Blow Up A-Go-Go! by various artists 1999

I bought this album at the Mighty Music Machine in Chapel Street Prahran. I bought it because there was a song by the Kinks that I'd never heard of. Of course, it may have been rubbish (but it wasn't) but there was something about the look of the album that said it might have some good stuff on it. I took a quick listen on the headphones something I hardly ever do. Mainly because it usually puts me off buying the record. Anyway, a quick scan through this album and I was amazed at how great it all sounded. It was like a glimpse into someone else's club or their record box. These songs were touted as hits from the legendary Blow Up club in London. And when I got the album home and started playing it I was wishing I could go to a club that played these songs. It set me off on a trip looking for more obscure but groovy sounds from the sixties and seventies. Not really something I'd done before but now I was buying weird seventies soundtracks and hip lost treasures. 

The first hour of the Lizard Lounge as the people were just coming in I'd use to create my own little Blow-Up vibe. Spinning tracks like Bert's Apple Crumble, Bongolia and Shake by The Shadows of Knight. Also got me back into playing Northern Soul and early ska. In 1999 while everyone was getting a little bit more dance floor I was constantly listening to obscure groovy tracks.

Just listening to the album again now I want to get some friends together and party. 

Stoneage Romeos by Hoodoo Gurus 1984

Booked to support Little Murders on a Monday night at the Prospect Hill Hotel (Monday nights were incredibly huge gigs.. the place was packed and always ready to party!... it was a major score to get a months residency there) they pulled out at the last minute but we got to play with them a little later on a shared bill at the Jump Club.

Le Hoodoo Gurus took off really quickly it seemed. They had this brilliant single called Leilana that was all over RRR. When I saw them play I was amazed that they just had guitars and drums and no bass player. The crowd went nuts. They loved everything they did.

Soon they would drop the Le and a guitarist (the legendary Roddy Ray'Da), add a bass player and record a bunch of brilliant singles and this great album. All the singles ended up on this album. Tojo, My Girl, a new version of Leilana. I was mad about this record.

When I wasn't playing myself I'd go and see them at places like Macy's and the Armadale. I particularly remember their cover songs too like "That's Cool, That'sTrash" by the Kingsmen and Galveston by Glen Campbell. It took me ages to find the original version of the Kingsmen record. It was such a good song. Hoodoos should of recorded it though because it's their version that sticks in my head.

Later on we played this album to death at places like the Beehive and Barbarella's. A classic Australian album that helped to define the guitar era of the Eighties.

For a start it's the one with Waterloo Sunset on it so that's worth the price of admission alone.
After buying the Golden Hour of The Kinks I started looking for more Kinks albums. K-Mart had a few cheap ones in horrible sleeves on labels like MFP or Music For Pleasure. The first one I picked up was in a horrible purple sleeve with the worst photo of the band. I actually made my own cover for it when I find out it was actually Something Else (not Waterloo Sunset as was the name on the cover). I built the cover from bits of cardboard and photos from an old pop annual. Though I wish I'd kept the annual now.
The Kinks work as been endlessly compiled and resold which is a great shame because they are right up there with the Beatles, the Who and The Stones.
Anyway after Village Green this is arguably their best album. It is just so English and in the early seventies when I started getting into the Kinks I was also getting back into my Englishness. I couldn't listen to Crosby Stills and Nash or James Taylor or hear about endless highways and golden beaches. I had become focused on wet streets and old buildings and would watch old films like Billy Liar and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. My pin-up girls were Julie Christie and Chrissie Shrimpton. Not a Californian girl in sight. And this is what Ray Davies wrote about and their music reflected. There are no better songs about London than those by Ray Davies.
And what songs! Apart from what I beleive is the best song ever written in Waterloo Sunset there is the sibling rivalry of Two Sisters, the ode to smoking which is Harry Rag..Death of Clown (a song I once based a painting on during High School art).. brilliant album!

Idlewild by Everything But The Girl 1988

Well, there's got to be some quiet time around the house. It can't all be pounding drums and chiming guitars.  In 1988 when this album came out I was living in Elwood on the top floor of a block of flats in Meredith Street. You could actually go up from my flat and it was a big open roof. One year I threw a birthday party up there. It was pretty big. A friend of mine who was minding the place actually dragged a mattress up there one hot night and slept up there. On New Year's Eve, you could watch the fireworks.
I remember playing this song a lot at Meredith Street. Not only was the sound lush and one could say a little to the middle of the road. But calming on a Sunday afternoon. Sitting on an Ikea couch (the same one as two of my friends) Surrounded by Art Deco statues, art prints and Japanese robots. Waiting for friends to turn up with a bottle of Stolly. Especially after 3 nights of DJing playing lots of guitar music.
And I really liked the lyrics.  So it wasn't just background music. It was an album to listen to. Back in a time when I would actually sit on the sofa and listen to records. I'm not even sure I could do that anymore. I really enjoy hearing albums in the car because I can really hear what's going on but more often than not I will rely on music I really know. So I now I listen to music while I'm busy doing something else. Like right now, typing.

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.