So I was in Form 3 (Year 9) at Box Hill High School hanging out by the taps in the Quadrangle when the windows of the Art Room on the second storey were opened by a bunch of older kids and then large speakers were placed on the ledge. The distinctive thud of the stylus hitting the vinyl and suddenly the schoolyard was filled with the screaming guitar of John Fogerty, Up Around The Bend. And so I was really introduced to the mighty sound of Creedence Clearwater Revival.
With the end of the Beatles Creedence kind of became the biggest band in the world for a short while. Well according to GO-SET. But indeed Cosmos Factory was everywhere in 1970. I knew they'd been around for a while. My big brother Tony would play Susie Q on his Marantz stereo real loud. He was living across the road from our house and those early Creedence albums were never far from the turntable.
But Cosmos was another thing altogether. What you might call a crossover hit. Their fifth album in 2 years. The radio would play the whole 11-minute version of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" My brother Steven would tell me how that was the time it took him to drive to his girlfriend's house. Door to door Grapevine on the radio.
A brilliant album that rounded off the sixties. A massive party album. And with songs like "Who'll Stop The Rain" and "Run Through The Jungle" not to mention that track that blasted the kids eating lunch at my old school, truly a classic album.
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