Rattlesnakes by Lloyd Coyle and The Commotions 1984

As Little Murders were winding down after some bad decisions and basically just getting worn out after constant gigging for six years (up to 5 times a week) I had more time to DJ at friend's clubs and generally just go out. After playing so much it wasn't that easy. I DJed at the Venetian Room now and again. An upstairs club run by Ronny and Michael in the city. The Church played there. so did the Go-Betweens. Actually some really great bands played there.
Anyway I had moved to the other side of town and was living in St. Kilda. Upstairs flat. Starting thinking about where I lived. My flat in Fitzroy looked like a teenagers bedroom. Rock posters everywhere. Records everywhere. I guess it was time to grow up a bit. Went down to Ikea and bought some furniture. Framed a few posters or picked them up from the art gallery. Lamps . A bit of art deco.
And a bit of Lloyd Cole and Rattlesnakes. There was something a bit Warholian about this record. Pop culture was all over this record. Also it had a retro feel with it's references to On The Waterfront and Eve Marie Saint.
The first song that I really got into was Forest Fire. Probably because I read about it first. I liked the allusions to love and fire. so I bought the record. The rest of the record turned out to be just as great.

n 1980 the Mod scene in Melbourne was really taking off. We had our own nightclub "Kommotion" at the Prince Alfred in Richmond. Our numbers were growing. We had Mod singles to play by bands like Secret Affair and Purple hearts. We had the ska bands and then along came Dexys. And Geno. Geno was a big hit in Australia. But to a lot of people, it was a novelty hit. For us, it was a back door into Northern soul and Stax and more soul. Especially through the track, Seven Days is Too Long, a Northern Soul Anthem. It basically got everyone digging a little bit deeper into those record crates at the fairs and markets. I began exploring the Northern Soul scene. Up until then, I hadn't realised that those nights at the Highland Room at the Mecca in Blackpool back in the mid-seventies were already on their way to becoming legendary. Little Murders started dropping soul covers into the setlist. Songs like "Right Back Where We Started From" by Maxine Nightingale and Stand by Me.

Blue-eyed soul Kevin Rowland called it. And it was great. Beginning with Burn It Down and the sound of a radio being tuned in (with snatches of Sex Pistols and Deep purple) we would listen to the album in one go. It was a record everyone I knew was getting into. 1980 was turning out to be a brilliant year.

Plastic Ono Band/John Lennon 1970

A Beatles obsessive just as they broke up I became fixated on John Lennon. My first rock and roll hero. My first bought poster. A picture of John in 'How I Won the War' ordained my wall by itself. I took down everything else. This was the first album I actually bought with my own money. Mum thought there was a bit too much shouting and screaming on it. It was censored with all the F words taken out of "Working Class Hero" ) A song I covered during my folk-rock stage. Didn't go down to well at the Gardenvale Pizza Parlour.

With all the brothers leaving home to get married I had a bedroom and a music listening room. I bought incense and locked myself away for hours listening to the Beatles and John Lennon. I pored over the lyrics that came with the album. This was John in his primal scream phase. The lyrics were dark. The melodies were denser and at times didn't exist at all. The guitar in places was almost punk.

I continued buying his albums faithfully although gradually his albums got worse and worse.

It was a horrible day when he got shot. Horrible.

I went to the memorial in the city at the old City Square. Vic and I went. It was pretty big. His death affected a lot of people all around the world. The end of a dream.

Bandwagonesque by Teenage Fanclub 1991

1991 was a great year for music and I'm not even mentioning Nirvana. I was in England when Star Sign came out and it just blew me away. I still have the 7 inches I bought in Virgin London. Oxford street branch if I remember well. I had to wait until later in the year before I could get my hands on Bandwagonesque. And it didn't let me down. It reminded me of Big Star and Badfinger and all those guitar bands from the Seventies but it was very much a current album. looking backwards but zooming forward.
The moment I realised it was a stone-cold classic was sitting outside the garage on the corner of St. Kilda road and Alma road. I stopped the car for petrol but I couldn't get out because The Concept was playing. It was so good I wanted to keep driving and listen to the album.
So I drove to the Lizard lounge and filled my car with petrol on one of my breaks. Superb!

