For months, I've had a draft email which read simply:
I threw a brick through a window - U2
I was remembering the effect that borrowing the album October (on 12 inch vinyl of course) in about 1984 had had on me and the hours I had spent listening to it as loud as I could get away with (depending on who else was in the house).
The other day, I found the draft email and realised that, although that song belonged on my list, above it would have to be Geno by Dexys Midnight Runners. It was released in 1980 and it was probably the first time that I liked some music that my parents didn't 'get'. Here it is for those who need teaching/reminding:
By the time I realised that I could start buying records, it was 1982 and their new album Too-Rye-Ay was out and that was the next chapter in my pop music journey - it included Come On Eileen (and yes I can sing along - who'd blame me?) but also a fair amount of darker material. The result was I never owned a copy of Geno until yesterday when I downloaded it (along with a copy of Too-Rye-Ay).
Now I come to think of it I haven't got a copy of October any more either - but I definitely need to get some music made in the last year or so first to counter-act the nostalgia!
My strongest memory of hearing a song for the first time is slightly later than yours, a a somewhat different genre! I clearly remember sitting in a car with a friend, in a parking lot outside a drug store, I think somewhere near Raleigh, NC, probably around 1988.
ReplyDeleteThe song was Sweet Child o'Mine by Guns and Roses (the proper version, not today's poor excuse of a band) and it was the first time I had heard such music on the radio! I was blown away that it wasn't just the usual trite, bland, teenage pop music I was used to hearing in the UK. I was just amazed that someone could make a guitar sound like that and wondered how on earth I could ever approach such song and such a solo - still haven't managed it 22 years later!
A