Live by Bob Marley and the Wailers 1975

 I was living at my brother Tony's place in Blackburn South in 1977. My mum had gone back to the UK to live and Tony and his wife Carol let me live at their place. My brother had a great record player. A Marantz with these huge speakers. Really it made everything sound good. Late evenings we would have supper which was our custom and always included toast. Tony would toast two pieces of bread together to make his own thick sliced. With lots of butter. He would put a record on. More often than not something I didn''t really want to listen to. It didn't matter. It was cool hanging out.

One night my mate Chris Hunter came around with the Bob Marley Live! album and some funny smelling cigarettes. Everyone was bringing these cigarettes back from Bali and his girlfriend had done the same. Didn't taste them . The smell put me off. Chris asked to put the record on the Marantz. This was my introduction to Bob Marley. One good thing about music. When it hits you you feel no pain. 

I had never heard anything like it. I was completely immersed in the sounds. They just jumped off the record. This record became my early evening Saturday night soundtrack. I would listen to it before I went to gigs. I quickly copied it onto cassette and we would pile into the Volkswagen Beetle and head into the city with Marley blasting out of the speakers. It would be playing as we returned home in the first light of morning. It was all we had until the punk albums starting turning up. The Clash. The Jam. But for a time Bob Marley and reggae was the sound of my 77.

Drop Out With The Barracudas 1981

 "I Wish It Could Be 1965 Again!" Because for a while there we did! Wish it was 65 or 66 or 67. Well, anything but 1980 it seems. The Mod movement in Melbourne was starting to move along with scooters appearing fast and furious. Especially when the South Melbourne council decided to sell off all their Rabbit scooters that were scooped up by several Mods who couldn't afford or get their hands on a Lambretta or a Vespa. We looked for sixties suits and shoes in Charity Shops at a time when they were full of cool stuff. I was dressed totally in second-hand clothes. Where else could you get button-down shirts?

We were listening to soul and ska and the new Mod bands from the UK. My band had morphed from a  pop punk band into a Mod band without bothering to change our name.

And with the action starting to gather speed, this record came out. For some, it was just a joke. Which was not helped by the horrible front cover. Luckily on the back, they looked cool. But for a few of us, it was a party record summing up our new strange experience of digging up the past. In retrospect, it fits more into the scene about to happen with the paisley brigade of the early eighties and bands like the Hoodoo Gurus. But I loved this album It was a three-minute of everything cool about the sixties. California style.

I loved this record. It is jam-packed with great songs. 

One weekend a few years back I bought a surfboard at a garage sale. Maybe my band should do a similar pose to the cover.