388. Metal Firecracker by Lucinda Williams 1998

Didn't really know much about Lucinda Williams before this song came out althought a few of my friends were really into her records. I just never got to hear them. And then I bought the latest copy of Uncut magazine and played the Free CD and Metal Firecracker was on it and it was just such a good song I kept coming back to it. Uncut, a bit earlier, had this CD on it which was a compilation of newish country songs and I was really liking what I heard. So I kinda went through a bit of a country stage. Just on the side mind you. And it was lead by the fact I was enamoured by Lucinda Williams voice. Truly one of the great vocalists. The album it came from was great too along with all the other stuff of hers I tracked down. I even found myself writing some country lite songs.  Then again as with a lot of the songs I write, being based on simple chord structures, easily lend themselves to a country makeover.
And as for those magazine CD cover disks. I'm a subscriber to Uncut, Mojo and The Word. Each of those mags has free Cds. 36 compilations a year. They're piling up and I've never been one to throw out music. I follow up on the tracks I like but I think I'm building a mountain of sampler CDs.
Now and again they do put out a themed CD which turn out to be be ripper comps however. Sounds Of The New West was an ear opener for me. And Lucinda wasn't even on it.

387. Boy in The Bubble by Paul Simon 1986

I was over in the UK when this record came out. I was at my brother's place in Blackpool and he had himself a nice little music machine and he was playing Gracelands a lot. In my mind I remember it as being on CD but were they out then. I didn't start buying them until around 1989 so maybe they were. whatever the facts the sound on Paul Simon's album was just amazing. It was like nothing I'd heard before but at the same time was very familiar. They were playing this single on the TV regularly so it really got into my head. Right from the get go it achieves lift off with that first instrument which is either an accordion or some panting wind organ. Then it as Paul Simon's familiar honey like vocals singing about bombs in baby carriages and the wonders of life and it just burst with life. Everyone got excited about this sound. It was World music in the pop charts. Even Hugh Cornwall of the Stranglers picked it as the best album of the year.
And it's still very listenable. I downloaded the Joe Strummer "London Calling" radio shows the other day and he plays this song. I was driving down Neerim road in Carnegie and got caught at the railway crossing.  I sat there there and turned up the music and sang along to "Boy in The Bubble"

386. That's Cool, That's Trash by The Kingsmen 1964

I first heard this song not by the Kingsmen but by the Hoodoo Gurus. They were playing at the Armadale Hotel.  A gig we'd played many times before but also one of my favourite places to see bands. Upstairs, since downstairs was a cover band playing and usually a bunch of drunk suburbanites happily dancing away. This was the early eighties and the Gurus had just released Stoneage Romeos. They sounded brilliant. And they played this old Kingsmen song and to me it just stood out. I think James Baker the drummer might have sang it. Whatever,  it started me on a search to find the record. Another one that took me months to find. It even took me a few days to find out who sang it. I had to ring around all my musical mates.
There were hardly any Kingsmen albums around in the first place never mind one with this song on it. When I got the record it didn't have the same punch as the Gurus live performance but it was still a great garage version. And after seeing the Sonics the other night I'm having fun playing all this old garage rock. The sound is lo fi but they've captured magic in the grooves.

385. Who's Gonna Tell Mary? by The Moondogs 1980

Don't have a clue where I first heard this song nor where I picked up the record. Though I think it was while I was in England in early 1980. I didn't hear it on Melbourne radio that's for sure. Actually, I have a few of these well-loved singles which are in my record selection and I don't know where they come from. Sale bins in Indie record shops. Small articles in NME. Singles reviews. Live reviews. A combination of reading about stuff and then finding it cheap.
This song was absolutely brilliant. Couldn't stop playing it to everyone that came round. I was kind of obsessed with the Moondogs for about six months. I bought their other singles and although great 45s they didn't have the same impact. This one was almost up there with the Undertones singles. I even wrote a kind of homage to them in one of my early songs.  "After The Fire" I adapted the opening guitar refrain to my song.
I thought they disappeared after a bunch of singles but reading about the Moondogs I found they even had their own TV show.
Named after an early John Lennon group name there was for a brief moment something magical about the Moondogs. When Little Murders got up to Sydney later in the year I found a few fellow Moondogs fans. Seems they had a bit more popularity up there.

384. Rum and Coca Cola by The Andrew Sisters 1945

In 1975 30 years after this song was recorded I started to go to see international acts regularly at Festival hall in West Melbourne. Before then I'd only been to see one overseas act and that was the Slade, Status Quo, Lindisfarne concert at The Showgrounds. In 1975 me and my mates started to go to see the big bands though. The first gig was Roxy Music and it will always be my favourite gig ever. Then at the same venue we saw Leo Sayer, who was huge at the time, Sweet, Queen, Lou Reed and a few others I can't remember off the top of my head. I did turn down the ticket to Jethro Tull. Couldn't stand them.
Two of the main things I remember about those gigs was the support act always seemed to be Split Enz. before they got big. The other was every gig seemed to have this song, Rum and Coca cola,  playing over the PA before and after the show. We traipse out of Festival Hall with with the Andrew Sisters singing their jaunty song about prostitution in Trinidad. Of course we were nowhere near drunk. There wasn't a bar there in those days. We had to get a pass out and have drinks in the car.
The early seventies saw a lot of this retro music in vogue. Can't say I was too interested. But I liked this song. I think it was the bass sound coming out of the huge PA at Festival Hall. Or maybe it was the cheap alchohol we drank in the car.

383. Strychnine by The Sonics 1965

Because tonight I actually got to see them live at the Caravan Club in Oakleigh. Oakleigh of all places. The Sonics. The ultimate garage band. And despite them all knocking on 70 or maybe even more they sounded fabulous. It's like they bottled their sound and they're able to pop it open to give everyone a taste of that wild sound. And the almost local RSL was the perfect place to see them. It had one of those old fashioned stage set ups that you might see in old english Halls where rock and roll was first played. It reminded me of some of those scenes in the film "That'll Be The Day" where David Essex checks out the local bands. It was really just a good feeling and a memorable night. I went their by myself cos I knew there would be so many like minded people there and without asking I knew there would be friends from other bands. I wasn't expecting so many though. Full house. An epic rock and roll night. 50 years on and fresh as ever.
Strychnine was the first Sonics song I ever heard. Back then I was knocked out by it's rawness and power. And I'm still knocked out.

382. Don't bring Me Down by The Pretty Things 1964

                         

I was introduced to the Pretty Things by David Bowie on his "Pin Ups" album when he covered two of their songs. This one and Rosalyn. At the time I thought the Bowie versions were fantastic. But then apart from the Kinks and Easybeats songs I'd never really heard any of the other stuff.
A few years later I started hanging around second-hand records shops searching for sixties records. I picked up a few of the early Pretty Things singles and was just knocked by their rawness. kinda like a cross between The Stones and the Yardbirds who I was really into at the time. That sixties garage rock r'n'b that would inform the bands I was trying to form in the mid-seventies. Miles away from the pomp of the big bands of the time like ELO and Queen. Unknowingly we were building ourselves our own culture listening to the Pretty Things and Dr. Feelgood. Early sixties stuff like The Easybeats and the Nuggets compilations. Raiding second-hand shops for clothes or heading down to a Carlton shoe shop because we heard there were winkle pickers in the back room. I would make mixtapes and try to get them played at parties we went to. It was a crusade that would feed naturally into Year Zero and the punk explosion of 77 in Melbourne.