I hate it when I have a song in my head that I despise but round and round it goes, and it won’t sim­ply go away. Today it’s MC Ham­mer’s incred­i­bly irri­tat­ing Turn This Mutha Out. I hated that song for years. I really despised it and fired any DJ who played it at any of my clubs. I can’t for the life of me work out where it came from. Why the hell is it in my head?

Maybe, just maybe, it’s a sign from some­where, god knows where, to finally fin­ish the album roundup I’ve been plug­ging away at for some months. There are three ear­lier parts, posted here, here, and here; and it was started as a sequel to my 7” and 12” lists. This album thing (I have no idea what to call it) is not, as I iter­ated before, a silly best-albums-of-all-time list. Rather it’s a bunch of vinyl long play­ers, from the years before (and includ­ing 2000) that would not make most lists of that sort, but may well make mine. Records I’d rather not be with­out, if you will. Many of these, for one rea­son or another, are either out of print, or hard to get hold of but, that said, these records are all as cool as it gets and I make no excuses for any of them.

So let’s, with no fur­ther ado, let’s put on our harem pants, start chicken-dancing and turn this mutha out…

  1. Toy Love – Toy Love (De-Luxe 1980)…yes I know it’s on CD now with lots more bits and rare stuff. But the OG is the real thing. The new ver­sion has a fresh mix of sorts and a nice pack­age but, like AK79, it’s sim­ply not as much the real thing as this. I know I’ve said I’ve never liked the cover (and I apol­o­gised to Jane for say­ing that) but it’s actu­ally grown on me quite a lot in recent years. And the new issue might have a rather nice infor­ma­tive pack­age but it doesn’t have a pull out poster and it doesn’t have that dense, rather threat­en­ing sound about it. I like the CD as well but there is some­thing about the orig­i­nal. And it’s held its age well. Sorry to be revisionist….
  2. EPMD-Unfin­ished Busi­ness (Fresh 1989)…the first album from Eric and Parish, deservedly, gets lots of kudos. It remains one of the great hip hop albums of any era. But the sec­ond one is often over­looked. It sits in the shadow of its pre­de­ces­sor and that’s not fair as its every bit it’s equal from the open­ing track, So What You Say­ing (best in its var­i­ous 12” remixes but fine here too) onwards. My favourite track, aside from the sin­gles has to be the lovely Faze-O sam­pling Lis­ten to My Demo.
  3. Badfin­ger – No Dice (Apple 1970)…perhaps one of the great­est pop bands ever, and surely the most tragic, this was their sec­ond album under this name, and I could eas­ily have cho­sen any of the next four instead of this. For­get the sin­gle, No Mat­ter What, a huge hit and a film sync regular…well actu­ally don’t for­get it, but look past it to the likes of With­out You, as later cov­ered by Nils­son, and the majes­tic and slightly omi­nous Mid­night Caller.
  4. The DOC-No One Can Do It Bet­ter (Ruth­less 1989)…the great unhailed (well be hon­est it was might­ily hailed in some quar­ters but not for a long time) Dre album, pro­duced around the time of the first NWA album. The DOC allegedly con­tributed more to that group than var­i­ous actual named mem­bers, but this is a far more sophis­ti­cated album both lyri­cally and in pro­duc­tion terms than any­thing by the Comp­ton crew. Inci­sive, sharp and melodic…. Dre wouldn’t come close to this again until The Chronic.
  5. Carl Craig-Land­cruis­ing (Blanco Y Negro 1995)…post Kling Klang metallic-eyed soul from Detroit’s sec­ond wave. It always intrigues me to hear peo­ple enthuse about the likes of Kraftwerk but scratch their heads at, and walk away from records like this. The lin­eage is both obvi­ous and cru­cial to the under­stand­ing of the path that elec­tronic music has fol­lowed in recent decades. And no-one does it bet­ter than the man from Planet E. Re-tweaked and reis­sued last year as triple pack, I’ve got a soft spot for the sound and mixes on the orig­i­nal dou­ble vinyl, sim­ply because that’s where I first fell in love with this. And then there is the amaz­ing Kenny Larkin mix of the sin­gle from this, Sci­ence Fiction.