Is this the best Power pop album of the 90s? It surely is a contender and at the moment I can't think of anything better.
I was shopping in JB HiFI for CDs when the cover of this album just grabbed me. Sometimes you see a cover and just know the record inside is going to be good. And it was. Guitars, harmonies and great melodys with plenty of muscle plus a touch of sweetness. This was my kind of album. Girlfriend started to get radio play and we started playing the track at the Lizard Lounge.
My personal favourite was I've Been Waiting. I copied the album onto a cassette tape and played it in the car incessantly.
Matthew Sweet came to Melbourne on tour. He played the Collingwood Town Hall. In his band was Richard Lloyd from Television. It was loud. very loud. I ran into Paul Thomas who was in Weddings Parties Anything at the time. (later he would join Little Murders for one album) He told me the Weddoes were about to release a single and the B-side was my song Things Will Be Different. How cool!  It was on the single Monday's Experts. Mick Thomas had asked for the words quite a time before so I was always wondering what his plans for it were. My mates would go to WPA gigs and hear my song and tell me they heard Things being played.
I continued buying Matthew Sweet records. Altered Beast and 100% Fun were great albums too. And he's lately made some cool albums with Susannah Hoffs. covering other peoples work.

Oranges and Lemons by XTC 1989

Through 79 until 89 I was sporadically interested in XTC buying their singles and albums. liking them..getting bored with them but when this album came out I realised what a magical band they were and just how good their whole catalogue was . sometimes it takes one album to put a band's output into perspective and this one did it for me. Although I still skipped tracks (and this was a double album) most of it was wonderful and seemed to match the sunlight that streamed through the windows in my small house in Elwood. From the moment I heard Mayor of Simpleton I was hooked. I went back through their old music and looked forward to their creative spurts. they were English and a bit sixties and psychedelic. They just made 1989 for me. The best way to get over the eighties which although had it's fair share of brilliant music had a lot of ear burning rubbish. Thank God for XTC.

Mott by Mott The Hoople 1973

Being a massive Bowie fan there's no way I wasn't going to seek out Mott The Hoople. Bowie had written All The Young Dudes for them and produced their first Glam album. Later I would find all their older releases. However this was the first Mott album I bought because it was in the Australian Record Club catalogue. 

Storming through All The Way From Memphis I was instantly hooked. I became a bit fixated on Ian Hunter and let my hair grow into the style you see on the cover. Plus I wore dark shades and wore black. I'd listen to this in my record room in Blackburn South alternating it with Bowie and T.Rex. When I went to the movies and saw Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore I was so excited when they opened the movie with Memphis. 

My mate Alan Barnard who became our first sound engineer and roadie was also big on Mott and was always the first to dig up their other releases. I liked the one-upmanship where it was a race to see who could dig up the most obscure release by a favored artist. I got the Guy Stevens produced Mad Capers from Monash. actually I think all my Mott albums except this are American cut outs.

Best Of of The Shangri-Las 1966

Although I had heard Leader of the Pack and I didn't know much about the band until there name kept cropping up in articles in the NME. First it was the New York dolls with "When I say I'm In Love ...." and Pete Townshend talking about the teen angst of "Past Present and Future" as well as it's Moonlight Sonata origins. The Ramones, Blondie ...anyway I got the album with that brilliant photo of the band on the front. And when I put it on the turntable it refused to get off. One by one the songs captured me. They were like mini-operas. Teenage angst. Street savvy. Big tunes.
This was my Fitzroy North living behind a garage, across from a church days with the trams rattling past on the way to the city. The Shangri Las blasted from my window and every visitor was treated to at least one side of the album.

Jesus of Cool by Nick Lowe 1978

When it comes to songwriting I put Nick Lowe right up there with all my heroes but in a way he's a lot more because he was a bit of a role model in that he was happy writing all sorts of different styles. And so I tried to emulate this by writing fast songs , ballads, punk and sixties style. Just trying everything really. This album had a big impact on me. I wanted to be the next Nick Lowe. Of course fate had other plans and I moved more into Mod & power pop. But I still knelt at the altar of the perfect pop song and Nick as come as close to anyone in writing it.
On this album he tells short stories like Marie Provost where he writes about the poodles that ate their movie star owner (Straight out of Hollywood Babylon) So It Goes. about the music biz. You know the score. Clever clever writing. That he followed this up with Labour of Lust and produced Elvis Costello's best work proves the guy was a genius. And he still makes great records. The Beast in Me comes to mind. Recently I saw him in concert at the Forum and I knew there was no chance he was going to play all my favourite songs because there have been too many. And there is his work with Brinsley Schwarz where you can first hear "What' So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding" a song that the Murders used to cover for a while.
Got this album from a Charity Opportunity Shop that every week had a bunch of new wave stuff that some music writer must have been throwing out. Heaven!

