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.

OK Computer by Radiohead 1997

By the time OK Computer came out in 1997, it seemed the world was ready for Radiohead after the slow bleed of The Bends into people's mindsets. Without lots of publicity, it seemed everyone I knew had a copy of The Bends playing whenever we got together. So there was a great deal of anticipation for the new album which was preceded by their own "Bohemian Rhapsody" in Paranoid Android. The album that came after was exactly what it promised to be.., one of the best albums of the 90s. It was just a listening pleasure that was constantly in the CD player for probably the next 2 years. Paranoid was played at Lizard Lounge. No Surprises and Karma Police were played through headphones. It reminded me a lot of the way people used to listen to Dark Side of The Moon 20 years earlier.
Radiohead came to Festival Hall in February 1998 in Melbourne on the back of OK Computer. It was incredibly hot. Devastatingly hot. 5 guys in front of us took off their shirts and the body odour was horrendous. But it couldn't detract from the power on stage. (though it came close) After OK Computer (and the Bends) it was hard to give their newer albums the attention they probably deserve. (Although Kid A and Amnesiac which at the time were derided now seem to receive a lot more attention. Back then we fed those CDs into our computers removing the rubbish tracks to burn a single album. This would be done for a few of those big sets including Sandinista by The Clash)

Rum, Sodomy and The Lash by The Pogues 1985

I can't remember where I first heard this album but once I had it I couldn't stop playing it, swiftly transferring it to a cassette to play in my car. I remember being stuck in traffic under the railway line that runs parallel to Flinders street blasting this out. I had just dropped off a girlfriend in the city and was itching to turn the volume up.
I became a feverish promoter for the band telling everyone I knew how great this album was. Even teachers where I worked in Footscray west. Especially those with modest Celtic ties. The whole album is great from start to finish. No fillers. And produced by Elvis Costello! After producing The Specials debut he comes up with another classic album. From The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn to "and the band played Waltzing Matilda" just great songs.
I managed to pick up the T-shirt while I was in the UK. Mick Barclay who was playing the drums with Paul Kelly begged me to let him wear it onstage at the  Club in Smith Street Collingwood one night. He promised to give it back the next day. I never saw it again. It did travel the world with the Coloured Girls but he lost it somewhere in the USA.
He replaced it with a green Pogues T-shirt (not nearly as good) tickets to Festival Hall to see the band then invited me along to drinks afterwards at the Razor Club where I got to meet Shane MacGowan. Shane, however, was completely wasted so unlike my meeting with Joe Strummer this was over after 5 seconds. 
I don't think The Pogues ever came close to making an album this good ever again. Plenty of great songs but no truly great albums. Well not like this one.

Singles Going Steady by The Buzzcocks 1979

Another compilation album but what a fantastic bunch of tracks. And the Buzzcocks had a brilliant run of singles beginning with Boredom (not included) right until the Harmony in My Head and beyond that. I remember seeing the album on import at Missing link Records and getting so excited at seeing all these tracks together even knowing I had most of them already. It just seemed the ultimate in modern pop. Pete Shelley sure could write a great pop single. B sides were terrific too.
Little Murders were lucky enough to support them at the Prince of Wales back in 2003. I got to chat to Pete about Blackpool of all things cos his Aunt lived close to there. And he signed album cover sleeves that Joey from Dollsquad gave me to get signed. On stage they were ferocious and loud.
I first got into the Buzzcocks when I was in The Fiction. They were a great influence on the way I wrote songs. I've tried to cover their songs on a number of occasions but I never get anywhere close to getting the sound right.

Now I'm back playing with The Fiction again when I'm creating songs for the band I keep referring back to the sound of the Buzzcocks. They truly are the gold standard in punk-pop songwriting. We even cover one of the songs from this album. "Ever Fallen in Love"