OK @Azzarole here goes.
I think a lot of people are defined musically by a short window - usually during their late teens - when taste is formed, aesthetic shaped, influences locked in - which is then carried throughout the rest of their life. A period of frantic openness, shifting, intense cramming in of stuff that isn’t ever possible again. During which records are bought, friends’ collections analysed, bands formed, split, formed again and split again.
When everything is music and music is everything. Before lives get filled with work, life, families, responsibility, the rest of it. The stuff that kills the space in which head tunes develop and gets in the way of making the music that could be made if only there were the space and time (and the people with space and time to make it with).
Sure some people manage to keep that window going. Through luck, through a choice of career that enables or encourages it. But for most of us, we have that one window. And as part of this little exercise, I’m going to mine it heavily for my choice of albums that defined me.
And I’m going to start with the sound of punk rock. Well not quite punk rock. But what felt like punk rock to me. Actually a load of the albums I’m going to pick over the year felt like punk rock, in the sense that at the time I encountered them, they lifted the bar in terms of what I thought music could be and whether or not it was something I could do too.
For me it happened first with a band called Green on Red and their 1985 album Gas Food Lodging. I’m not sure they are much remembered now. They had a brief moment of glory, got signed to a major label, did two astonishing tours, bickered, split up, got into heroin, kind of petered out. Some of them still make decent music - check out Chuck Prophet’s live shows or Chris Cacavas’ solo work or tortured vocalist Dan Stuart’s occasional solo efforts. But at the time, in their brief prime, and in a fairer world they should have been huge, the biggest band on the planet.
Why did they fail? Perhaps because they arrived a decade or more before the resurgence of Americana. Perhaps 2-3 years too late to capture what became REM’s audience. They were pure rock and roll, but perhaps not enough for a world preparing for grunge. Mainly they fucked up their moment and never recaptured their one great year. But for better or worse, it was in 1985 that they shone, and they shone on me.
I’d had an acoustic guitar for a while. I tried to sing. I was terrible at it. Punk was long gone, so the idea you could make decent music _without_actually_being technically_very good_at_it or having lots of gear was pretty radical to 16 year old me, sitting in my bedroom in the north of England without effects pedal or amp.
Even the John Peel show, listened to religiously every night, seemed to showcase bands who could play fast, or had big amps, or really clever ideas. But all I could do was strum in a kind of desultory way. This music thing felt unattainable, pretty much beyond me.
Then, in mid 1985 a new DJ turned up on Radio 1, some guy called Andy Kershaw, playing a show once a week that (initially, before it turned into a world music thing) showcased a slightly different type of music - Robyn Hitchcock, Jonathan Richmond, Loudon Wainwright III, and a lot of bands from what was apparently known as the Paisley Underground and/or the American Guitar Invasion. The likes of the Long Ryders, Rain Parade, Dream Syndicate (the last two of which, between them, eventually gave birth to Opal/Mazzy Star) and, for me, the best of all of them. A kind of knock off of Neil Young with cracked vocals, twisted sort of country guitar lines that melted your head, and just something about them - Green on Red.
And in 1985 they had just released their greatest (by some way) album Gas, Food, Lodging. One of those albums that - for me - changed my world.
Just a listen to it blew my head off. In terms of what it was possible to be and do. Songs with three chords you could strum. Mostly straightforward cowboy chords. With vocals that were both spot on, but also endlessly imperfect. That you could learn and play along to. That you could sing as you played (the strummy bits, not the rather fine guitar licks which were and remain beyond me). And who pulled that all together into an album that then (and relistening to it now) sounds pretty much peerless.
I was lucky enough to see them twice in 1985 as they toured the album, and at one of the shows no-one made a sound from start to finish of the set. We were all in shock at what we were experiencing - just pure rock and roll perfection. Before they - well Dan Stuart - fucked it all up with drugs and ego and all the sorts of things bands do.
But this isnt about their live shows. It’s about the album. Which is not much more than half an hour long. But for that half hour it’s (mostly) perfection.
Starting with That’s What Dreams, an organ heavy, guitar lick heavy exercise in home and depression, with some spectacular broken vocal harmonies, and an epic vibe. And you could play it with open D, open G, open C and then D again. That was about it. And fill the gaps in your head. This was attainable music to a music desperate teen.
Track 2 is Black River. Another exercise in proto-alt-americana using their favoured DCG chords. Less epic. More of a world weary song of years spent on the road (slightly disingenuously for what was at the time quite a young band). But they delivered on the vibe and pushed the album forward to.
Track 3 - Hair of the Dog - a hard drinking song, more riffs than chords. Not one to play along to as an incompetent teen. But short, hard and heavy enough to nevertheless keep you going to
Track 4 - This I Know. A pretty bang on take on the Neil Young/Crazy Horse sound using C, G, Am and F. When to be honest normal Neil Young was usually way too complex and way too unfashionable to play (this was six years before NY burst back into relevance with Arc/Weld). Not my favourite on the album but still astonishingly good stuff.
The last track on side 1 is Fading Away. In some ways a song that feels like an outtake from their previous album Gravity Talks, in that its less country, more psychedelic/paisley sounding. But again with its basic D, G, Em, D structure, for a kid with a guitar and not much else you could be them. And they were fucking great.
Side 2 is where the action is, though. With a run of 4 songs - Easy Way Out, Sixteen Ways, The Drifter (the best serial killer song ever?), and Sea of Cortez that dived into the heart of Neil Young, stole his soul and presented it back to him way better than he ever managed. Any of these songs could have been on the best of Neil Young’s albums and not felt out of place. And most of them you could play along to…
It ends (for reasons that are incomprehensible given what else is on the album) with a terrible cover of We Shall Overcome (in preference to the much better non-title track which ended up on a follow-up 10inch EP). But you can forgive the band that. Given quite what they delivered beforehand.
And it left me at 16 years old with a belief that I could also do that rock and roll thing. Which I spent the next 6-7 years doing. Not successfully, or anywhere near as competently as the source of that inspiration and motivation. But anyway. A bit of an unstructured ramble. This is where it all started for me. This is the album that opened my window.
An obscure bit of now mostly forgotten proto-Americana. But it did the job for me.