{"id":14127,"date":"2020-05-12T22:02:30","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T21:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/?p=14127"},"modified":"2020-05-16T10:21:13","modified_gmt":"2020-05-16T09:21:13","slug":"ten-albums-no-explanation-youre-having-a-laugh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/ten-albums-no-explanation-youre-having-a-laugh\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten albums? No explanations? You’re having a laugh …"},"content":{"rendered":"

Call me nosy, but I always want to know why people choose their favourite albums on Facebook. And call me verbose, but I can’t resist explaining why I choose mine. So here are some short accounts – and hopefully ones that some at least can relate to.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Best of the Seekers<\/em> was the first album I ever bought. Thirty nine shillings from Rhythm<\/em> music in Reigate, Surrey. I was about 12 at the time and my popular \"\"music education was woefully lacking. I had been brought up in an evangelical Christian household where music meant hymns and choruses – and where pop\u00a0 was mid-way between suspect and Satanic. \u00a0I managed to persuade my folks to let me buy this album on the grounds that, as well as chaste pop numbers such as I\u2019ll never find another you<\/em>, they sang about crossing Jordan river deep and wide and opening up them pearly gates. I then got the sheet music and spent about two months straight learning guitar by playing along, with enforced breaks for school, food and sleep.<\/p>\n

\"\"Given the religious nature of the household, I had little trouble introducing a record by Creedence Clearwater Revival, which sounded like a faith-based temperance movement. In reality, of course, this was a big step on from The Seekers: crunchy electric guitars, howling vocals and lyrics about life on the road, life on the bayou (whatever that was) and \u2013 bewilderingly but intriguingly \u2013 wiggling to the left and wiggling to the right. I discovered Creedence from Top of the Pops, which I\u2019d in turn discovered after moving from Cheshire to a more street-wise school near London. On Day 1, Nick, who sat behind me, 13 going on 30, told me he’d a bet on with his mum about that week\u2019s number one. So I told my mum, not a gambler herself, that I would be horribly left out of things if I didn\u2019t watch Top of the Pops…. Result. New worlds opened. The charts. Radio 1. The NME. Radio Luxembourg.<\/p>\n

\"\"And Radio Luxembourg was where I discovered The Beatles. It was New Year\u2019s Eve, 1970 I think, and the pirate station played every Beatles track back-to-back. I tuned in by chance half-way through A Hard Day\u2019s Night<\/em> and listened spellbound.\u00a0 Here were harmonies like The Seekers, a beat like Creedence \u2013 and a whole lot more. \u00a0What I was hearing was the musical cocktails that the Fab Four concocted from the ingredients of rock and roll, blues, country, jazz, gospel, the American songbook and Liverpudlian wit. Picking an album is invidious, but Revolver is my current choice for sheer Beatly-ness, ranging from the balladry of Here, There and Everywhere<\/em> to the psychedelic wig-out of Tomorrow Never Knows<\/em> by way of something like And Your Bird Can Sing<\/em>, which no other group could ever have come up with.<\/p>\n

\"\"If there was one band that The Beatles envied, it was this lot. Beatle harmonies were punchy, tight and sweet, but they didn\u2019t have the lush multi-part arrangements that Brian Wilson was creating for the Beach Boys. It was like he\u2019d kidnapped a choir and put them on top of a backbeat. My classmate Nick was again responsible. His domestic arrangements were slightly different to mine and one night he invited me round to drink beer and listen to \"\"music with his mum and her boyfriend. I can\u2019t recall whether it was Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Motown or whatever. But it would have been something cool, which the Beach Boys weren\u2019t. Hence Nick handing the sleeveless disc to me and saying: \u201cI don\u2019t need this mate. Do you want it?\u201d I took it home, put on side one and sat awe-struck. Then I played side two which finished with God Only Knows. I thought it was the best song I\u2019d ever heard. And 50 years later, I still do. A blissful night in Reigate, California.<\/p>\n

