f4f3 | 20 Albums that changed my life - or my way of looking at it

Think of 20 albums that had such a profound effect on you that they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that, no matter what they were thought of musically, shaped your world. When you finish, tag 20 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you're it!

I was tagged by a friend on Facebook to do this, and since FB lends itself to short form, I dashed down the first twenty I could think of, keeping more or less to chronological order, but saying nothing about each. Now I have time, inclination and The Rattler on in the background.

In roughly chronological order:

(1) ELO - Out of the Blue
(2) Meatloaf - Bat Out of Hell

These came almost together. To be honest, I only bought the Meatloaf single - I only had enough money for one album, and the ELO one seemed much better value - a double LP, with a free self-assembly cardboard spaceship. Being a comics and SF geek, I was amazed to see Science Fiction imagery on an album cover (look, I was about 12 - I'd never heard of Hawkwind, or Yes, or any of the hundreds of bands grooving on Moorcock and Tolkein). Yes, I though, we geeks are entering the mainstream! One day SF films will be huge (this was pre Star Wars). One day they will make expensive looking Super Hero movies! Nah, I thought, maybe not.

Bat Out of Hell is the album that spoiled me for Opera. When you can get tunes like "Two out of three ain't bad", "Heaven Can Wait", and, of course, the title track, sung in English in 6 minutes 50 seconds, what more profound emotional truth am I going to get from 3 hours of Italian? I'm still not entirely sure I was wrong. These were huge, overblown songs of fantasy set in exotic locales (a drive in movie was at least as exotic as the fires of Hell to me - possibly more so). When I want to hit the highway like a battering ram, I still reach for this one.

(3) The Undertones - The Undertones

WTF!!! Cheerful Irish urchins sing about chocolate and girls! With guitars! Repeatedly!
Blew the top of my head off.

(4) Stiff Little Fingers - Nobody's Heroes
WTF!!!!! Angry Irish Urchins singing about guns and bombs!!! Loudly!!!! With Politics!!!

(5) Life's A Riot - Billy Bragg
Wait a minute. He can't sing. That guitar playing is quite loud, but a bit ropey. Ah. Songs about relationships (although I don't think we called them that then), lines like "I never made the first team I just made the first team laugh/And you never came to the phone, you were always in the bath" and songs about politics! With lines like "So they offer you a feature on stockings and suspenders next to a call for stiffer penalties for sex offenders" and even body politics (we definitely didn't have those then) "The busy girl buys beauty, the pretty girl buys style and the simple girl buys what she's told to buy". This might not prove that punk could produce a masterpiece, but it proved it could produce anything it all.

(6) Mike Oldfield - Incantations
And just by way of contrast, a long piece of orchestral music that I reall enjoyed. It opened my ears to the fact that there was different stuff out there. I'm still listening for different stuff.

(7) AC/DC - Highway To Hell
Very, very noisy, and not trying to be anything but fun. I could head-bang without guilt and I did. Plus they said "Nanu nanu" on the run-out.

(8) Gerry Rafferty - City to City
Grown up songs for the first time. Reflective, self deprecatory, and very, very hummable. "Whatever's Written In Your Heart" might have been the soundtrack to the first time I got dumped.

(9) Goodbye Mr Mackenzie - Good Deeds and Dirty Rags
I lost the chronology around here I think - The Rattler was a song about a rootless wanderer (or a motorway pervert) that spoke to something inside me, and made me think about lonely highways, and AMTRAK trains, and diners. It took another 15 years to happen, but I got there.

(10) Billy Connolly - Solo Concert
Yes, it's an album, the only comedy album we had in my parents' house. The first time I heard someone being funny in my voice, the first time I learned routines by heart. Probably still the root of a lot of my delivery.

(11) Tom Waits - The Heart of Saturday Night
I don't think I can explain how alien this was to me, how different from anything else I'd heard. I couldn't listen to Sinatra or Tony Bennett, or any of those old guys (I did learn, honestly) but this was something magical - songs of loss, sadness, nostalgia, and a hopeless romance with an edge on it like diamonds (on my windscree are like tears from heaven). Not my last Tom Waits album.

(12) Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense
As Steve Earle says somewhere, "And white people can dance to this". During my brief experience of night clubs (their names are like grafitti in my dreams: Viva, The Warehouse, Ultrateque, The Sub Club) Slippery People was probably my favourite song to dance to, and might be still.

(13) Simple Minds - New Gold Dream
Synthesisers! And Drums! And lyrics which made no sense whatsoever. But the sound was fantastic. I'd heard "The American" and "I Travel" in clubs, and they were fantastic to dance to, but this was just like a slab of sound. Loved it. Still do.

(14) Crowded House - Temple of Low Men
I can't even remember why I went to see Crowded House. It was their second visit to Glasgow - first time they played to 3 or 4 hundred at King Tuts, this was to a couple of thousand at the Kings. Next time was the Barrowlands, next time was the Concert Hall. I realised I might like some pop. Scary thought. Sister Madly was the track that did it for me.

(15) Tom Waits - Blue Valentines
I know - two albums by the same artist. This is the album that spoiled me for jazz. It more or less coincides with my discovering malt whisky, and my first stab at writing for money.

(16) Everything But The Girl - Eden
The soundtrack for my first stab at domesticity in the West End, and very nice at dinner parties. In fact, I might dig it out for dinner next Thursday, and see if Kay remembers it too.

(17) Steve Earle - Copperhead Road
This took me somewhere completely different. Like Tom Waits, but with an edge and, improbably, bagpipes. I'm still following Steve Earle, still think he has important things to say about politics, and that he can turn a love song like nobody else.

(18) Warren Zevon - A Quiet, Normal Life
The only compilation on this list, but I didn't realise it was a compilation at the time. I'd heard "Werewolves of London" on the Colour of Money soundrrack, but that hadn't prepared me for the plaintive beauty of "Desperados Under The Eaves", the madness of "Exciteable Boy" or the irony of "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me." He died too young. Heaven must have needed a lounge pianist.

(19) American Music Club - Mercury
I was amazed that I could still find music with the energy and anger of punk, and the emotional depth of my advanced age (I was what, 28, when this came out?). Saw them at King Tuts, and cried in the corner. Thank you, Mr Raines.

(20) Lloyd Cole - Antidepressant
I realised I was at number 19 and still had nothing after 1993, and nothing by Lloyd Cole. So this, from a couple of years ago. Lloyd was at Uni with me (well, we were at the same university at the same time) and I may have seen the Commotions first gig (it was a long time ago, and I'd just discovered drink). He's always had a lot to say to me about the absurdity of love, and the importance of putting up a wry, dissafected front. So when he came out with this mostly cheerful ode to middle age ("No longer angy, no longer young, no longer driven to distraction, not even by Scarlett Johanson") I took it as a sign to get off my arse and embrace love. I've never regretted it.

I could have gone from 1993 and picked another 20 - No Ezio here, no Del Amitri, Deacon Blue, Silencers, Blue Nile, Bruce, Eddie Reader... ah well, next time.