1. Roy Harper – Stormcock
2. Beatles – White Album
3. Captain Beefheart – Lick my Decals off
4. Bob Dylan – Bringing it all back home
5. Byrds – Notorious Byrd Brothers
6. Love – Forever Changes
7. Doors – Strange Days
8. Mothers of Invention – We’re only in it for the money
9. Cream – Disraeli Gears
10. Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland
11. Pink Floyd – Wish you were here
12. Country Joe & the Fish – Electric Music for the Body & Mind
13. Neil Young – Harvest
14. Joni Mitchell – Blue
15. Bob Marley – Exodus
16. John Lennon – Imagine
17. Sex Pistols – Never mind the Bollocks
18. Stiff Little Fingers – Inflammable Material
19. Little Richard – Here’s Little Richard
20. Son House – Death Letter Blues
A Record
A Record
Albums sit in neat rows on shelves,
Antiques,
Full of memories from long ago,
Rarely touched.
In cover photos
Groups of young men
Pose
In sexy clothes
Trying to look mean.
Now fat, bald grandpas.
Images of
Old bluesmen
Stare,
Clutching national steels,
Eyes full
Of experience.
Now long dead.
Vinyl discs,
Laden with clicks and hisses,
Atmosphere and warmth,
Transport us to nights
When the air throbbed,
The beat pounded,
As the blood rushed through arteries,
Ears rung
And neurones fired.
Each album
Brought home on a wave of euphoria,
With bated expectation,
Held gently,
Delicately inspected,
A precious artefact
To be revered
Played and intently listened too,
Focussed on
Every note absorbed,
Every word analysed.
Liner notes no longer pawed over,
Interpreted or scanned for clues.
Replaced by wiki where all and more is available
At the touch of a finger.
Now reduced to the status of trite historic documents,
Well-worn words,
Now stale and pretentious,
Robbed of their nascent wonder.
Albums sit on dusty shelves
Untouched.
Opher – 6.2.2022
I find it hard to believe that many of these albums are now 60 years old.
Music was so much more than music. It was a discovery, a sharing of social intent, a sharing of ideals.
Music informed.
Music was the most important thing of all.
Music was our culture.
Anecdote – My first LPs
My First LPs
The first album that I bought was a second hand copy of Here’s Little Richard. I adored it and played it to death. I remember at a school fete where we were asked to put on a fund raising stall. I took my Dansette in and was a Juke Box for the afternoon. I only took one album in and that was Little Richard, but I played it non-stop all afternoon and made a pound or two. It was an excuse to play the stuff I loved extremely loudly.
I soon followed that first album with Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly. I extended out to Elvis Presley and the first Cliff Richard ‘Live’ album.
The first new album I bought was The Shadow’s Greatest Hits in summer 1963. I loved the Shadows and had all their singles. It seemed the logical choice. I wasn’t to know that no sooner had I bought it that it was destined to become part of the ‘old sound’. It was blown into the past by the Beatles.
After one hearing of the Beatles Please Please Me album I was hooked. I rushed out and bought it. For a full year Merseybeat was it. Then it was British Beat with the Stones, Kinks, Who, Yardbirds, Animals and Pretty Things. I still have all the singles and albums. But I craved for the slightly out of the ordinary so I had The Downliners Sect, Birds, Sorrows and Bo Street Runners. I felt that this was my music. This was as if a knife had sliced it off from everything that had gone before. This was mine.
I loved albums.
I rushed home to my bedroom with my latest purchase, put side one on the Dansette and while it was blasting out, to the distant sound of ‘turn that down!’ futilely coming from my mum and dad in the living room, I avidly digested the front cover photo and all the writing and songs on the back. It was a total experience.
LPs were sacred. They were a complete package of art, information and music aimed only at me. I absorbed them with the rapture they deserved. They were the total immersive experience.