21. Night Boat To Cairo by Madness 1979

In the early Eighties there was a Mod club called Kommotion which operated from the Prince Alfre Hotel in Chapel ST. (or was it Church St.) in Burnley (or Richmond). The night was run by Chris Hunter and Michael Phillips, two mods. The room was small but the speakers were huge. Some nights I DJed. Some nights I just hung out. Everybody danced. At times, in the spirit of Quadrophenia mods would jump off the speakers to be caught by the crowd. "Night Boat to Cairo" was usually the last song of the night and everyone went crazy dancing around the small room. Yes, it was madness.

We all had pictures taken doing the Madness walk.

After dancing we'd all move out to the courtyard where scooters were lined up along the walls finish off our drinks and head home, tired, drunk and sweaty. Or if we were lucky we'd find another place to go to. Caseys in Brighton started a Mod night and we started going down there after. It was great and it was only a Wednesday night! The weekend was on it's way. work on Thursday was usually pretty rough. Often I'd turn up to teach kids with remnants of eyeliner. (Mod fashion). Actually by the morning I probably looked more goth than mod.

20. Cloudbursting by Kate Bush 1985

January 1986 and I'm flying back to Melbourne after a Christmas holiday in the UK. This time I had a Walkman to listen to cassettes as I flew the skies.I had bought a few tapes to listen to in London and the last one I put on as I flew the last leg from Adelaide to Melbourne was Hounds of Love by Kate Bush. I wasn't really expecting much never having been a great Kate Bush Fan but the album was a revelation. Maybe it was being up so high, lack of sleep or the sun streaming through the window but it was mesmerising.Especially this song.

The song just builds and builds towards the climatic line. It suggests a real promise that yes.....
Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen.
Later on this sampled line was used in the Utah Saints single "Something Good" which went down a storm at the Lizard Lounge. A remix turned up a few years back and in the video they showed the running man dance. I could never get it right and were envious of those who could do the running man. In the end I gave up trying but it did give me a title for one of the songs off my new album.

19. There She Goes by The Las 1988

In 1990 I started a nightclub in the back room of  a pub in Windsor called the Lizard Lounge. I was DJing at the time at the Beehive so this was kind of me branching out on my own. Along with Jason Underhill we played a mix of indie and sixties music. For the first few months it barely stayed open with small crowds. We tried everything to get it going. Bands like Captain Cocoa played. We had Abba nights. In the end it took cheap drinks! Dollar pots!
Anyway it did take off and continued for over a decade of good times. This single released in 1990 along with a few others was a euphoric calls to arms. The crowd danced to the records but this one was absolute joy with everyone in the club singing along, dancing together, Basically it became our first anthem.
I was never blown away by the subsequent album but this song as remained a constant in my life. It's dead simple. doesn't really have a chorus but it's just so joyous. You just have to hear the opening guitar notes and you're taken to a better headspace.

18. Up Around The Bend by Creedence Clearwater Revival 1970

In 1970 at Box Hill High School the older students used to have a record listening club on the top floor. when Cosmos Factory by creedence Clearwater Revival Revival came out they wedged the speakers into the window openings and blasted this song out to all the kids playing games in the quadrangle,. That opening guitar riff shook the school.
I was in Year 3 (year 9) by todays groupings. I thought it was the most magnificent sound I'd ever heard. When I got home that night my brother had the record.
I was a regular buyer of Go-Set and I had just read an article stating that since the end of the Beatles Creedence were now the biggest band in the world. Cosmos factory was everywhere. Every party. Everywhere.
A few years back I was on holiday in Bali when we went on a tour of the hinterlands in the back of a jeep blasting out Creedence tunes. A perfect soundtrack to hot weather, raging monkeys, 12 foot pythons and rain forests. Bouncing up and down in the back of a jeep going up around the bend!

