Raindogs by Tom Waits 1985

I was DJing at Barbarellas when this album came out. I know this because every time I went to the bar for about a month after it came out the bartender and I would sing the refrain "For I am a Rain dog toooooooo!"
Couldn't get this record off the turntable. And I thought Swordfishtrombones was good! this was even better. I had been listening to Tom Waits albums for years actually since I saw him on In Melbourne Tonight with Don Lane in the seventies. Wish I could get a copy of that video! While I liked the albums I always found myself drawn to particular tracks and ignoring others. But Raindogs is so complete it does what the best albums do and takes you right into his world. In this case, a Kurt Weill vision of New York with its Down train Trains and shore leave sailors.
I remember I was staying up late taping episodes of Rage when a series of vignettes advertising the album were being played so I got to tape them on my brand new video VHS having just ditched the Beta player. It's just Tom telling 60-second stories related to the music.
I didn't think Tom Waits could make a wrong move. But then I couldn't get into his next album. I guess I had taken in too much Tom Waits in too short a time! Luckily I came round and rediscovered Frank's Wild years later on after Down in The Hole became the theme song to the TV series The Wire.

Up The Bracket by the Libertines 2002

It started with the film clip of Up The Bracket on Rage one night. Just one of those film clips that are instantly exciting because of the sound for one but also the image. For one it made them seem they didn't give a bollocks. but also at the same time, there was the English military coats and English flags. Although at first, I approached them as a UK Strokes when I got the album there was just so much more. Firstly it was produced by Mick Jones of The Clash and the attitude of that band is all over the record. It's got Beatles melodies, Syd Barret influences, Keith Richard harmonies a Kinks feel especially in the lyrics and references to Albion. It rejected the US and baseball caps. It embraced English pop culture. It was the start of the great British rock revival of the noughties.
At the time I was on my last legs as a DJ at The Union Hotel. The old indie days were over and now I was no longer running the club but coming in half the night to spin some discs before Dan took over. We had big crowds but were playing dance music almost all the time. Most of it forgettable crap. I wanted to play this record but it didn't fit in. When after an unfortunate incident where a patron was hurt badly the club was closed it brought about the end of my 16 years DJing. It was time to get the Telecaster out again.

Violent Femmes 1983

I bought this album one week after they had played the Jump Club in Collingwood. When I heard this album I was kicking myself for missing out on such a great band. My wife saw them busking outside Missing Link and then spent the day with them. Just hanging out. Everyone saw them but me. Which wouldn't have been so bad except the album was just fantastic and it reigned the turntable for so long that by the time it was worn out I had to buy it has a CD. We were also playing a number of tracks off it when I started DJing and would continue to play Blister In The Sun and Gone Daddy Gone forever.

At the Lizard, I loved playing Add It Up cos the punters went totally wild. Oh and the joy of dancing to Kiss Off. Playing the album I'm still amazed at how good it was while still sounding like it's played on acoustic instruments and still rocking madly.
I did get to see them years later at Tower Records in London. and they blew off the roof! People were crammed around the band on a small stage and all up the stairway to the next level. So many smiling faces.

The Stone Roses by The Stone Roses 1989

The first time I heard the Stone Roses was when I was working at as a DJ at a club in West Melbourne called KAOS. Ronny Williams (Rubber Soul, Barbarellas, Batcave, Venetian Room, Beehive) had picked up a bunch of 7-inch singles from the Mighty Music Machine in Chapel Street, South Yarra, to play at the club. One of them was Made Of Stone. A good song but not for the dancefloor. Enough to get me interested, however. Especially after all this news about them started reaching Australian shores. A few months later the album was everywhere. 

Luckily it coincided with the first days of Lizard Lounge so the record got a hefty battering on the turntables. And then we'd put it on again at home. The second summer of love, as it was called, was a fantastic time for music with The Roses and the Happy Mondays. We actually decorated the Lizard in swirly lights and slide shows and bubble machines and gave out lollies at the door. We just had fun with the music.
And this album which is playing now hasn't lost anything in the 30 odd years it's been out. It's a near-perfect record from the opening song "I Wanna Be Adored" to the last "I Am the Resurrection". Incidentally often at the Lizard, we'd start the night with Adored and finish with Resurrection" A writer friend of mine in San Francisco, Alex Green, wrote a book in the 33 RPM series about the album and I got to contribute a bit about the album's influence on me.

Later on, I would get to meet lead singer Ian Brown at an exhibition of Stone Roses photos in London. lovely guy. He was there with his kids and it was just his family and mine in the gallery.

A few years after that the Stone Roses played at Festival Hall and it would easily make it into my top 20 gigs of all time. It was brilliant. As is this album. One of those albums which sounds just as good in a club as it does at home.

Modern Lovers by Modern Lovers 1976

I first heard this album round at Bruce Milne's house in 1978 when we had just started dreaming of recording singles for his fledgeling label Au Go Go. At the time he hadn't anything out at all but he had the label designed. I loved going round to his place. It was incredibly bohemian but at the same time very rock and roll. So many records and books and posters of acts I'd only heard about. US and British versions of records I had picked up at Brashes. All his stuff was in fruit crates piled high like a bookcase. It was a bedroom the size of a studio or a small flat. And we drank strange tea.
And one day he played this album telling me how at one time he and Graeme Pitt (who played bass for one night in The Fiction) had both lost their girlfriends and had found solace in listening to this album. So I didn't know what to expect. 

 The needle hot the groove and I was knocked out. It was hard to get past Roadrunner but as each track followed it was just an album that you could love instantly. Very reminiscent of Velvet Underground but totally out of the left field and unique mainly due to the charismatic Jonathon Richman. Flip the cover and the band look so cool. (the image only ruined when Bruce pulled out their Rock and Roll album and showed me that cover..what a change!). Anyway back to the Modern Lovers and I'm loving it and then Someone I Care About starts playing and the hair raises on the back of my neck. If I was loving the record then that song just sealed the deal.
I spend the next few weeks tracking the album down. The vinyl hunter.

And I've spent over 40 years listening to this cool and special record.

Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits by Bob Dylan 1967

Although released in 1967 I never really heard this until I found it looking through my girlfriend Leonie's records in 1975. Previously I hadn't cared too much for Bob Dylan probably because by the time I Dylan records came into my orbit it was the nasal sounds of Lay Lady lay and Nashville Skyline. I couldn't listen to that voice. But listening to this record and having just started writing songs myself this was a revelation. It was such a fantastic record and it was just the tip of the iceberg. It led me to go back and discover all those fantastic albums of the sixties like highway 61 Revisited.
I went out and bought the Dylan songbook and tried playing his songs. I tried to write songs like his adapting his chord sequences.
this album takes me back to Balwyn North. A Catholic home where the Mum and Dad didn't seem to like me. Finding records that you've never heard before in your girlfriend's collection. I never borrowed it either. It was better to go there and listen to it in her living room. Not long after that, the Sex Pistols came along and Dylan disappeared from the playlist for a while.