  6. Johnny Thun­ders-So Alone (Real 1978)…. That Johnny recorded any­thing lis­ten­able at this stage in his career remains a mir­a­cle (there are some truly awful records from the same gen­eral period). But record he did, here with the help of Steve Lil­ly­white, and he made this record. You Can’t Put Your Arm Around Mem­ory is jus­ti­fi­ably famous but I love the answer to the Pis­tols’ anti Dolls New York, the Jones & Cook fea­tur­ing, Lon­don Boys…”you poor lit­tle pup­pets”. The sense of atti­tude this record exudes is still tan­gi­ble all these years later
  7. The Who -Quadrophe­nia (Track 1973)…it’s hard to raise a hand and say which of this band’s albums of its first decade is the stand­out. Leeds of course is the defin­ing live album, but I think this edges out Next as their stu­dio peak. The pack­age alone, on the vinyl, is a piece of art, and what is inside, if you play the four sides in order, comes closer to defin­ing Town­shend’s elu­sive tribal youth than any­time since the first album….hewas still close enough to his roots to have a grasp on what he was writ­ing about and infuse it with the mod ethos and sound­scape that it demanded. He would never be this pre­cise again.
  8. Metro Area (Env­i­ron 2002)…I snuck this record in, two years after my cut off point. It’s my list I can do things like that. The album that nailed a whole sub genre… it didn’t start it (and, indeed, much of this defin­ing album had appeared on vinyl ear­lier), but it so obvi­ously was the land­mark release. I hate the term nu-disco, but it’s as close as I’m going to get so it will do. Taut flow­ing basslines, sim­ple, decep­tively clin­cal, until they grab you, melodic keys and a sub­tle seduc­tive­ness make this album one the records that I’ve not been able to file away this decade.
  9. Var­i­ous-Fast Prod­uct (IRS 1979)…an Amer­i­can col­lec­tion of the first few sin­gles on Bob Last’s very briefly cru­cial Fast label. The best tracks ever from The Human League, Gang of 4 (the clat­ter­ingly angry Armalite Rifle…still their finest moment), The Mekons and oth­ers. Rough and bru­tal, and that’s exactly how indie post punk records should be…this album inspired me to start a label….
  10. Dr Alim­i­natado – The Best Dressed Chicken in Town (Greensleeves 1980)…god how I played this when I first got hold of it. Over and over again. This record just sounded so com­pletely fucked up…so utterly out there and twisted, despite the pas­sage of some 27 years, it still does. Just look at the sleeve. The record sounds as it looks. What I want to know, is did the car actu­ally him, as the leg­end goes.
  11. The Mighty Dia­monds – Right Time (Front Line 1976)…Virgin NZ (or were they still RTC at the time) imported the whole Front Line cat­a­logue in 1979 and for many of us it was our first expo­sure to any Jamaican music beyond the Island name stuff (Bob, Toots etc) but not the inter­est­ing things, and what an eye opener it was. Actu­ally that’s not absolutely true, I had two tracks from this cour­tesy of the ear­lier Front Line sam­pler but that was it, noth­ing else…and all that did, in a land where it was impos­si­ble to import records, was frus­trate. Like so many of the Jamaican vocal groups of the era, this had an oth­er­worldly, almost ethe­real qual­ity to it, like a fil­tered ver­sion of some­thing from another time and place. Which is exactly what it was.
  12. Robert Owens – Rhythms in Me (4th & Broad­way 1990)…this album, from the tail end of the Chi-town golden era of house, is largely for­got­ten, but it bought together two strands of Chicago House, the vocal genius of Owens, his first record­ings out­side the Fin­gers Inc camp and their sem­i­nal record­ings for Trax, DJ Inter­na­tional and Alle­vi­ated, and the pro­duc­tion skills of Frankie Knuck­les (with David Morales herein), god­fa­ther of the genre. And it was a major step for­ward for both par­ties. This album added a sheen of sophis­ti­ca­tion to the pro­to­typ­i­cal Owens vocal style and empha­sised the dark mood­i­ness hinted at by ear­lier anthems. To com­plete this album you really need the Visions 12” mixes.
