Eldarado by Electric Light Orchestra 1974

It started with the single "Can't Get It Out Of My Head" which wasn't constantly on the radio in early 1975. Basically I couldn't get it out of my head. I had just started teaching college. Met the girl I would go out with for the next six years and ELO kinda soundtracked that period for me with this album. I was really into concept albums. They were like audio films. I would listen to them from start to finish. I guess I got into that from listening to The Kinks run of concept albums in the early seventies. But really everyone was doing it. Bowie. Pink Floyd..everyone.
At the time ELO were not big yet. So this was like an underground record. They were cool with their "I Am The Walrus" strings and Beatle melodies in a world where the Beatles no longer existed. Listening to the album now I can hear the fifties rock and roll roots on some of the songs. The voice seemed blurred. I actually went to see them at the Myer Music Bowl and it wasn't just the production..Jeff Lynne seemed to have a blurred voice. For that one, we sat outside the fence until the last 3 songs and then poured into the bowl. A tactic we used on many a gig.
When I started writing songs our guitarist said my songs sounded like a cross between ELO and Leonard Cohen. I took that as a compliment. Depressing lyrics on top of pop melodies. Fair enough.
Oh, I must say I've always liked the cover too. The Wizard of Oz was a film we all went and saw in the early seventies because it was very "trippy'

Forever Changes by Love 1967

It took me a long time to hear this album and it started with one of those singles that were tucked away in the back of our neighbor's house and he wanted to get rid of. Graeme Boyd was a DJ at 3AK. He had tons of singles and albums floating about the house and now and again he would give me a box of them. Mostly rubbish but with a few gems. So many singles it took me ages to get through them all. One was "Alone Again Or/A House is Not a Motel" by Love. Good enough to keep but not on the top of my playlist. Not when I was busy listening to the Beatles.

Then later in the seventies I started reading about the band and I got intrigued and searched out the album. When I found it in some second hand store and got it home and played it and heard "Alone again Or"  in the context of the album I was hooked. I loved the mariachi horns, the acoustic guitars and the wild ideas crashing about the recording. It was like finding lost treasure. I think it was the summer of 1980 I would play this with the windows open and just drift backwards into 1967. I still want to put mariachi horns on one of my own records. Something I was aiming for with the horns on "Keys to My Heart" from my Home album.

Slade Alive! by Slade 1972

I loved Glam Rock. It was the first real movement I was part of as it happened. Too young to be part of the real Beatles era. Not that interested in Hendrix and Creedence and all those American bands, Glam rock was a godsend for early seventies teenagers. First, it was T. Rex. And then Slade. They came out with these magnificent singles "Cos I Luv You" and "Look What U Dun". Then they brought out a live album. The radio kept on playing "Darlin' Be Home Soon" continually. We'd all wait for the quiet bit and then the burp and then kill ourselves laughing. Simple pleasures. The record shop windows were always ordained with this cover.
And they were coming to the Melbourne Showgrounds. This was going to be my first real concert. Lindisfarne, Status Quo and Slade. Tickets were $5:50. I went with my friends Geoff Thake and Alan Barnard who would later roadie and mix for Little Murders. The place was full of sharpies dancing their strange sharpie frug. When Slade came on I was too small to see over the older kids so Geoff put me on his shoulders for what seemed like the whole gig. It was just amazing. The rain came down. Wet happy and having one of the best times of my life.
On the back of my bedroom door, I had a large poster of Slade. For a brief time, Slade were the coolest band on the planet.

Setting Sons by The Jam 1979

Arriving in the UK in late 79 I waited until I got to my family's place in Blackpool before I let myself go record shopping. I was afraid of how much I would buy and then have to carry it around for the next month or so. So the first day in Blackpool I went to WH Smith and bought two albums, London Calling and Setting Sons. When I got back to my cousin Neil's house I didn't know what to put on first. In the end, I chose The Jam.
He had this thing called a Music Centre set up in the front room. The speakers were high and when I put on Setting Sons "Girl On The Phone " just exploded. I can't remember anything ever sounding so good. The trouble of course was I wouldn't really get to hear any more of this stuff until I got back to Melbourne.
But when I did arrive home in late January laden with boxes of albums and singles it was to a slightly different world. While there I had got myself a Union Jack coat made up by Paul Weller's tailor. My hair which had been growing long was now back to a short cut and it was done in Carnaby Street. I was ready to help kick-start the Mod movement in Melbourne. Me and a few friends would gather in a house in South Yarra and talk about what we could do to get more people interested in our Mod obsession. We started a club Kommotion and a fanzine called "Start" Little Murders draped amps in flags, covered Who and soul songs and organised Mod discos instead of support acts. On the street, scooters started appearing. In the background, The Jam "Setting Sons" played. A brilliant time was had by all.

Today by The Beach Boys 1965

I picked up this album up ina second-hand shop in the city at the peak of my record-buying mania in the late seventies where every week I would go into town just to see what new second-hand records were in. I think I used to fret knowing that every day more records were going into the shelves and being scooped up by others. But once a week I would come home with classic albums mostly American like Flaming Groovies, New York Dolls and The Beach Boys. Old sixties albums from the USA were always very tactile with bright colours and thick cardboard.
After listening to Pet Sounds continually I was interested in what Brian Wilson had released before though I was a bit turned off by some of those old cheesy surfing songs. But I had read so much about his writing I thought I would give it a try. This was the first one I found. And it was glorious. Such great melodies. Such great harmonies.  Such great songs. Still surfing pop but there is something more to the songs.
The first side is upbeat with that fantastic chugging surf beat the band had perfected. Well, the session musicians (known as the Wrecking Crew) But on the second side Brian Wilson gets a bit more melancholic. The production is more sumptuous. It was stuff like this that showed what a genius Brian was. Great songs except for a bit of rubbish at the end. But Beach Boys always seem to have a bit of rubbish at the end as if we want to hear the band mucking about in the studio.

Blood On The Tracks by Bob Dylan 1975

It was on the 3XY album show late on a Sunday night when I first heard "Idiot Wind" and was instantly glued to the speaker. Couldn't believe how good the song was. Especially since I'd kind of written Dylan off after Blonde on Blonde. It took me a while to buy the album though but when I saw it at the record stall at Burwood Teachers College and read the blurb on the back cover I thought it sounded like a good album by the way the author spoke of the work. When I got it home and started playing it I was just mesmerized. it was so cohesive it was like he wrote one song and just made variations on it. But it worked so well. It was like jumping on a roundabout.
I would take the album over to my girlfriend Leonie's house in Balwyn North and we would listen to it obsessively. Later when I moved to Oakleigh to a share house it was one of those 2am albums we'd sit and listen to after being out to gigs. It would also inform my first attempts at songwriting as I would make use of Dylan's chord progressions.
And the words. So many just hit home. Heartache, anger and loneliness indeed. Easily one of his best albums. It got me back on the Dylan kick searching down the albums I hadn't bought yet from before Blonde on Blonde. A year later he would follow it with another great album in Desire but it lacked the impact of the previous album. We thought Dylan was finished and irrelevant but Blood on The Tracks blew all those thoughts away. He would continue to surprise us for years to come.