Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA
The paper round album.
I was about fourteen when a girl living in the next street to me asked if I wanted to take over her News Post Leader free paper delivery round. About 500 papers, dumped off every Wednesday and delivered that night and Thursday. She also loaned me her Walkman and the three tapes she had for it. I can’t remember what the other two tapes were, because once I heard Springsteen it stuck with me through wind and rain and sleet and wind and snow. It started an obsession with Bruce: that first year I asked for The River for Christmas and sat listening to it with the little record arm just going back and starting again and again…Then it was lunchtime trips around Newcastle record shops during my Saturday job and, in 1985, on the day I finished my final O level, busting out of class to get to St James’ to see the man in concert. The paper round lasted much longer than it should have (at one point driving around dropping off the massive bags), but the Springsteen obsession lasted even longer.
Martin Stephenson and the Daintees – Boat to Bolivia
The ‘local’ album’.
I started going to gigs around Newcastle when I was about fifteen. The Riverside was the venue of choice to begin with and The Mayfair came soon after. Seeing Martin Stephenson and the Daintees play for the first time was a revelation. I’d seen a few ‘big acts’ at Newcastle City Hall before then but seeing a local lad – someone I could see in the street before the concert – was unthinkable. Boat to Bolivia was an album that opened my eyes to the fact that a singer-songwriter could have multiple styles and put them all together to make something quite amazing. The Christmas shows at the Riverside (and, after its demise, around other North East venues) remain some of the most memorable gigs I’ve been to.
Tom Waits – Swordfishtrombones
The first WTF? album
It would have been a year or two after Born in the USA, and probably found in NME or Melody Maker when I read that Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombones’ was a ‘must hear’ album. So, I bought it and I heard it and I didn’t get it. At all. I put it to one side and didn’t listen to it for a while. Then, for some reason, I borrowed Tom Waits Anthology from Newcastle library and gave that a listen – I remember wandering around on Christmas Eve in the rain, Walkman (my own now) playing Martha, I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You and the like, thinking – is this the same person? This stuff sounds…melodic. Stuff I could play on the piano alongside my beloved Billy Joel. I went back to Swordfishtrombones and listened more. In some ways it was the first album I found I had to ‘try’ with but ended up loving.
Cowboy Junkies – The Trinity Session
The album that got me through.
Completing my final dissertation project for my Film Studies degree at university meant locking myself in a toilet at night and editing for nights at a time. Ok, the toilet had been converted into a deck-to-deck ‘video suite’ (a grander title than it deserved). One of my friends – much more musically varied than I was brought some tapes to get me through it. I didn’t like the sound of the Cowboy Junkies from name alone. I knew he was into Sonic Youth and Jesus and Dinosaur Jr and some band called REM, and I wasn’t a fan. I expected some thrash indie thing. Instead, I found Margo Timmins’ incredible fragile voice and Michael Timmins’ melodic, simple guitar – a long way from the likes of Steve Vai and Eddie Van Halen who were my usual listens of choice by that point. It was perfect night mood music; not loud enough to risk being discovered by security and turfed out as I tried to finish my film, not disruptive enough to break concentration. Rather, it was mellow and beautiful and soothing as I stressed away, even as I’d never be a film editor.
Blue Nile – Hats
The ‘gift’ album that stayed.
It was a college thing – a relationship with an older PGCE student who seemed all sorts of sophisticated to me. Someone who had travelled and knew stuff and had done things and was smarter and more cultured than me. And gave me a tape when she broke up with me, as though we were in a role reversal bad Nick Hornby novel. It was, I thought, with a touch of bitterness, boring, monotonous synth music. I didn’t play it mournfully, crying over lost love, but I did give it a chance. And it just stuck. As a breakup album goes, it’s a good one.
Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque
The gateway album
I was living in northern Japan and in a pre-internet/ email era was relying on letters to keep me in touch with home (“Brian Adams is STILL number 1” my best friend wrote to me in disbelief when it seemed I’d been there forever). My Cowboy Junkies friend sent me a care package including a couple of tapes. One was Bandwagonesque. I listened to it again and again and sought out any information I could (probably via microfiche or something back then) and read how they’d been influenced by other bands. It led me on to discover Big Star. Through them I discovered The Replacements. Through them The Jayhawks…and so on. But Bandwagonesque, for all its influences, is an album I go back to again and again.
Robbie Robertson – Robbie Robertson
The first album bought on CD.
These last three albums are all from my time in Japan. There are a couple of reasons – one, I had enough money for the first time in my life to just go out and try things (Tower Records in Sapporo was my second home) and two, I bought myself a new-fangled invention called a CD Player. I didn’t know who Robbie Robertson was other than having heard Somewhere Down the Crazy River – so when I saw it was on sale next to the CD player I bought, I picked it up just so I had something to play on it. The production by Daniel Lanois showed me what a difference CD could make, and the songs on it – particularly the opening Fallen Angel and Broken Arrow made me go out and buy the recently released Storyville immediately (it’s not as well regarded, but personally I think it’s a better album). Then I started looking into The Band and Bob Dylan and…my CD collection started to grow quickly.
Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus
The ‘best’ album.
I was at a conference in Sendai, and we went to a Jazz Club one night. I liked jazz – some of it I really liked, some I said I did. It was a strange night. I bumped into the guy that my Blue Nile donator had left me for (and yes, 6,000 miles away does sound like a bad novel contrivance, but it’s true). I also took notes from the poster on the wall advertising ‘the best 100 sax albums ever’. Saxophone Colossus was their number one pick. I included it in my next batch purchase from Tower. Four players. Five tracks. From traditional rearrangements to original. Thirty years on, it’s still the jazz album I listen to more than any other.
Bio
Simon Bewick is 52 and lives in Cullercoats on the North East Coast. He’s co-host of Bay Tales (www.baytales.com), a crime fiction based affair on web and live shows. He writes a bit himself. He’s on twitter at @simonbewick