17. Street Hassle by Lou Reed 1978

After Berlin I thought most of the stuff Lou Reed did was not very good. I picked up the Street Hassle album at a Brashes sale because it was only 99 cents. And because I heard Bruce Springsteen guested on it which was interesting since he was going through that no recording stage of his career. So I wasn't prepared for how good this 11 minute song was. Despite the length it never gets boring and despite the repetitive riff it doesn't repeat itself. I was living in a small flat opposite the San Remo Ballroom in Fitzroy. I would turn off all the lights and just listen to the track. Something I wish I could now. Sometimes the car is the only place I can immerse myself in music nowadays. One night Johnny J came over and said "you must listen to this" in the dark...for 11 minutes. So 2 guys sat in the dark listening to Lou Reed. No talking. Magic. Luckily he got it too. It is just one beautiful, mesmerizing song. especially when Lou sings:

Love is gone away
Took the rings off my fingers
And there's nothing left to say
But, oh how, oh how I need him, baby
Come on, baby, I need you baby
Oh, please don't slip away
I need your loving so bad, babe
Please don't slip away

Sha la la la la. I never get sick of this song. It's like a favourite painting.

16. Art School by The Jam 1977

This is the first thing I heard from the Jam and it knocked my socks off. Of course, I had read about them in NME where if anything they were described as a faster Dr. Feelgood and the reviews were all great. And then I saw their first album in an electronics shop in Box Hill Shopping Centre. I bought it. I was driving now, a Datsun Bluebird, so I zoomed home as fast as I could to listen to it. At the time I was living with my brother Tony as my Mum had gone back to England to live. I stayed here to attend teachers' college.

I'd heard The Who and could see the references but this was so fast and explosive and angry. Those 4 chords that kick off the record.

Well, I had the record but I needed it in the car. I drove over to my mate Alan's place and borrowed his huge tape player (now known as a ghetto blaster) took it home, put my speakers up to the inbuilt microphones, and did some home taping. The results were so good I spent the whole weekend in my room taping my records.

The Jam lead me to lots of adventures. I got the punk band I was in (The Fiction) to wear suits to one gig. Later I became one of the new Mods about town. I even became a bigger anglophile than previously.

When I went to the UK in 79 I bought a pair of two-tone shoes just like what Paul Weller wears in the Art School film clip. I dreamed of having a Rickenbacker too! However, it would take another 40 years before I owned one of those.

15. Mr. Blue Sky by ELO 1977

In 1978 when this came out as a single I had no interest in ELO what so ever. I was a punk and followed bands like the Buzzcocks and the Clash. Turn the clock back to Easter 76 and I'm buying the New World Record album on the thursday and leaving on a road trip to Sydney the next day. I couldn't wait to get back to play the record. Arriving home on the Tuesday afternoon I said hello to my Mum and walked into my bedroom and put the record on. I thought it sounded as good as the Beatles. At the time I was just beginning to write music and formed a band called Feathers. The guitarist actually remarked once that my music was like a cross between ELO and Leonard Cohen.
But it was short lived. Then came the Sex Pistols and everything changed. All my ELO albums went to my Mum's house. It was year zero.
How I got into this song was through the TV show "Doctor Who." In one of the episodes there's an ELO cover band who play this song.
Then one night I'm watching Eternal Sunshine and I hear it again. It's just such a happy tune that me and the kids would dance around the living room to it. I can appreciate ELO now. The best of ELO as got some mighty tunes on it. During the 90's we'd play a few at the club especially "Don't Bring Me Down"

14. Hateful by The Clash 1979

In 1979 I was in England on holiday trying to take in everything that was going on at the time in particular all things Mod. However the Clash were pretty big in my life too and on my first record spend I went to WH Smith and bought The Jam "Setting Sons" and The Clash "London Calling". I took it back to my cousin's house and he had an entertainment centre, incredibly popular in the UK at the time. He had his speakers mounted high and when we played The Clash album it leapt out of the speakers. Especially this song! The Bo Diddey beat. The call and response.
(actually if you have the Little Murders "We Should Be Home By Now " album that's a picture of his house.)
It's just so exciting to listen to. My cousin Neil wasn't too impressed being a big Status Quo fan.
My girlfriend and I managed to get tickets to see the Clash at Lancaster University and we drove there through a cold  snowy night in a rent a bomb. The band were magnificent and we managed to get right up near the front. At one stage Mick Jones was playing guitar with a lit cigarette and glowing embers flew over the crowd. I bought a poster at the front door. For a short while it was in the Missing Link window when they borrowed it for a window display. Now it hangs proudly on my wall.

