Alladdin Sane by David Bowie 1973

I came home from school and on top of the record player was a brown paper bag in the familiar shape of an album cover. My Mum had been to Doncaster Shoppingtown and brought me back an album. Excitedly I opened the bag and inside was this brilliant record. I didn't have any money at the time because I had bought a new bike on hire purchase so this was glorious surprise. My Mum only bought me 2 albums ever but what albums..Abbey Road and this!
I played it on the good stereo in the living room first before retiring to the crappier record player in the front bedroom to listen to it more. This was an altogether different beast to Ziggy Stardust and it took me  a little while to get over Mike Garson's piano playing but over the next few days it all fell into place. A brilliant album with only one jarring note..the cover of the Stone's Let's Spend The Night Together, which I thought was horrible. And it was a bit American. Bowie actually said it was "Ziggy goes to America" and being a big anglophile it took me a little while to get into that.
My immediate favourites were Cracked Actor and Drive-In Saturday. Jean Genie was already a big hit. I first heard that song in the school art room. And had the single.
Glam rock was big now. Actually, there's not much difference between Jean Genie and The Sweet's "Blockbuster". I can see now why Bowie felt he need to move on and kill Ziggy. Everyone was a glam rocker. It was all getting a bit much.
At the time the cover was quite shocking. Especially the strange nude like figure in the gatefold sleeve. The no eyebrows look. Of course, now the images are iconic. But at the time it was so out there. He really did come across as an alien.

Beggars Banquet by The Rolling Stones 1968

While I loved my greatest hits records from the Rolling Stones... in the late sixties and the seventies I wasn't really interested in the Stones. I started to hit my stride as a record collector as the Stones started to release steadily worse records. Beginning with Goat's Head Soup. T. Rex and Bowie meant a lot more to me than these old rockers. So I never got to hear their brilliant run of albums like Let It Bleed & Sticky Fingers, Beggars Banquet and Exile. I did spend a teenage afternoon pashing a girl called Bernadette while she played Sticky Fingers constantly but I think I was concentrating on kissing her while keeping an ear out for her Dad mowing the lawn.
It wasn't until after Little Murders broke up around 84 and I got together with Chris Harrington from Large Number 12s and formed the short-lived Dice Men that I got to hear the Stones properly. I was around his house in Prahran and he started playing Let It Bleed on his acoustic. Great song but I didn't know it. He then played the album over a few beers. Though I liked the album it was hearing Beggars Banquet that did it for me. This was introduced to me by working a few months later with Ronny Williams and Jason Underhill at the Venetian Room and Rubber Soul. Actually, I think I might still have Jason's copy of the album suitably corroded by overuse. Jason worked with me at all those clubs in the eighties and was the original DJ at Lizard Lounge.
Beggars Banquet ..it's really hard to put into words how good it is. Street Fighting Man and those opening acoustic guitars. Sympathy For The Devil a dance floor favourite from most of the clubs I worked in. Salt of The Earth. Stray Cat Blues which I argue is miles better than the live version on Get Yer Yah Yahs Out people always go on about. Brilliant.

Inflammable Material by Stiff Little Fingers 1979

Coming at the tail end of Punk was this masterful record by Irish band Stiff Little Fingers. Sure it harked back to the sound of 1977 but it did it with such style and melody and commitment it was just the stuff I could relate to. This was how I was trying to write songs. Fast and furious. But with a pop edge. I loved this band but unfortunately, this was where me and my old group of friends really started to diverge. While playing in bands in the late 70s I saw less and less of my old friends. But 1979 was where I kind of stopped seeing them altogether. The last time I got together with them I brought this over. We used to have record listening parties but for them after the Pistols and The Stranglers and The Clash this was the last time they wanted to hear my rubbish. Actually, I knew it was over two years previously but we had kept our friendship together over the sounds of Roxy Music and Bowie the like.
Towards the end of the year a group of my newer friends started talking about the Mod revival in the UK and since we were already into the style (as opposed to punk) began working on a Fanzine. Being in a band I started working on putting together a night. Although I rejected a lot of the punk bands especially hating Sham 69 I remained a fan of The Clash and Stiff Little Fingers. Truly great bands. I even had a soft spot for Generation X.

In 2020 Stiff Little Fingers played at the Croxton Hotel in Thornbury. My other band The Fiction scored the support gig. I was pretty sick that night but there was no way we were pulling out. If you're in a band the show must go on. And COVID was just around the corner and there would be no more gigs for a year. Not that I knew that then. In the end it was a great night. When they played Alternative Ulster they raised the roof.

Steve McQueen by Prefab Sprout 1985

I must admit when I first heard Prefab Sprout I was not very impressed. Overproduced, too lush and far too soft. But it was coming home late after a DJing gig one night and watching videos when the song Appetite came on and I was hooked. Instead of buying the single I decided to buy the album. I mean, it had a great title. And "Appetite" kinda got to me. The album was just great. It just drew me in with every play. I think it was the words that got to me more than the music first.  There were so many quotable lines in there and the singer mined the same angsty coalmine as Morrissey in many way. Dry humour.
I was driving my Mazda down to the beach one afternoon with a girl I was seeing at the time. I always thought she reluctantly went out with me from the moment we first met. I was a DJ at Barbarellas. And we met at 4am in the morning. And she didn't like DJs. We were all up them ourselves I guess.
Anyway I was playing this record in the car and it came to the song "Horsing Around" She told me to pull over and explain what I was trying to tell her. I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. Until she refered me back to the lyrics on Steve McQueen. I was just listening to my favourite record at the time and she thought I was sending her messages. It was a rocky road from then on. Lucky we were next to a Milk Bar so I bought a good supply of treats for the day. Getting back in the car it was really hard to choose what the next tape would be. I think it was Roxy Music. I doubted she would find any messages in there.