Live and Dangerous By Thin Lizzy 1978

I was living in Oakleigh in this sharehouse with a bunch of Uni students. I had just finished teachers college and was about to start a year of doing nothing but playing in a band. The Fiction. I had my own entrance so I was set up quite well. I even managed to scrape enough together to get a proper stereo. My cousin Neil who I hung out with in Blackpool a few years previously had bought a music centre and was getting into taping letters and including tracks. I got one from him and it included his fave band Status Quo but also a bunch of tracks from Thin Lizzy who I didn't know much about except their superlative hit "Boys are Back in Town". Anyway, I loved the tracks and even though I was a punk I had to have this record despite all the rock cliches and long hair.
Tonight there's Gonna be Jailbreak!. great for driving my Mazda around town. Saw the doco  and I think most of it was not really live. The power of overdubbing and replacing tracks. But who really cares when it's this good. The Cowboy Song and it's descending guitar lines, twin guitars and Phil Lynott's poetic turn of phrase. I was a punk for a short time and then a mod but I still had room for Thin Lizzy.

They played a free show at the Myer Music Bowl not long after. Foolishly I didn't go and have been kicking myself for 40 years.

Best of The Bee Gees 1969

This album and the songs within are embedded in my childhood memories. Carried through to the start of my teenage head when my brother played the album on his stereo. Later when he got married he sold it to me for 20 cents. I've still got it and it's the Bee Gees I always think of and not the mega-successful 70s version. So the early songs take me back to the Migrant Hostels we stayed in when we first arrived in Australia from the UK. Listening to I Started a Joke on the top bunk of the tiny room in Sydney. Spicks and Specks at the hostel kiosk where I bought my first Marvel comics. Writing out the words to New York Mining Disaster. Singing the same song in the communal showers and bathroom. This was what Australia meant to me when I was young. The sound of the Bee Gees. Oh and the Easybeats but I didn't have any of their albums around.
I was watching a brilliant Korean gangster movie called Nowhere to Hide and it had this amazing scene overlaid with the Bee Gees Holiday. Great scene and it made me remember just how good some of their songs were. 

Is this It by The Strokes 2001

When a record like this comes along it's like a wake-up call to why you like indie guitar pop music. Well, any kind of rock music. You don't realise how much you miss it until a brilliant record comes along. I remember seeing a Strokes CD on the wall of Mighty Music Machine in Prahran. I was browsing the CD racks for music for the Lizard Lounge. Often klutzy pop hits of the day. I passed on the Modern Age CD then but a few days later it was all over the radio and I went back and got the single. It was Last Night and it got everyone on the dancefloor. Then the album arrived in all its cool glory. (Australia was the first place in the world it was released) So New york. Sounding like a cross between Blondie and Velvet underground. looking like a real band. making it all seem effortless. The look and the sound.
And it opened the floodgates for another bunch of Indie guitar bands that deluged the playlists for the next few years. When I hear this album the first thing that comes to mind is driving down Chapel Street towards the Union Hotel (home of the Lizard) in Windsor vibing up on what a great night it would be. Sadly these great guitar bands like The Strokes, White Stripes and The Hives came as the Lizard was starting to fade. Still for the last few months, we played the hell out of it.

Electric Warrior by T.Rex 1971

Before Bowie came along Marc Bolan and T. Rex were definitely my top pop star heroes. I first heard Hot Love on the radio and I was sucked in completely in by its sound. So when this album became available through the Australian Record Club I snapped it up and had it delivered to my door in no time. I used to lie on the floor in my bedroom with my head on a pillow and the speakers on each side of my head lost in the music. It was such a great sound. It blew away my interest in John Lennon and his increasingly rubbish solo records. Glam had begun. I found that by not combing my hair after washing it I could approximate the Bolan hairstyle. Well almost. I got myself a shitty electric guitar from a music shop in Box Hill and started strumming along to T. Rex. I didn't play it, just posed with it a lot. Probably more than was healthy. Full of great tunes, the music of this album and the follow up The Slider really holds up well in the 21st century. No one as come close to replicating it.
Trouble was, by the time he actually got to Melbourne he was putting out bad singles, overweight and completely taken over by the cult of Bowie who came hot on his heels. But for a moment there he was king!

The good news was that he did start releasing great news was that he did release more great records including a favourite of mine "Dandy in the Underworld" before sadly dying in a car crash in September 1977.

After The Goldrush by Neil Young 1970

can’t believe how many of my all-time favourite albums have been picked up at sales. This was 99c cassette tape I picked up at Brashes again. I wasn’t all that familiar with Neil at the time but I’d heard some good things about stuff earlier than his blockbuster Harvest stuff which was all over the radio. I had my first car and I was driving up to a caravan park up near Bendigo. There were lots of families going up there for Easter, plus this youth group I was part of at the time.