  13. The Bal­lis­tic Broth­ers – Lon­don Hooli­gan Soul (Junior Boys Own 1995)…when I lived in Lon­don in the mid eight­ies I was drawn into the pas­sion­ate addic­tion of the Lon­don soul mafia…scouring the shops of Soho and Edg­ware Road for old jazz, funk and soul records arriv­ing weekly from US ware­houses, then off the Dub Ven­dor in Lad­broke Groove for crackly seven inches from Kingston. This record felt like the sound­track to that era, and indeed it was the young mem­bers of that soul mafia who later in the decade took the Amer­i­can musi­cal rev­o­lu­tion of the mid to late eight­ies around the world, and a decade later made this won­der­ful, warm, and hum­ble album.
  14. Eddie Kendricks – He’s a Friend (Tamla 1979)…long out of print but recently avail­able on a lim­ited edi­tion triple CD reis­sue, this was a won­der­ful mesh­ing of the for­mer Temp­ta­tions’ ethe­real voice with the lush washes of Philadel­phia, pro­duced as it was by Nor­man Har­ris and backed by the clas­sic MFSB band. One of those albums that is so damned good, it’s hard to work out why no one knows about it.
  15. Fripp & Eno – No Pussy foot­ing (Island / EG 1974)….that this album is so very hard to find in 2007 is an absolute crime. And that this album influ­enced a swathe of young musi­cians, first dis­cov­er­ing the brave new world of syn­the­siz­ers is beyond ques­tion. Much more than most of the Ger­man acts that inspired this record, tracks like Swastika Girls (actu­ally there are only two on the album), along with Kraftwerk, pro­vided a rough blue­print applied in garages and school music rooms across the UK and Europe over the next few years. And it still sounds like the future….
  16. Sparks – Kimono My House (Island 1975)…the mid sev­en­ties doesn’t really deserve its rock’n’roll rep­u­ta­tion as a musi­cally bar­ren era. Sure the United States was, out­side NYC and the odd excep­tion that proved the rule, pretty much the musi­cal waste­land it remains today, and the bloated car­cass of prog rock was per­va­sive in the uni­ver­si­ties. But there were dozens of quirky lit­tle acts like this across the rest of the world…well not exactly like this. Sparks had to escape the US to get any real trac­tion and they made pop records that sounded like no-one else. Fran­tic falsetto sto­ries of angst like This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us. One of them looked like Hitler’s camp twin, and five years later they made elec­tro anthems, huge in the gay clubs, with Gior­gio Moroder.
  17. Todd Rung­dren – Some­thing / Any­thing (Bearsville 1971)…sprawling, almost inco­her­ently at times then com­ing up for air, at just the right moment, with melodic gems like It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Dif­fer­ence, this album works as a whole, best when played from begin­ning to end as one piece. Some­thing / Any­thing is so good you can almost for­give all that cyber hip­pie non­sense later on, but not the fact that he pro­duced Meat­loaf.
  18. John Cale – Paris 1919 (Reprise 1973)…I like the Island Cale albums, espe­cially Fear, and some of his more recent work a lot, but I have a soft spot for my worn old copy of this eccen­tric album from the per­verse Welsh­man. Musi­cally sump­tu­ous, lyri­cally dark, this album is the sort of record that a major label would never release in 2007…it’s an artis­tic state­ment from a mas­ter com­poser and musi­cian that exists because it should. Ain’t that grand….Reissued in 2006 and then deleted almost imme­di­ately for some obscure con­trac­tual reason……..
  19. John Coltrane – Live at the Vil­lage Van­guard (Impulse 1961)….the first heavy metal album. For the meek this is not an easy lis­ten, but it sig­ni­fied the moment when Coltrane veered from being just an incred­i­ble player to some­thing much more. With the lights out and the sound up, at 2am, you can lis­ten to this and almost feel that you are watch­ing and feel­ing the heat from Eric Dol­phy’s majes­tic clar­inet and roll with ‘trane on those, intense, extended solos. A total head fuck…..
