402. The Waiting by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers 1981

Saturday night and instead of out playing a gig or watching some band I'm at home watching this four hour documentary on Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers and it's just brilliant. Someone told me it was good but at 4 hours.. I mean is there that much to say  about this American rock and roll band? well I'm engrossed at it's almost 2 hours in and they've just released The Waiting which apart from American Girl is my favourite song from a whole bunch of excellent tunes.
They were always the business. When I started getting into punk in 1976 and buying UK music papers to keep up with the news from the epicentre of music in the world (in my mind)  I remember the week they had this long haired guy on the front cover of Melody maker and a whole bunch of superlative prose inside. I was just about to get my hair cut too. Then I heard American Girl on the radio. A knockout. I bought the album.. and the next album. Tried to get The Fiction to cover I Need to Know. Every few months Tom Petty would release a single that cut across my idea of what was cool. Whether I was a punk or into two tone or a Mod I kept buying his records. At the time it felt like a guilty pleasure. Until a time when we started playing a lot more with a lot of different bands and when you talked about bands you talked about The Heartbreakers. Looking back they were just a perfect group.
And then they released The Waiting in 1981. When Mick Barclay joined Little Murders this was the first song we bonded over. Singing it at the top of our lungs. A power pop classic with it's Byrdsian jangle and that great opening line. Just joyful.

401.Up The Junction by Squeeze 1978

A classic quintessential song from 1978 and the band Squeeze. However in Australia they were called UK Squeeze. Used to hate it when that happened. It would wreck the album and single sleeves. Having UK or British or English plastered over the art work. No matter, this song was just mesmerizing and is every bit as strong today. Another story song set in the world of the sixties, kind of, with it's reference to Clapham Junction and the Nell Dunn novel and movie "Up The Junction" Also one of my favourite films.
In 1978 I was watching all those English movies and devouring the literature. Billy Liar, Bond movies, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Blow Up. I was building up a little world which began to influence what I wrote about and led to Little Murders becoming Melbourne's first Mod band at the end of 1979. When I look back now it wasn't so much the Mod thing that grabbed me but the idea that I wanted to be living in Swinging London in 1965. I think I still do sometimes. And the coolest thing was Modernism. And pop art. And the Who and the Kinks. And the list is endless.
Then when the punk thing came along I leant towards the the cool sixties references in songs like Elvis Costello's "I don't want to go to Chelsea" But now I'm just wandering. "Up The Junction" is a great song with a great storyline with some fantastic and odd rhymes. And Squeeze had plenty more good songs too. Actually I pinched the title of their first single "Take Me, I'm Yours" for my debut single.

400. Thirteen by Big Star 1972

I was too busy listening to all my Glam records to notice a band like Big Star back in 1972. I think the only American bands I was interested in then were Alice Cooper  and  New York Dolls. Oh and thanks to Bowie Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. But sixties power pop which wasn't anywhere near the charts. I don't think so. I wouldn't really get to hear Big Star properly until I was sharing a house with Little Murders guitarist Rod hayward. Who at the time was playing in Dave Grayney and the Coral Snakes. We drank, we played chess and smoked heaps.And we listened to records often very loud. He had this CD with two Big Star records on it. I had heard a bit about them but the fact that Alex Chilton was a cult hero and had recorded The Letter at age 16 cut no mustard with me. I never really liked the Letter.
It took a compilation tape from Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream which put me heroes Mott The Hoople next to this track Thirteen by Big Star to wake me up to the their sound. It was in a Select magazine from the UK. Pop stars made mix tapes. in those days they weren't giveaways. they were just listings. so for fun I'd sometimes copy the mix tape. Which meant hunting down records. So I finally got to listen to Thirteen properly. I was knocked out. It put me right back to being a teenager in 1972 when it came out. It probably wouldn't have got me back then but after kicking around the planet for a few years it really spun my head. He just encapsulated a teenagers love of rock bands and girls in a bunch of lyrics. Of course this opened up the door to Big Star. sometimes it just takes one song.

399. Almost Saturday Night by John Fogerty 1976

It may of been made in 1976 but I didn't hear until many years later having rejected the whole Creedence thing when Punk music took over my listening sensibilities. Creedence were too American and too Southern. Really I should of known better. The wake up call was the early eighties when I found myself watching some band I've totally forgotten playing a pretty typical pub rock set. But then they played this song and it was just brilliant. I don't care how bad the band played it I knew it was a great song. When I asked the guitarist later whose song it was he told me it was a Dave Edmunds single. I really liked Dave Edmunds and Rockpile and didn't know this one.
So I went round the record shops and hunted down the single. Finally got it for a very cheap 25 cents at some record shop in the city. But the record didn't do it for me. But when I looked at the credits on the vinyl I noticed it was by John Fogerty. I knew that would have to be the one. That's where the song was. In the hands of it's writer. But for the life of me I couldn't get a copy of the single. And gradually I forgot about it. Sometimes hearing the Dave Edmunds copy and trying to figure out how I would find that elusive John Fogerty track. Well at least it got me back into Creedence.
Then this morning I was checking out the Power Pop Criminals blog and there was a copy of Almost Saturday Night on a compilation made up by Will Birch of The Records for Mojo Magazine a while back. So now I'm blasting it out on my computer. And it rocks!

