave came over to me and started asking me questions about the UK. Which surprised me since even though my bands had played a number of times with the Boys Next Door I had hardly spoken to him at all. But he really wanted to know what was going on in London. I said there weren't too many exciting bands around playing live. And a lot of the venues are quite small.
At the time I didn't know they were planning to move over there. 

Got so caught up talking to Nick and then Bruce that I walked out of the shop without the B-52s record. I didn't get it for another few months because Rock Lobster was everywhere. I couldn't listen to that track any more. Then I picked it up second hand. And it was brilliant even if I had to lift the needle over Rock Lobster.