13. Everytime I Try by Spain 1997

There are good times and bad times. Songs can really help during the bad times. I put together a whole CD of songs for bad times to play in the car and feel sorry for myself, driving, smoking cigarettes. However a song like this transcends the bad times and becomes simply a song of yearning. I first heard it on Spain's second album where I loved it but it was the version on the End Of Violence Soundtrack which sealed the deal. They added cello and violin and the vocal track is a little different. But it becomes a kind of melancholy singalong. When I played the song I realised it was simply a damn good love song.

Not one I would play at weddings though!

12. Roxette by Dr. Feelgood 1974

In the mid-Seventies Brashes record Stores used to have these great record sales where albums went from 99 cents to 2.99. I bought some brilliant left-of-center records there and managed to find lots of new music. I'd read about this band but didn't know anything about them or what their music was like. But it was dead cheap so I gave it a go. These guys looked like petty gangsters from the film "Brighton Rock" and the music was tough stripped down r & b. But it instantly connected especially the single "Roxette". It was Wilco's lead/rhythm staccato guitar banged up against  Lee Brilleaux's tough vocals that did it.

They were John the Baptist to the coming of Punk soon after.

To seal the deal in 1976 Trak Cinema in Toorak used to have midnight movie sessions where they played two rock movies. One night "Going Back Home" Feelgood's live was one of the feature films. It was amazing to watch this band. Wilco used his guitar like a machine gun, Lee in a white suit that looked like it had been dragged through the mud. I heard he bought a white suit at the start of a tour and never cleaned it. Wilco and the bass player move back and forth like two sharks. Lee stared down the audience. Fantastic!

 

11.Children of the Revolution by T. Rex 1972

Before Bowie, there was T. Rex. I used to buy the NME weekly from a newsagent in Box Hill. I would ride my bike from Blackburn South to Box Hill every Saturday Morning to pick up my copy which was always 6 weeks late due to shipping. One week when Marc Bolan was on the cover I was so eager to read the article I started reading it while riding my bike. Not a good idea! I plowed into a parked car and came off with the handlebars at a wacky angle to the front wheel. And I tore the picture of Marc. 

Crap! I straightened the wheel and with sore knees, I rode on to my mate's Alan's house in Blackburn North.
I was the only one I knew who liked T. Rex at Box Hill High. The other music heads thought they were crap and a teenybopper band. They were listening to Focus for god's sake. This single made me feel I was part of something. Glam rockers. Part of a new revolution. Glam meant everything to me cos it meant nothing to anybody else I knew. Brilliant!

10. I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor by the Arctic Monkeys 2005

In early 2005 I kept coming across the name of the Arctic Monkeys in magazines like Mojo and Uncut and the description of what this band were doing really got me excited. But I couldn't buy their records because they hadn't released any yet. At the time everyone was using Limewire to download songs and when I typed in their name there were lots of songs. I managed to put together a pre album of demos and live tracks and it was all fantastic. I gave the burnt CD to friends and anyone I could spread the gospel to. The way Alex Turner sang and the brilliant lyrics I couldn't wait for the album. And when the album came out it was unadorned, just a better recording of most the songs I already had. It was one of those albums where you knew all the words. I played this album in the car incessantly.
This song was the lead off single and took my world by storm. Even Sugababes did a good version of it.

9. Green Onions by Booker T and the MGs 1962

In 1979 I was in London on holiday at a time when England was going Mod and ska crazy. There was record shop just off Leicester Square and I was browsing through the records when this record came on. Suddenly the shoppers started dancing. Nothing pre planned, just a bunch of Mod girls reacting to one of the best Stax records ever.
The Mod thing was just starting in Melbourne when I went to England for Christmas. In England my girlfriend and I went to see Mod bands like the Purple Hearts, caught Quadrophenia in a small cinema in Soho and bought plenty of records. the real stuff was a load of r & b and soul records that you'd never see in Melbourne. I also picked up a Union Jack Coat from Paul Weller's tailor. I also brought back a load of Ska. By mid 1980 the Melbourne Mod scene was in full fling.
Green Onions came out in 62 but never loses currency. A friend of mine gave me a live version a few years back and it's faster and just rocks. But the original is still the greatest.

