Let me take you on a journey!

First of all, that is an impossible question to answer. For someone who is as steeped in music as I am, how on earth can I choose one? I always find it tricky to do a Desert Island Discs challenge for that reason. I truly believe that if you can answer that question you are either someone for whom music is an insignificant element of your life or you are choosing an album based on your current mood.

So, I will be answering this in my own way by looking at favourite albums from my formative years, musically speaking.

My First Albums

For Christmas 1974 I received a cassette player/recorder and my first two albums. The linked article is one of my absolute favourites and reflects my feelings on playing the two of them back to back as I had done on that Christmas morning as a 9 year old. It is genuinely an excellent read and I recommend clicking the link! Suffice to say, the old magic was still there. The two albums were Parade of Disney Hits which covered films from their first feature film Snow White to their ‘latest’ Robin Hood, and Keep on Wombling which included perhaps the finest Christmas song ever made ‘Wombling Merry Christmas’. As they were my only albums for about 18 months you can guess how often they got played!

Looking Back to the Greats

The first album I bought for myself was Elvis’ 40 Golden Greats in salmon pink vinyl, which I still have, and it was the January after his death on 16 August 1977, the first celebrity death that really hit home for me. When I got the album I found so many great tracks to listen to for the first time. My favourite track at the time was probably In the Ghetto and I’ve been an Elvis fan ever since. Not long after I bought The Beatles 1962 – 66 (the red album) which covered their Pre Sergeant Peppers output. Track after track after track just enthralled me and my friends who were similarly discovering them for the first time. My favourite track on this album was In My Life.

Changing Tastes

Three albums totally changed my musical landscape in the early 1980s. First was Regatta De Blanc by The Police which was simply mind blowing. The track Message in a Bottle just spoke directly to me and from then on I was a massive fan of them. Next was Bat Out of Hell by Meatloaf, an artist I discovered on the only occasion we had a coach instead of a bus for our trip into school. The driver had the radio on, and Dead Ringer flooded my senses, partly because I was right under the speaker, and partly because of the feeling of absolute excitement that the music awoke in me. I went out and bought Bat Out of Hell, and every track electrified me, but my favourite was the final track For Crying Out Loud, an emotional closer that is still my favourite final track from an album. The last album was Declaration by The Alarm which introduced me to the idea that my Conservative upbringing, politically, was not actually the full story. Their songs sung amazingly by the late great Mike Peters started me on my political march leftwards, something that gathered pace when I joined the Royal Air Force The track Blaze of Glory is stunning in its power and its force. Oh, and by the way The Alarm were responsible for the greatest Christmas cover version ever, Happy Christmas War is Over, when they replaced the children with a Welsh Male Voice choir to stunning effect. It’s way better than the original in my view.

So, there you have it, seven albums, 10 years and scores of memories. Maybe check the albums out for yourself if you haven’t heard them. You can find them on either YouTube or Spotify. Happy Listening!