  20. Scritti Politti – Songs to Remem­ber (Rough Trade 1981)…Green Gart­side is odd. He’s made only half a dozen albums over a twenty eight year career. One, Cupid & Psy­che, was a killer transat­lantic pop album, and the rest were pleas­antly dis­pos­able and rather soul­less. Apart from this….the record that really didn’t belong in 1981 or on Rough Trade and is his one claim to rock’n’roll per­fec­tion. Sound­ing like the record the indie kid made after an evening at a disco, you’d swear this was the first E record, pre­dat­ing and pre­dict­ing as it does the likes of The Happy Mon­days and Pri­mal Scream at the end of the decade.
  21. The Buz­zcocks – Another Music In a Dif­fer­ent Kitchen (UA 1978)….Manchester’s great­est pop band, and pur­vey­ors of one of the finest streams of impec­ca­ble pop sin­gles pro­duced by any­one any­where ever. Fif­teen stone cold killers one after another, and in the midst of it came this album which offered just a lit­tle bit more…took the punk exper­i­ment one step fur­ther and was an obvi­ous pointer to the Pete Shelley’s solo work three albums later. Love Bat­tery and, even more so, Mov­ing Away From The Pulse­beat sound like tracks twenty years ahead of their time, and even the bang-bang power pop tracks like Fast Cars are never less than compelling.
  22. Moody­mann – Silent Intro­duc­tion (Planet E 1997)….enigmatic, even in his most open moments, Kenny Dixon Jr remains both one of America’s great musi­cal secrets, almost unknown out­side elec­tronic cir­cles, and a mas­sive influ­ence across the pond in Europe and the UK (try and imag­ine Hen­rik Schwarz’s won­der­ful DJ Kicks mix with­out Kenny’s influ­ence). And com­pletely addictive…once you buy in you come back again and again (and indeed, find your­self pay­ing silly money for those rare 12”s). His rhythms, grooves…call them what you will…are often ridicu­lously under­stated in their sub­tly but their abil­ity to snare you…as he says: I Can’t Kick This Feel­ing When It Hits
  23. Eugene Record – The Eugene Record (Warner Bros 1976)….rightly famous for all those glo­ri­ous Chi-lites records, this was the first of three, for­got­ten, solo albums for Warn­ers, and is neigh on impos­si­ble to find, as it flopped on release and has never been reis­sued.. The two key tracks Lay­ing Beside You, a minor hit, and Over­dose of Joy, revived as a rare groove styled clas­sic in recent years are only the begin­ning of this sweet soul masterpiece.
  24. Split Enz – Men­tal Notes (White Cloud 1975)..the only Enz album, if push comes down to shove, that really mat­ters. The rest were sim­ply nice but this one, with Judd still in tow, had edge which all the oth­ers sim­ply lacked. The deliv­ery is ama­teur­ish at times and the pro­duc­tion raw (you can tell they wanted the world but were lim­ited by bud­get and tech­nol­ogy). Although it was recorded in Mel­bourne, this record breathes Auck­land ’75 and is one of the two clas­sic AK albums of the decade (the other being the debut Hello Sailor album).
  25. Fran­cis Albert Sina­tra & Anto­nio Car­los Jobim (Reprise 1967).….I’m not going to try to talk about the genius of the fifties Sina­tra canon.…but by the mid to late six­ties he was regarded as an artis­tic spent force, and most of his Reprise record­ings do lit­tle to con­tra­dict that per­cep­tion. Apart from this….a sub­lime meld­ing of the Jer­sey brat at his most refined and Jobim’s Latin genius. At the time Jobim was rid­ing on a wave in the USA but nei­ther act here suc­cumbs to the temp­ta­tion to over­state, as Sina­tra was by this stage, so prone to do. Perfection….
  26. Wom­ack & Wom­ack – Love Wars (Elek­tra 1984)…this album was every­where when it came out…it was THE album to own and talk about. But, oddly, if drifted from the pub­lic con­scious­ness rather quickly and for most of the past twenty years has been pretty much unavail­able. So obvi­ously Womack-ish in it’s grit, this album had many of the rough edges found on brother Bobby’s albums, smoothed out some­what. A clas­sic of it’s time with its lovely inter­twined domes­tic vocal inter­play. My favourite moment is found on Baby, I’m Scared of You when Linda wails I Need a Man and hus­band Cecil hollers back I’m Avail­able….

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