Ramones by The Ramones 1976

I remember reading the review of this in NME and it sounded so exciting. Guitars like power drills. Sixties sensibilities delivered with buzz saws. So when the local Brashs had a copy I was over the moon. When I got it home I was knocked out by the opening track "Blitzkrieg Bop" I couldn't believe that was a niche record. To me, they all sounded like pop singles that deserved to be all over the radio. But of course, they weren't.
The second thing that hit me was the separation of left and right very similar to the old Beatles records. Guitars one side. Vocals the other. Made it odd when listening with two speakers on each side of my head. I had really just begun writing songs at this stage but here was a fantastic template for songwriting. And I really started writing after this.
It was also great to read that the Ramones influences were exactly the same as mine. Bubblegum pop, glam rock and sixties classics like Do Wah Diddy. This was the beginning of a whole new chapter in music. And one that I really wanted to be part of. I had two crappy amps that I plugged into each other to give me the buzz saw sound and I was away. It would be another 3 years before I got to play the guitar on stage though.

For Your Pleasure by Roxy Music 1973

I first encountered the wonderful world of Roxy Music at my friend Peter Joyce's place. I can still remember the first time I saw this cover on the dining room table in his house. Between him and his brother I got a fantastic musical education away from my slightly narrow view of what was good in rock. Mainly Beatles, Bowie and T.Rex. Being a glam rock fan and seeing the inside photos of their albums I didn't think the glam rock thing suited them. They really looked like a bunch of aliens. But when the needle went on the record and "Do The Strand" came on I was transfixed. By the time I got to "Editions of You" and "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" I was sold.
Roxy world was a whole different place.  Sophisticated and cool with a hint of menace. I always dreamt of having a Hollywood pool party with their music playing. Because it was like some futuristic postcard of the Fifties in the US.
They came to Festival Hall after the release of Country Life and it remains the best concert I ever went to. I'm still there in the fourth row with the hairs on the back of my neck standing up during Editions of You.

Transformer by Lou Reed 1972

1973 summer I spent at a Camp in Banksia which is near Lakes Entrance. The camps were organised by religious groups but there wasn't much religion going on. Anyway, everyone had a real good time and a few weeks after we were all invited to the house of one of the cool cats at the camp. So a few of us drove all the way to Preston from Blackburn. Our bunch who were all at school at the time realised there was a large difference between these share house cool cats and us so I think we spent most of the time sitting in the front garden.
But they kept putting on this album. I was really starting to get into Bowie big time and I'd heard about this Lou Reed record but I wasn't prepared for just how good it was. Friends tried to talk to me but I was too busy listening. There was a girl I liked there and it was going well until this came on. I was too enthralled in the music to pay her attention while this was on.
I remember the smell of patchouli oil that someone was wearing. The speakers in the windows. And these fantastic songs.
When I got the album I was disappointed that it was the RCA super thin vinyl. But the front cover by Mick Rock was great. The back cover was a big talking point at school. God knows why especially since I was at an all boys school. And the album contained so many classics.
A few years later he played Festival Hall. Drag queens walked out. We stayed but really it was a bit of a heavy metal bore.

Young Gifted and Black by Various Artists 2002

Definitely not one for the purists of Trojan but when I picked up this CD in JB HiFi many years I was so excited to see so many hits from my youth all on one double CD. instant sunshine in a box. These are the singles I heard on the radio not only here in Melbourne but also in the UK. These are the tracks that amazed me with their different sounds but instant familiarity.

And they go back to the early sixties when I sang along to My Boy Lollipop by Millie. Israelites lit up the summer of 69. The seventies with tracks from "The Harder They Come " all those songs that were covered by The Specials and Madness and even the Clash. I could write a list of the tracks on here and place a memory against most of them. I'm a great believer in compilation albums. When I went to JB in my record store days,  I usually headed straight to the compilation rack. Amongst all the dross you'd find something really special. Often it would be looking at the songs you know and hoping the ones you didn't might match up to the others. So suddenly you're finding new music kind of introduced by an old friend.

I've got a few ska compilations And I love the Tighten Up series from the early '70s. But I keep coming back to this regularly. Let Your Yeah Be Yeah!