Anyway, on the first night the young people as we were known, gathered together away from the rest and played the guitars, sang and then, as it quietened down and everyone was getting tired, I put this album on. After that, I think we never stopped playing it. It was the background music for everything.

It was a mixture of folky stuff and his classic guitar rockers that made it easily the best album he ever did. Harvest for me was overcooked.

It also fitted all my moods from the sadness of Birds to the joy of When You Dance. And it’s one of those albums with no clunkers.

Many years later I was at the Jump Club in Collingwood with my friend Jimmy. Halfway through the night, he came up the stairs to let me know he had just been talking to Neil Young and did I want to meet him. I wasn't surprised since Jimmy had already introduced me to both Joe Strummer and Ray Davies. He wasn't backward in coming forwards as Mum used to say. So I was introduced to Neil Young. I cannot remember much of the conversation but I did notice he was wearing platform thongs. I wish I could remember the band who was playing because he was quite digging their sound.

Neil invited us all to the show at Festival Hall the next night. Which was an amazing gig if only for Cinnamon Girl. And also for the fact that Neil actually spotted Jimmy in the crowd during one song and waved to him.

New York Dolls by New York Dolls 1973

Picked this one up for 1:99 at a Brashes sale at Doncaster Shoppingtown. Loved those sales. New York Dolls I'd heard about through reading David Bowie articles but also from a book I picked up at a sale which was called NME's Greatest Hits. A wonderful book of classic NME writing featuring Nick Kent amongst others. So when I saw this album I thought I'd give it a go. 

And it was better than I'd imagined. Sure some of it didn't sound that great but some of the songs just blasted out of my wood grain stereo. The first song that knocked me out was Trash then Personality Crisis then it just kept growing. The references to classic girl groups particularly the Shangri Las were just so well-timed with the sixties vibe I always seemed to slip back into

. I didn't get into the look. A little bit too trashy. I did have a few pairs of platform shoes, however. Walking six-foot-tall..well hobbling.
When Bruce Milne asked me on our first meeting (between cars on the highway) what bands we were into I shouted New York Dolls first. Then Iggy etc. Then I went home and turned my acoustic band into a rock band.

Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy by The Who 1971

In 1972 I was living in Blackburn South. Form 5. Really full-on music fan now! The latest thing which spread like a virus around Box Hill High School was the Australian record Club. When you joined you got 5 albums for some minuscule amount. If you got someone else to join you got two. You just had to buy six (or was it twelve) more albums that year. Easy. Kids were signing up everyone. Then you got a catalogue and picked out your monthly record. It would arrive quite promptly. Mum would sit it near the stereo for when I got home from school. I remember seeing the Stooges in the catalogue having no idea who they were and why would you name a band after a comedy act.
Anyway one delivery I clearly remember was this album. My first Who record. Recommended by my mate's brother and soon to consume my life. I never knew they had so many great singles. It was on endless rotation. I couldn't get enough of it and it sent me searching other Who albums. I always thought that some of the tracks were alternative versions or even re recorded versions because some are definitely longer than the 7 inch singles. Many years later the internet would confirm my thoughts.
And the cover. Some kind of touchy feel thing like bumpy..very tactile.
Anyway I had just got my first electric guitar for 30 bucks (including a Coronet amp) and now I had something to really thrash along to. substitute..I'm a Boy..My Generation...Substitute and more.

Then one day I was kicking a ball around at school and one of the guys started talking about a song called Baba O'Riley off the new Who album. I was about to get my mind blown again!

Not my favourite Beatles album but a very important one for me. One day I got home from school. Box Hill High. I was in Form 2 which is now know as Year 8 and there was a big square package on my bed. My Mum had been to the new Doncaster Shoppingtown and brought back not only my first Beatles album but my first album ever. I was breathless. I went down to the living room and put it on the crappy fifties stereo. wasn't too big on side one at first but side two just knocked me out. I thought that this was the difference between singles and albums. All those songs running into each other.
A couple of weeks later I was at a class party and they kept playing the first side. It seems everyone was rapt in Come together and Something. Me I was over with Polythene Pam and Mean Mr Mustard.
We used to play that suite of songs at Rubber soul on the Beatles theme nights. Sadly my ipod doesn't put those songs together.  So they don't have the same affect.
And the true test of a classic album. Must contain some rubbish. Octopuses Garden. Ringo having his go. I must admit that it took me a long time to warm to I Want You. But that was what was great with vinyl. You didn't skip tracks as much. No remote! so songs were given a bit more of a chance to grow on you.