398. Safe European Home by The Clash 1978

Couldn't wait for this one in 1978. We'd read the bad things being said about the Clash and how they'd sold out using an American producer, Sandy Pearlman, whose claim to fame was Blue Oyster Cult. It was a time of supposedly rotten second albums by The Jam, The Stranglers and The Damned. Nothing from the Sex Pistols. It seemed punk was already starting to fizzle. So I put this on the turntable with quite low expectations.
But then it starts off with one of the best songs The Clash ever did. Who cares what else was on the record. This was just magic. It blew everything else away. And the production was magnificent. Topper's drums sound like explosives going off. Great tune, great lyrics..great backing vocals.
Alright, the album got a bit patchy from then in. Some of it seems very forced especially tunes like Tommy Gun and English Civil War. At the time. Now I can appreciate the album a bit more, No expectations to cloud my judgement. And we did like to have a singalong to Stay Free.
Anyway, Safe European Home is worth the price of entry for this one. Off to see bands in the city with the cassette player turned up really loud singing along to Joe Strummer and co. Tiger Lounge or Martinis or the Collingwood Town hall. To see great bands in small venues which is always the best way to see them. What a time!

397. Lucifer Sam by Pink Floyd 1967

From the great Psychedelic album "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" which I didn't get around to buying until I think around 1980 because as a punk I hated Pink Floyd. Even though I loved some of the stuff on the Relics album the name Pink Floyd just couldn't be uttered in polite company. They also had a number one single in that dreadful Another Brick In The Wall song which was on the radio all the time.
Anyway I was in one of my favourite second shops when I came across a copy of their first album. I knew I had to have it. I had read so much about it. So I took it home and it was fantastic. Couldn't stop playing the thing for weeks. Put me right in that sixties frame of mind I loved. The song Lucifer Sam was the first one that really stuck out for me. A song about Syd's cat seemingly. At first it reminded me of the descending guitar line in our song "Take Me , I'm Yours" never did get round to asking Rob if that's where he got it from. Whatever the ancestry of ours, I guess it was the most straightforward song on the album in a pop guitar kind of way.
And I liked the way Syd sang. I could connect it to some of that early Bowie stuff I had laying round the house. A voice that Bowie came back to. Even covering Arnold Layne with Dave Gilmour live in concert.
Later on it would be one of the songs I would play before everyone turned up at the Lizard Lounge. And when there was just a few in I was playing songs like that I used to get guys come up and want to discuss music. I used to love the quiet before the storm. You could play favourite songs and they would come blasting out of these huge speakers. With flashing lights and swirling images. And really great songs. It was a bit like having your own radio show for a hour. Then the crowd would come in and then you're playing stuff you might have played hundreds of times before. Come On Eileen or Love Shack or Groove is in the Heart.
But then it was all over and you went home and listened to Syd's Piper or Dylan's Blonde on Blonde.
By the way I did manage to get to enjoy the Dave Gilmour Pink Floyd in the end. They had some top songs. But I still can't stand Another Brick in the Wall. Okay I like Comfortably Numb.

396. Mother of Pearl by Roxy Music 1973

1975 Festival Hall West Melbourne. 400 people in a venue meant for so many more. The first in a year of concerts. My second big concert after Slade at the Showgrounds
Absolutely brilliant. Roxy Music.
This was a song off their third album, Possibly it's their greatest song. It comes in two parts. The first fast and ferocious. A night out. The second part falls into a groove.  I used to listen to those Roxy Music albums constantly and dream about the glamorous life Bryan Ferry seemed to be having. And here I was living in Nunawading. Australia. I wasn't ever gonna get close. Though we used to have these school dances where I used to get dressed up in shirt and jacket and paisley cravats while the other kids thought putting a shirt on was dressing up. Unfortunately I spent a good deal of my teenage life being short so I didn't have luck with the girls for a long time. And they never played the music I liked. it was all boogie or prog rock. Never Bowie or T. Rex or Roxy Music.
Actually I think I had to wait until 1979 until I went to a place that actually played decent music. I guess that's how I became a DJ. No one else was playing anything good at parties. I just came loaded with mix tapes where songs faded into each other. Then fight over the tape deck. Once I chucked another guys tape out the window. Then I ran for my life.

395. In The Ghetto by Elvis Presley 1969

                                                                        
  In 1969 I was in Form 2 at Box Hill High School. I used to hate Music as a subject but every now and again we were allowed to bring in a song and play it to the rest of the class and tell everyone why we liked it so much. I don't know where I got a copy of this song but this was my choice. Not that I was a big follower of Elvis. I'd always thought of him as a leftover from the fifties. We had a family friend who had an entire back room kitted out like a Presley Museum. It was incredibly tacky. It was a long while before I actually got to see the real Elvis and realise just how good he was in the Fifties and how he changed music. But that was to come later. For now I was mesmerized more by the song "In The Ghetto" I was a bit of a sucker for story songs. Probably why I few years later I was into rock musicals and concept albums. I was always looking for a story in the song. This one was like a mini crime tragedy. And it came with a coda at the end. 
The music and that voice put me on the means streets of the USA. It was like reading a short story. I'm not even sure I knew exactly what a ghetto was at the time. Bit the world was getting quite political. Students kept talking about having a sit down strike or marching to the city to protest the Vietnam war. As some people say the Sixties started in 1963 and ended with the last days of the Vietnam War. I am always glad I was there to see it. But even happier when Punk came along and I found myself part of it.
But in 1969 I was listening to Casey Case  American Top 40 on my crystal radio set late on a Sunday Night.