Electric Light Orchestra - A New World Record


One of my mum’s admirers (she had a few in her time) bought her a copy of this album for Christmas in 1976. Apparently, she loved the song Livin’ Thing, and he’d picked up on this and decided to get her the whole album. She still liked Livin’ Thing, but I’m not convinced she was as enthused about the rest of the album, so I got to pretty much adopt it.

Although I’d been aware of ELO, my main frame of reference was the cover of Roll Over Beethoven, so I hadn’t really given them much thought up to that point. A New World Record changed that for me, and it still sounds fresh and exciting even now. Their bigger hit album was Out of the Blue the following year – a double album with fantastic artwork and an even broader range of material included – but this was the one that turned me on to them and has kept me listening ever since.

"Music videos weren't such
a big thing in 1977"


10cc - Deceptive Bends


As with ELO, I’d been aware of 10cc for a while. Hated Donna when it was released, but quite liked a lot of the other stuff. Even so, they weren’t properly on my radar until they released Good Morning, Judge. Music videos weren’t such a big thing in 1977, but the one that went with the single was entertaining and hooked me in. At the time, I was still buying records, although my cassette phase wasn’t far off. Still, I popped into Loughborough (my nearest town at the time) and visited Castle Records, which was the place to go. It was nothing flashy, and not that big, but it was always busy. There, I bought my copy of the album and it became a gateway to the lyrical joy that is 10cc.

One thing you can never say about them, is that they were boring. Word play has been an important part of my life for as long as I can remember, and 10cc were brilliant at it. Within Deceptive Bends, you went from having a cold, to your mates fancying your girlfriend, to going out without your shoes on. This is an album that doesn’t even attempt to stick to a formula. There’s some heartfelt stuff, but there’s fun as well. I still love Modern Man Blues because it feels so subversive.

Leonard Cohen - Greatest Hits


Including a Greatest Hits album here does seem like sacrilege, but it was a significant one for me. It had been bought for my mum by a friend who thought she’d enjoy it. She did, but probably for the reasons you’d normally associate with Leonard Cohen. My mum has always had a leaning towards melancholy. As an angsty teenager (I mean, we all were, weren’t we?), I was also drawn to that aspect of the music. But I began to listen to the lyrics more and the meaning in them.

As a sixteen-year-old, I found myself torn between the affections of two girls and, after a particularly troubling time, broke up with one, not knowing whether the other would have me back. After a long walk in the cold and snow, I returned home to find there was no one in. Alone and feeling low, I raided my mum’s stash of cigarillos and alcohol, and started smoking and drinking as I listened to this album and wallowed in my misery.

It's a very distinct memory and, on the face of it, shouldn’t incline a person to feel good about it. Sometimes, though, having a wallow allows you to ride the misery and come out the other side.

What’s more important is that, as the years passed, I grew to love Cohen’s songs more and more and, far from being ‘music to hang yourself to’, I find it uplifting, as it touches the human spirit.

In the late 1980s, I saw him live, and he was brilliant, surprisingly humorous and entertaining. I saw him again on his final tour, when he was 75 and, again, humour and warmth emanated from him. I have other albums of his but, like some of the others I’ve listed here, this album was the gateway to his other music, and I’ve been able to immerse myself in it during both good times and bad.

"My Mum has always had a leaning
towards melancholy"


Thin Lizzy - Live and Dangerous


My first live gig didn’t happen until 1979, but I’d already been listening to live albums for a couple of years, and this was one I went back to again and again. In 1981, I finally got to see Thin Lizzy live and, for the remaining few years of their existence, they became my go-to live band. I have many great memories of seeing them perform, including one time when I got up on the stage. I was respectful, though. I sat in front of one of the speakers and didn’t get in the band’s way, so they left me there (security wasn’t really a thing back then). At the end of the gig, Scott Gorham came over and shook my hand.

It wasn’t the only time I got that close. There was also a brief but memorable meeting with the band backstage. I enjoyed their songs – a kind of pulp fiction set to music – but, played live, they moved to a completely different level. When Lizzy split up, I did see Phil Lynott perform several times with his new band, Grand Slam, but you could tell the magic was waning. In one sense, his death came as a shock but, having seen him only months earlier – overweight and drugged to the eyeballs as he slurred his lyrics – it also seemed sadly inevitable. Even now, I miss those days, the atmosphere of those gigs. For me, they are still the best live band I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen a lot.

Live and Dangerous was considered at the time to be one of the best live albums ever produced. I seem to think it’s still held in high regard now, over forty years later. Listening to it takes me back to my late teens and early twenties, of being there when they played, and loving every moment of it. They produced a second live album around the time they disbanded. Called Life, and from a farewell gig, they managed to get a lot of past band members back together. It also includes a wider range of songs, since by then they’d got more to choose from. It’s a great album in itself but, for raw energy and taking you back to the moment, Live and Dangerous is the one for me.

Queen - The Game


Like some of the other albums mentioned here, The Game opened a door to Queen for me. To be fair, I was already aware of them. It seems like sacrilege now but, when it was released, I didn’t get Bohemian Rhapsody. Then again, I was only 12 and still very much influenced by my mum’s tastes in music.

