10 Songs that changed me – Songs 6 – 10

In this edition of the blog I will be reflecting on 5 songs that introduced me to 5 acts which remain an abiding passion of mine musically. Now, as you can imagine, I could easily have picked 10 acts or 20 acts and just kept going! However, there are certain moments where you know that your musical heroes and, occasionally, your musical tastes are never going to be the same again. These moments tend to occur in your childhood and teens, but they can also happen later in life when a particular artist just connects with you in a way that you weren’t expecting. So, here are 5 songs which have had an abiding impact on me and which have helped to shape my musical journey.

Song 6 – Hey Rock n Roll by Showaddywaddy

From my early music loving days I have already mentioned The Wombles, Glam Rock, Don McLean and many others, but for me one group stood apart as my first real experience of music fandom. An eight piece band from Leicester, Showaddywaddy were formed from two bands on Leicester’s pub circuit. The Choise were a four piece with Dave Bartram on vocals, Romeo Challenger on drums, Trevor Oakes on guitar and Al James on bass. Their sets featured 50s and 60s style songs written by the band. The Golden Hammers, also a four piece, had Buddy Gask on vocals, Malcolm ‘The Duke’ Allured on drums, Russ Field on guitar and Al Deas on bass. After jamming together on occasions, they decided to join forces permanently in 1973, and Showaddywaddy were born. The name came from the backing vocals of a song they would go on to play on New Faces, the Britain’s Got Talent of its day, called Hey Rock n Roll. In the competition they won their heat and then came runners-up in the Grand Final. Almost immediately, they were signed to Bell Records and Hey Rock n Roll was released, getting to Number 2 in the charts in mid 1974 and spending 14 weeks in the Top 50. They were helped in building a fan base, no doubt, by their appearances on Top of the Pops and also being named as David Cassidy’s support act right at the beginning of their career. Their multi-coloured outfits were a good way to stand out and their combination of tight musicianship and exuberant stage personas soon made them favourites across all age groups.

So what was it about Hey Rock n Roll that captured my imagination from the start? Well, first of all, it was the drums at the start, which made use of both Romeo Challenger and Malcolm Allured to create a thumping intro, which, as I found out when I saw them in concert, was incredibly exciting live but also translated very well to record. It was unmistakeable as soon as it came on the radio or TV, and even today it still hits the spot. Add this to the foot stamping chorus and it was quite simply irresistible to me.

Over the course of their career, Showaddywaddy spent more than 200 weeks on the charts and appeared more than 50 times on Top of the Pops as they racked up no fewer than 9 Top 5 hits and toured one of the best live shows of the era. Despite this, they were never popular with music ‘aficionados’ who viewed them with contempt. I didn’t realise this until I got to secondary school and mentioned that I liked them. For my tormentors it was another piece of ammunition to bully me with, but sadly, it was also something my ‘friends’ loved to jump all over both then and for decades after I left school. It was used as a shorthand, by a couple of my contemporaries in particular, to ‘prove’ that I had no musical taste. The fact that they were still mentioning it over three decades later was, to say the least, frustrating! I learnt to avoid any mention of Showaddywaddy at school, which I still think is a very sad state of affairs, but I continued to buy their records and go to their concerts and, to this day, I still love listening to them. They were something of a ‘safe space’ and gave me the opportunity to escape my daily bullying and for that I will always be grateful.

From the other end of their career, as a sort of bookend, I want to introduce you to the self-penned B side for their final single ‘Do Wah Diddy’. The song is ‘You are Love’ and it is just gorgeous.

Song 7 Message in a Bottle by The Police

My next track comes from a group I was aware of for a little while before I became a committed fan. Their first album contained a couple of tracks I would grow to love, but it was the lead single from their second album that hit the sweet spot for me and made them the first group, and pretty much the last, to feature in a poster on my wall. From the first time I heard Message in a Bottle, I knew that it was something special. Andy Summers’ fantastic guitar intro was a masterpiece of its kind, Stewart Copeland’s drumming was something completely new to me and Sting’s vocals just soared above his contemporaries with individual, idiosyncratic brilliance. Their use of reggae fused with the energy of punk made them a group that genuinely sounded like no one else, before or since. Regatta De Blanc was an exceptional album and a 15th birthday present alongside the afore mentioned poster. However, Message in a Bottle was the standout track with its lyrics of loneliness and alienation perfectly reflecting my teenage mindset as I continued to survive school rather than thrive within its Lord of the Flies style ethos. How I would love to have been cast adrift away from everyone else, and how I would love someone else to understand my thoughts. The Police did understand and they continue to be a musical touchstone of mine.

Much as I did enjoy their entire musical output, for me the first three albums, Outlandos D’Amour, Regatta De Blanc and Zenyatta Mondatta were their high water mark, and arguably the best three albums from the debut LP put together by any group. My second choice from their discography was a difficult one to make, but I decided to go for a deeper cut from that Regatta De Blanc album. Bring on the Night perhaps encapsulates the tightness and quality of their playing more than any other album track. It is hypnotic, brilliant and utterly unique.