More Adventurous by Rilo Kiley 2004

I was reading an article about Elvis Costello because although I can no longer sit through a whole album he does come up with a few good songs now and then and he does good interviews. The man does have an opinion. Regrettably I love his old stuff better than his new stuff. It happens.  

In the article, he was talking about Jenny Lewis and her band Rilo Kiley. He usually has pretty good taste so I sought out the album. And it was fantastic. One song on it "Does He Love You?" sent shivers up my spine when I heard it.  I just couldn't stop playing it. Then there was "Portions For Foxes" and the sublime "It's a Hit". The album was full of brilliant songs. This was their third album so I went looking for other stuff and I find heaps. Not only the previous albums but demos and such. What I didn't find much of were videos. They didn't seem to make many vids of their songs. But I became a bit of a Rilo Kiley obsessive for a while.
I don't know if they ever toured Australia but I did get to see Jenny Lewis performing at RRR a few years back. No Rilo songs but songs off the Jenny and Johnny album. "I/m Having Fun Now" (which is a great record too) And she's still writing classic pop songs. Great night but the first time I'd seen a band without a drink. Didn't hurt that much and managed to get down to The Tote for a beer afterward.

Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles 1967

The first time I came across this album I wasn't really interested in the Beatles at all. I liked their early stuff but I was mostly into my radio and the current pop songs. Luckily this mindset only lasted a few short months in the late sixties. Tony Edwin, who lived around the corner from me, his Dad was a 3AK DJ Graeme Boyd and Tony brought round a copy of the album. Along with some other albums, he said his Dad no longer had need of them. The plan was for me to sell them at school. So like some black marketeer I packed them in my bag and the next day took them to Box Hill High School and with a group of young Form 1 bidders around me, I tried to sell the album. But no one was interested at the extortionate price of $3.50. I think I sold it for $2.50 in the end.
That weekend Tony comes back saying he's got to take the records back. His Dad was looking for them. Especially the Pepper album. So then on we had to tell a fib and say we never saw the Pepper album.

I felt terribly guilty. Graeme Boyd was one of the 3AK Good Guys and he was really a good guy. As a teenager, I got in trouble with the police and he was the one who came down to the police station with my mum to help me. When he walked in the police really changed their attitude. This was a celebrity!.
A few months down the track and my eyes and ears are opened to the sound of the Beatles and after my Mum gave me Abbey Road I start collecting Beatles albums. Because of the stereo effect on my cheap stereo Peppers always seemed to have vocals missing. But there was something about the songs. They're like sunshine. It became a regular play over the years and especially around 1990, I went mad for it. Everything was a little psychedelic again and this fitted in so well.
At the Rubber Soul Ronny would always play the Pepper reprise. Short but ferocious.
Nowadays I just put the record on and it creates a good vibe and puts you right back through time looking through the rose coloured glasses of 1967

Monkeemania by The Monkees 1979

My copy of this record is scratched ripped and smells of Rubber Soul. (the sixties night club I DJed at for 5 years)  It's also got Ronny Williams's name on it. Since he took my Aretha Franklin Best of when he left for Adelaide, I guess it's a fair trade. The Monkees were a big band for me in the sixties.

I lived in Croydon in 1968 and remember arguing with a neighbour in their backyard about who was better. The Beatles or The Monkees. I pointed out that The Monkees had all these hits. So what if they didn't play on the records just sang. What difference does that make? But they did play on their records later on. And wrote some great songs. Mary Mary, Randy Scouse Git. Self-penned.

The friendly argument continued into the house where we were playing the Game of Life in the living room. I was so intent on winning them over that I actually started believing the Monkees were really better.

Years later, I would get Little Murders to cover Monkees songs. Mary Mary of course. Also Look Out Here Comes Tomorrow, I'm Not Your Stepping Stone, (the Fiction even covered I Wanna be Free and made it into a punk song). Quite a few really. The Monkees were the beginnings of bubblegum music but they transcended that.
I used to love the TV series too. Watched it religiously. Bought the bubblegum cards. Even have a large tin Monkeemobile.
In 2016 the Monkees brought out the album Good Times. A brilliant album with a host of current-day artists writing songs for them. It contains what I think is one of the best Monkees songs ever in a track called Me and Magdalena. Mike Nesmith singing. Just great.

Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan 1966

An epic record from 1966 which I didn't really get to listen to until 1978.
Again it took me until the mid-seventies to start listening to Dylan but when I did there was a great catalogue to get through. I used to live in a share-house in Oakleigh. One of the guys there was totally into Dylan. His name was Seb. His girlfriend was a very heavy walker. She made the floorboards bounce when she walked into the room. Therefore the records would skip. When she was around we'd keep the good records off in case they got scratched. Seb had a Dylan gold record on his wall. And that's all he had. I was resistant to the Dylan thing but gradually broke down after hearing Like a Rolling Stone on a good stereo.
This was a time when we would just sit around listening to Dylan. No TV on. Maybe a few beers and smokes. It was glorious. And this album went on forever. Though we had to get up every 20 minutes to flip the record.
I used to collect the Story of Pop magazine. Dylan's image at the time was just so cool. With his polka dot shirts, black suits and Cuban Heel boots. I even bought his book Tarantuala. It was rubbish. But not this album. It was Dylan at his peak.