8. Temptation by New Order 1984

Like a lot of people I thought with the death of Ian Curtis that the idea of Joy Division going on as New Order wouldn't work. So wrong!
I first heard this at a small house in South Yarra where the girl I was seeing at the time lived. The first time I went over to her place this was the song she played to me. You could see the shades of Joy Division but it was something totally new at the same time. I'd never kissed her before but I kissed her then.
It was a groovy little house with people popping in and out constantly. And they always had Saturday lunch after going to Prahran Market. And there was always music but all I can remember is New Order and stuff like Pachebel's Canon. The classicical and the new proved a perfect balance.
A long song, this was the first raw version I heard as compared to the many remixes that came along.

It was one of those records I'd take to friends house's and put it on their turntable to just play the song to them. Sometimes it's hard when people don't feel the same way about songs as you do. And the people who did have the song had all these different versions.

I never got sick of this song. I played it a minute ago and it still moved me. It popped up on my Ipod so I danced around the kitchen.

7. Don't Look Back by the Remains 1966

In the late seventies we used to drive to the university record shops looking for albums. There were a lot of American albums with cut outs on the side and incredibly thick cardboard. One album I picked up was Nuggets which was almost a template for a lot of the stuff that band s were doing during the punk wars. "Don't Look Back" by the Remains knocked me off my feet. It just leaped off the vinyl.

You both made your bed and now
You're gonna have to sleep there
Old Man Blues is goin' to try
Try to find you everywhere

Why wasn't this a hit? Why did I stumble across it at Monash records. Sometimes you get flabbergasted by what is popular and what isn't. This is just a truly brilliant song. I'm sure the Sunny Boys were listening to it because it's almost a template for their records. Sadly I lost the album somewhere along the way but have now replaced it with 2 box sets. Great stuff.

6. Without You by Nilsson 1971

Back in the 70s there was little opportunity to hear your favourite songs if you couldn't afford to buy the record. You'd have to sit by the radio for hours on end with a cassette recorder waiting to tape the song. In my bedroom I only had a crystal radio set which somehow ran off  astrip of metal on my bedroom window. I first heard this song on a radio show beamed in from the USA  called kasey Kase's Chart Rundown or something like that.
I was in my teens and still trying to work out this girl thing and getting my heart broken. This time I think her name was Bernadette. Anyway this song was just so emotional and Nillson's voice just captured everything I thought I was feeling.

The other way you could hear songs was to ride your bike down to a phone booth. (I didn't have a phone until I was about 22 and moved into my own flat) and other than the weather, time etc you could get a free call to song of the week. I think I spent a week in a phone booth in Blackburn South.
later my mate Tommy got the album Nillson Schmillson so I could listen to it at his place but by then I was sick of the song.
Its meaning as been tinted a little by some of the overwrought covers. It's also wrapped up in the terribly sad story of Badfinger's Pete Ham and Tom Evans who wrote the song and never saw any money from it both eventually committing suicide.

5. Editions of You by Roxy Music 1973

Roxy Music were introduced to me by a friend Peter Joyce back in Blackburn in the early seventies. I loved the front cover of Roxy Music, their first album but when I looked at the gatefold inner sleeve I thought they were just playing glam dress ups and didn't hold a candle to the style of Bowie.
But I really got into that album and then absolutely loved the second album "For Your Pleasure". I realised they were so much more than glam. In 1975 they came to Melbourne and played Festival hall to an audience of around 400 people. I was enjoying the concert and it was full of magic moments but it was when this song came on that it was like an electric charge went through me. I was just tingling all over. Totally gobsmacked by the power of it. Never knew that music could hit you so hard. A pure rock and roll moment.
Every time I hear this song it takes me back to that wonderful night.
Many years later Roxy Music came back to Melbourne and they played all the old songs but this time there were thousands watching at the Rod laver Arena. Some of the audience were a bit disgruntled when they played all the old stuff and no Ferry solo stuff but for some of us it was a gift from heaven.

4. Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks 1967

Not just my favourite song of all time but Paul Weller and a host of other artists have claimed this particular song. And what a song. from that descending bass line that begins the song, the acoustic guitars that jangle and the gorgeous harmonies ..they all set the foundation for ray davie's wonderful off kilter voice and his these precious lyrics. See ! I'm gushing here! it's just that good.
I once told a journalist if I ever wrote a song as good as Waterloo Sunset I could stop writing. (which incidently was why I called the 1986 Little Murders album "Stop" not because the band were finished ..although they were at the time) Anyway I haven't stopped yet so obviously I haven't reached my target yet.
Like the best of songs it immediately puts you in a place and time. This one puts me in the middle of London in the heat of the sixties. scooters, mini skirts and Julie Christie. It's all there. You can almost see the wet with rain pavements reflecting the neon lights of Picadilly Circus.