Here’s where it got difficult, as I desperately tried to prune my choices down to 5! I decided to look at moments when a new sound or group came out of nowhere and set me on a new path. For that reason, a number of songs that I could have chosen fell by the wayside as they became musical cul-de-sacs, with an impact that was restricted to that one song, or they only led me to one particular artist rather than a whole new genre. Accordingly, the next three look at songs whose impact was not restricted to one specific artist.

Song 8 Souvenir by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

It is inaccurate to say that I was unaware of OMD in particular, or electronic music in general before September 1981, but up until then it had been something of a background noise which hadn’t yet captured my heart or my imagination. Souvenir was the song that opened the door which led to my immersion in synthpop. In tone and style it seems somewhat atypical of OMD’s output, but as an introduction to them it is perfect. It is a classical piano piece, which any romantic composer would have been proud to write, channelled through the synthesiser and given a timelessness that few other songs of the genre can match. The words are apparently incidental when you first hear them, but they are, to my mind, in fact integral to the song. It was a single I have played over and over again, and I think it is a tone poem, reflecting upon the importance of the creative process. There are of course different interpretations that you can place upon it, but that is the way I see it, especially in the context of my increasing interest in classical music. A few years ago, I finally saw OMD live and had a great time listening to a group who have seemingly put an early poster of themselves in an attic somewhere! No song that day affected me more than Souvenir, which brought tears to my eyes from the opening notes as I discovered anew its power to move me.

My companion piece from this genre was incredibly difficult to choose, so central has it been to my life over the past four decades, but I thought it was appropriate to choose another synth song that makes me emotional every time I hear it. From their 2020 album, Hotspot, here are one of the greatest British bands of the last 50 years, the Pet Shop Boys with gorgeous Burning the Heather.

Song 9 The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

This song opened up the world of hip hop and rap to me and to many others. Musically, I loved its urgency and the thumping rhythm track which underpins the whole song. It was unlike anything else I had ever heard up to that point and it made me sit up and take notice from the opening bars. This music was combined with lyrics that reflected the real experiences of the writers and their community. Even now, the lyrics are hard hitting and raw. My abiding interest in social commentary through music made this a perfect introduction to a genre which was, at the time, almost entirely absent from the charts. The vignettes of the inner city characters were superbly drawn and unsparing in their focus on the reality of life. This is not a song that allows for any happy endings because for many there were no happy endings. Even listening to it now, I am struck by just how bleak it is. If you’ve never heard it before, or you haven’t heard it for years, take a look at the lyric video below of this incredible piece of music.

What do you choose to go with that tour de force? How about the follow-up, the stunning White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It?) Just hearing these two songs, you have no doubt that you are in the presence of genius.

Song 10 Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day

The revival of punk rock style bands in the US was one I was initially suspicious of, for no other reason than assuming it would be a pale imitation of the original movement. In many cases that was probably not an unfounded suspicion, but in two cases at least it proved to be incredibly wide of the mark. Both groups were introduced to me by my sons and they became favourites of mine.

First up, we have Green Day, whose socially conscious lyrics were always going to appeal to me once I had the opportunity to listen to them. Songs like American Idiot, reflecting the disillusion of a generation were similar to their punk forebears in style and content and delivered with no nonsense musicianship that drove the songs along at 90 miles an hour. It is perhaps strange then that I have chosen their most atypical song to reflect their output, but it was the song that sent me back to their previous work. Wake Me Up When September Ends is a song full of emotion, beautifully sung and quietly devastating. It is hard to imagine many other bands of this type coming up with such a masterpiece, although The Stranglers mined similar territory to great effect when they made Golden Brown. The song reflects the feelings that Billie Joe Armstrong had following his father’s death when he was only 10. Given the personal nature of the song, it is perhaps unsurprising that he has become increasingly irritated by the stupid memes that circulate every year on October 1 telling him to wake up. Sadly, these people either don’t know or don’t care what the subject matter is, in the search for cheap likes. Armstrong himself has the best answer to those people with his comments about writing a sequel called ‘Shut the Fuck Up When October Begins’!

The companion track to that incredible track is another modern classic from the superb My Chemical Romance. Their Black Parade album was one that hit me with its power and passion from the first time I heard it, making me a huge fan immediately. My choice from that album would be the title track, but there was another track that spoke to my teenage self more than any other modern song. For 7 long years, this would have been my personal anthem and even now I can just find myself back there wishing I could have taken the lyrics with me in a time machine to that awful secondary school in the late 70s where they might have been something to hang on to.

So, there you have it. My 10 songs have finished, but the musical memories haven’t.

Coming Soon – The A-Z of my singles collection!