\"\"By the final years of school, people had divided into tribes: prog-rockers listening to Genesis and King Crimson; stoners into The Grateful Dead; bohemians following Bowie and the Velvet Underground; quiet chemists who cherished heavy metal; and eccentrics who admired weird outfits like Gong, Uriel and other groups with Steve Hillage in them. \u00a0That genre gang syndrome was perhaps largely a boy thing. The girls I knew often had much more electic tastes, and it was mainly they who introduced me to the intellectual and emotional power of songwriters like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Carole King – and Bob Dylan of course. I repaid the compliment by discovering Judee Sill, whose LP I bought at Cheapo Cheapo Records in Rupert Street, Soho. Like Brian Wilson, she brought some of the artistry of classical music to pop, and her lyrics were poetic and spiritual. Only years later did I discover this transcendentally beautiful music was created by someone who started life as a teenage armed robber, learned to play at reform school, became a junkie and died of an overdose at 35.\u00a0 When it comes to musical genius, the seeds grow in unexpected places.<\/p>\n

\"\"…Like the blind third child of a single mother in Detroit. From new friends I learned the different flavours you get from jazz-influenced music, Steely Dan, the Crusaders, and Stevie Wonder \u2013 who was both jazzy and poppy. But he was also political. Listen to Black Man<\/em> or Pastime Paradise<\/em>.\u00a0 He was openly emotional \u2013 Love\u2019s in need of love today<\/em>, Isn\u2019t She Lovely<\/em>. Nostalgic \u2013 I wish<\/em>.\u00a0 Passionate \u2013 As<\/em>. All human life is here. The music just pours out of him. A great lesson in being uninhibited.<\/p>\n

\"\" At university, I met people I\u2019d not encountered before. Many terrifyingly confident, although some disturbingly shy. \u00a0People who had travelled the world. People who understood politics and read the Sunday papers. And, extraordinarily, people who were unembarrassed to listen to classical music. I realised I too could like some classical stuff. Usually shortish pieces with great melodies. Chopin\u2019s piano. Bach\u2019s fugues. Elgar, Faur\u00e9. And this, played by a quartet on a sunny day by the river. So many tunes packed into half an hour.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

By the mid-70s, country rock was a thing for me, albeit a guilty pleasure because \u2018country\u2019 was generally regarded as naff. That said, Teach Your Children<\/em> by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young was cool – and it was country as a cowpat. The music\u2019s allure was in part that it came from somewhere exotic, a place of canyons and cowboy boots. \u00a0But one guy who seemed to speak directly from the deep South to South London was Gram Parsons. \u00a0Anyone who\u2019s been homesick can get Hickory Wind<\/em>. Anyone can dance to I Can\u2019t Dance <\/em>or cry to Brass Buttons<\/em>. The latter was written about his alcoholic mother who died of cirrhosis when he was 18, following his father\u2019s suicide six years earlier. Parsons\u2019 own self-destructive streak led to his own death at 26 from a booze and morphine binge shortly after this album was made. And perhaps the most poignant part of the back-story was that Emmylou Harris, the woman whose pure, heartfelt harmonies bonded so uniquely with Parsons\u2019s well-lived-in tones, never got to tell him that she loved him and later wrote the ultimate song of grief about him in Boulder to Birmingham<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"Had Gram Parsons gone to rehab, he might have turned out like Jason Isbell \u2013 whose recovery from alcoholism is an undercurrent to this album. It also epitomises the comeback of the song. Music has always been about sound and style as much as stories, but in the last decade there\u2019s been a renaissance in great song-writing. And Jason Isbell is in the middle of it. His songs are short stories set to music – smart, moving, curious. Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes is in the same league \u2013 check out A little bit of everything<\/em>. Then there\u2019s Justin Townes Earle, Laura Marling, Ron Sexmith etc etc.<\/p>\n

\"\"About ten years ago I heard a beautiful song and thought I vaguely recognised it. It was Adele, transforming Dylan\u2019s drawl Make you feel my love<\/em> into something tender and powerful. Been a fan ever since. I love the strength and character of her voice and the soul-baring nature of the songs. Things I particularly like about this album: \u00a0the emotional honesty; the bluesy influences; the perfect pitching and phrasing; and the fact she told the record company to get stuffed when they wanted to put a band on Someone Like You<\/em>. Just as it was, with only a voice and piano, she said it felt like it freed her from the relationship for which the whole album is a requiem. It sold 17 million copies, went quadruple-platinum, and was Number One in the US and UK. Good call, Adele.<\/p>\n

And finally, had it been another day\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\" \"\" \"\"\"\" \"\" \"\"\"\" \"\" \"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Call me nosy, but I always want to know why people choose their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14127"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}