There were other Queen singles I listened to, but most passed me by. Until Crazy Little Thing Called Love. To this day, I couldn’t tell you what it was about that song that caught my attention. Maybe it was the fact you could dance to it more readily than some of the others – I did (and occasionally still do) love dancing, although it could probably most generously be termed free-form.

Whatever it was that hooked me, I loved the song. Over the following months, Queen released more singles from The Game, culminating in Another One Bites The Dust. In all honesty, I can’t recall when I ended up buying the album, but that last one would’ve been the clincher.

As with so many new albums I got, it was played pretty much on repeat for days, before gradually becoming a recurring feature in a mix of albums. I can’t recall there being a duff track on it. Indeed, when I saw them live a few years later, I was delighted when they played Dragon Attack. In my view, album tracks don’t get played enough at gigs – then again, that only applies if I’m familiar with the music!

So, this was another album that introduced me properly to a band I grew to love and saw live a couple of times while Freddie was still with us. He was such a showman, I’ve never felt inclined to watch them since he died. It’d be impossible to replicate what he was capable of on stage. Good memories to savour, though.

Phil Collins - Face Value


I was aware of Genesis, but they weren’t at the forefront of my thinking when it came to musical tastes. It’s fair to say that, when this album was released, I wasn’t even aware that Phil Collins was connected to them. In The Air Tonight caught my attention, prompting me to buy the cassette. At this time in my life, cassettes seemed to have become my primary mode of listening, partly due to the advent of the Walkman, but also because they tended to be cheaper than LPs.

Although I don’t listen to it often these days, the album has a special place for me for a couple of reasons. The first is that it introduced me properly to Collins, but also Genesis – who I saw live a couple of years later. The second is linked to the follow up album, Hello, I Must Be Going!.

Early in 1983, after a year of living away from home, I returned to evict my sister from what had become her bedroom, and reclaim it for myself. For the second time in two years, I was experiencing heartache following the breakdown of a relationship. (Young love, eh!) In my bedroom, I turned to writing, partly as a distraction, but also for catharsis. In one – for me – memorable twenty-four-hour period, I played both albums back-to-back continuously as I wrote a short story (which was quite a long one, really) about love and betrayal. With hindsight, the story wasn’t as well written as it could’ve been, but the story was good and got a lot of positive feedback from the many, many people I shared it with. Sadly, I did nothing more with it at the time, but it’s a happy memory for me from a time that could have been very dark.

The Police - Ghost in the Machine


My mate asked me if I fancied going to see The Police. He’d seen them a few times, and they were touring again off the back of this album. It was 1981. It seemed like a good idea. I just hadn’t expected to end up on a coach trip to Germany. What an experience, though, and I’m always reminded of it when I listen to this album – or, frankly, any track off it.

A song that gets very little airplay these days is Invisible Sun. For me, it’s one of The Police’s best singles. Anger, frustration and despair are at the heart of it, but there’s a restraint that makes it powerfully melancholic. The album is worth getting just for that track. But there are more, and each one is good in its own way. Songs like One World (Not Three) and Rehumanize Yourself more obviously kick back at society, but the album as a whole feels darker, possibly angrier, than their previous ones. Maybe they were feeling a sense of social conscience – I do like a bit of social conscience.

It's an album I haven’t played enough of in recent years, but writing this has made me realise I need to play it regularly again.

As for the gig, I had a great time. So much so, I even travelled to Stafford to see them again two months later on the UK leg of the tour. Great times to be a teenager.

"They bridged a generation gap"


Kaiser Chiefs - Employment


It’s fair to say that my coming of age, musically, was in the 1970s, particularly the latter half. Like most people, I suspect my musical tastes have been largely influenced by what was playing when I was a teenager and into my early twenties. Those are, as they say, our formative years. For me, the eighties was also the period when I was a big concert-goer, and those experiences reinforced the enjoyment I was getting from music. For that reason, most of the music I still cling to comes from the ’70s and ’80s. The ’90s pretty much passed me by, as did a lot of the subsequent decades.

There was a period in the noughties, though, when I started to hear music I could relate to. Bands like Franz Ferdinand and The Feeling were producing songs that seemed to fit in with the kind of music I used to listen to. Of that crop of bands, Kaiser Chiefs were the ones who had the biggest impact. To date, seeing them live is the only time I’ve been to a gig with my son. If nothing else, they bridged a generation gap.

So, I’ve picked Employment here because it represents that period and, for me, also represents it in the best way possible. It has energy and anger and quirkiness in equal measures, and reminds me of what it’s like to be young again.

Bio


Graeme Cumming is a bestselling author (in his own mind, at least) based in Robin Hood country. He draws on his wide and varied tastes to come up with stories that cross genres, but usually involve violence, action and sometimes violent action. In real life, he’s lovely. Honestly.

To learn more or connect with Graeme, you can find him at the links below. Do check out the blog on his website, which covers a variety of subjects, one of which is a series of reflections on his ‘Gigging Years’:

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