London Calling by The Clash 1979

1979 I arrive in the UK and the first thing I do is go to the record shop and buy London Calling by The Clash and Setting Sons by The Jam. Then I had to wait a couple of days until I got round to my aunt Sheila's house to get to a record player. My cousin Neil had a set up with the speakers resting above the curtains in the front room. All I wanted to do was listen to the records but I was there with my girlfriend and I hadn't seen my family for years. I only managed to get through the first side of this but what a first side. The clarion call of the title track, the rock and roll of Brand New Cadillac,,it just sounded so great. And then it got better.
They were playing at Lancaster University which was a short distance from Blackpool. We were down the local record shops the next morning to get tickets. At the show through which we drove through snow and ice and mud to get to we were treated to The Clash in their absolute prime. It was breathtaking watching these legends in what was really a small hall at the University. We were able to get up close and then move back when the crowd exploded. On the way out I bought a poster which is still on my wall today. Actually for a few months in 1980 I lent it to Missing Link for their window display.
A few years later I'm at The Clash's after show party at the Jump Club when my mate Jimmy grabs Joe Strummer and introduces him to me. We sat on the stage and for 20 minutes he told me how important it was to keep going with the band despite all the crap you go through in rock music. I must have listened well because here I am 40 years later working on a new album. Joe was brilliant. He is sadly missed in this world.
I love this album. One of the few great double albums. And what a cover! Magic.

Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen 1975

In 1975 I was at Burwood Teachers College. Near the cafeteria, they would regularly have a record stall organised by the student union consisting of boxes of records many being imports and cut-outs. I'm pretty sure they came from Monash records. One lunchtime I came down to see a group of girls in my class sitting around a table passing round an album cover. These girls had fallen for the charisma of Bruce Springsteen just by looking at the cover.

Yep, it was a cool cover but I hadn't heard anything of his yet. It took hearing Jungleland on the album show on the next Sunday night to convert me.

I hastily tracked down the album and bought it from my local record store which was Box Hill Brashs. Took it to my room and listened intently. My head on a pillow between 2 speakers. And out blasted Thunder Road.

Straightaway I was transported into Springsteen's world. There I was on the streets of New Jersey or just as easily in the film Mean Streets. There were bits of sixties wreckage scattered around the album. Spector, girl groups, the tinkling sound heard on Dusty Springfield Records. Punk rock was just around the corner, but I didn't believe for a second it was crap before that. There was just a lot of it and really it never went away. But there was also a lot of magic stuff. This album rocks. I even bought a Telecaster just like Bruce. and a leather jacket.

Put the cassette in the tape deck. Start the car. Drive. Brilliant

Piper At The Gates Of Dawn by Pink Floyd 1967

When punk rock came along Pink Floyd represented the enemy of music. Johnny Rotten had a t-shirt with I Hate Pink Floyd on it. I had never owned a Floyd album and any leaning towards Dark Side was ruined when I spent 24 hours supporting a mate who was listening to it 24 hours straight to raise money for charity.  However, I did like the early singles that were introduced to me by  Bowie's Pin-Ups album. See Emily Play being the song he covered. (not a touch on the original I daresay)
In the early 80's I picked up an NME annual that had an article by Nick Kent on Syd Barret. It was the time of the paisley underground and before now I'd never seen a copy of Piper. But there it was in the second-hand record shop so I bought it dead cheap. And it was just fantastic. Suddenly I got what people were raving about. I couldn't stop playing the thing. I was living in Clarke street Prahran with a girl from my school and I swear I probably drove her out of the house listening to it.
More's the pity that is the only Syd Barret Pink Floyd album we were gonna get as his mind kinda exploded soon after this. But then I found a copy of Relics in my own collection. One of those cheap albums from K-Mart that had been lurking around the back of my collection for years and only been aired for the singles.
I even learned to like a few newer Pink Floyd songs when my wife turned out to be a Pink Floyd fan. Though as hard as I try I could never listen to Animals nor The Wall straight through. Too much punk rock in me.

Hatfull of Hollow by The Smiths 1984

The Smiths were like this big thunderbolt in the early eighties. Everything they did was amazing. I had the first album and was playing it to death when one afternoon I was over at my friend Tania's flat. A huge apartment that overlooked Port Phillip Bay and was metres from the Espy. I was looking through her records when I came across a Smiths record I wasn't even aware of. At first, I was bamboozled because here was an album that contained tracks already on the first album. It turns out they just released their own kind of bootleg. I remember sitting around the flat but itching to get out to a record shop so I could get my own copy.
I had to drive into the city to Missing Link but boy was it worth it. It was like a greatest hits set from a band that was only beginning. I quickly copied it to tape so I could play it in my little Fiat 128 as I dashed around town.
How many times must I have listened to "Please Please Please let me get what I want" and felt sorry for myself? The scene in Pretty in Pink pretty much sums it up.
Morrissey's words were just unbelievably on target for what I and I guess millions of others were thinking. "What Difference Does It Make?" "You've Got Everything Now" For the short time the Smiths were together they were one amazing record after another.