I was mostly buying singles in the early 70s due to cost. When I did buy an album it got played to death as my choice was very limited. I was a huge Bowie fan and I suppose glam in general at that time.
2 of my early albums that totally blew me away and I still play regularly today were Kimono My House By Sparks. The single This Town ain’t big enough for both of us seen on TOTP was enough to seek out the album and what a cracking album it is.
The 2nd was For Your Pleasure by Roxy Music. Still their best IMO.
The singles Virginia Plain & Pyjamarama had persuaded me to check it out. Wow!
I suspect that many of the above choices would be more appropriately filed under “albums I really, really liked”…
I’ve got loads of those, some of which are listed above. There is only one that fits the title description with me. In the pits of depression in 1977 and fed up with the state of so-called “progressive” hippy music twiddling and feeling directionless as a comparitively older enthusiast, I turned on the radio one evening to John Peel’s “Top Gear” and was confronted, then overwhelmingly, life changingly electrified by:
Osibisa - Woyaya
Amazing Afro Funk album that I first heard as a 16 year old in 1972 on a Sunday night in The Man On The Moon pub in Ipswich. I asked the guy what the track was and he showed me the “flying elephant” album. The following Saturday found me trawling the record shops and I’ve been playing it ever since.
Absolutely. From the crushing speed of Fight through to the beautiful instumental of Ktulu, this is 47 minutes of absolute note perfect perfection for me. Blown away the first listen, and still being blown away hundreds of listens later. Escape is the only song I have never heard live. I doubt I will get that pleasure now! I did say that about Trapped though… Anyway, a timeless classic that still feels as fresh today as when I first heard it.
Both Script and Ride the Lighting were early classics in my record collection back in the day here in New Zealand. They were both fringe and not on general release. We had to beg the record shop to import them from England at thrice the price on a slow boat round the world.
Then if we wanted other stuff, it was by Kerrang, post a letter to a record dealer in England to get their catalogue, wait for it, buy a money coupon in pounds, send the order to England by post, records sent back by boat. Weeks watching the letter box for the music to arrive.
Most “Convincing Recording” I have come across. By convincing, I mean the artists are in the room. This is my high bar–to make all artists sound like they are in the room. Of course it depends on the recording also.
The Sex Pistols debut could have blown me away on first listen but for the fact that the 3-4 singles with b-sides (making up a large part of the album) released earlier had already blown me away (and taken the edge away from the album).
The earlier Ramones debut was my ’blown away’ punk awakening, although also in this case their debut single had done part of the work already.
Other big moments for me were:
Pere Ubu, The Moder Dance
Neu, Neu ’75
My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
The Velvet Underground with Nico
Sonic Youth, A Thousand Leaves
Liaison Dangereuse
Cocteau Twins, Heaven or Las Vegas
The Art Ensemble of Chicago, The Complete Live in Japan
It was actually tracks from it but in sessions for the BBC. I was aware of the group as responsible for a version of Theme One used on the Friday Rock Show on Radio 1 some decades ago and had always meant to check them out one day, eventually a session from them was re-broadcast on the show including Still Life and La Rossa. My reaction was pretty much instant “nevermind your New Wave of British Heavy Metal, thats what I’ve been looking for” and I found a copy the next day in a secondhand record shop in Chertsey by the name of Mr Waxy, or was it Waxey. This was shortly followed by all their other albums (except the Long Hello ones that are mostly crap) and then the Peter Hammill solo material which was up to pH7 at the time.
I still remember the haunting feeling and existentialism of My Room very much in the same veins of The Undercover Man from Godbluff. Two remarkable albums .