Dirty old river, must you keep rolling
Flowing into the night
People so busy, make me feel dizzy
Taxi light shines so bright

Later in about 1981 I actually got to meet Ray Davies. I can't remember saying much. What can you say to a hero. I gave him all the Little Murders singles up to that point. 3 in total. I said"I've got all your records and now Mr Davies you have all of mine!"
There's been some rubbish versions of this song. The best live version was a Melbourne band called Large Number 12's. God they made me jealous that night!

3. Make Me Smile (come up and see me) by Cockney Rebel 1975

My first car was a Datsun Bluebird that I bought with the help of my mate Alan Barnard for $400 from a car yard in Springvale Road. The first thing i got set up was the sound. This song was the one I remember driving to when going over to see my girlfriend Leonie who lived in Balwyn back in the mid seventies. It was the summer holidays. In those days they went forever.
It was the voice that got to me. Kinda not giving a damn about conventions. The stop starts. The Spanish guitar. Steve Harley was a big influence on my music. I even tried to rewrite the song. It's a song called the Night I Lost Control.
I think The Church had a go too with Almost With You which seems to have a very similar lead break.
I just listened to it a few minutes ago and it still seems fresh.
A little bit Bowie, a little bit Ferry in delivery but it doesn't matter it's just that good a song.
He had some other great songs but this is the one that left a great big imprint on pop music.To my mind. 

2. Starman by David Bowie 1972

Living in Nunawading in the early Seventies delivering goods on my chemist round ($3.60 a week) I had my transistor taped to my handlebars listening to 3AK when this came on. It blew my teenage mind. I had to keep the radio on all night hoping it would come on again. I don't think it did but I managed to find the album on sale at the Newsagent in Blackburn near the train station. Ziggy Stardust really changed my life. After this all I wanted to do was be in a band.
Eventually I got there several years later with Little Murders. At one stage we played Rebel Rebel when we were trying to expand our repertoire to accommodate gigs where we were expected to play 3 sets. Would have loved to play Starman but it was a bit too hard for me.
Starman literally seemed to fall from outer space. Completely alien and that no one else I knew at Box Hill High deemed it of any value made it more special.
I would carry the album to any parties or get togethers and try and get the host to play it.

Didn't know what time it was the lights were low oh how
I leaned back on my radio oh oh
Some cat was layin' down some rock 'n' roll 'lotta soul, he said
Then the loud sound did seem to fade
Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase 
That weren't no D.J. that was hazy cosmic jive

When I played it to my own kids later on they loved the song too and we'd all sing along to bowie in the car. "There's a Starman waiting in the sky" I didn't get to see the Top of The Pops performance that altered a lot of teenagers minds in the UK until a lot later but I still have two massive scrapbooks of all things Bowie. The last time he toured Australia he did this song. My heart stopped for a brief moment. Brilliant!

1. Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division 1979

Back in 2010, I went to the Palais Theatre in St. Kilda to see Peter Hook and his band perform "Unknown Pleasures" the first Joy Division album. This song was worth the price of admission alone!. I've never been a big Joy Division fan back in my younger days but I can remember the first time I heard this song. I was a Mod in the early 80's and at a gathering, Graham, then editor of Start fanzine played this song. It blew me away it was just so powerful. Amongst all the songs played at Mod parties, this song always seemed to get played. It was part of the soundtrack of our lives in Melbourne.
Later when I became a DJ at places like Barbarella's, Beehive, and the Lizard Lounge Lounge this record stayed on my playlists.
One of my brief romances in the early eighties had the lyrics taped to her bedroom wall. That she lived in the heart of St. Kilda seemed even more poignant. And what lyrics! All these years after its release it still has the power to generate emotion. I saw Peter Hook and the Light again quite recently and Love Will Tear Us Apart remains the highlight of their set.

Nowadays I have a lot more time for Joy Division. I think it was when I started playing the Substance compilation which had been sitting at the back of my record collection for a very long time.