Tracks Of My Years
Age 0-5, 1971 to 1976
I remember my dad used to play me a lot of music. I mean a lot in quantity and variation. He always had the car stereo on and would make the effort to expose me to as many different styles as he could. I can’t recall most of what he played but I remember I used to ask for “The Donkey Music”, which was kind of clippy cloppy stuff you heard in westerns. He used to play Steve Wonder, too and tap on the steering wheel. I remember the music to Doctor Who used to terrify me.
My mother used to play Helen Reddy, Kenny Rogers, Abba and Roger Whitaker, and I still know a lot of their songs by heart even though I haven’t heard them since, which is the sign of an aural thinker. I liked The Jungle Book soundtrack which I used to play over and over on my tape machine. It was one of those toploading things with a built in speaker and a handle. My dad used to play a lot of jazz, but more about that later.
Age 5-10, 1976-1981
I moved from the UK to the US and listened to a lot of mid-to-late-70’s American radio rock, which really I liked. Whether it was discovering music myself for the first time, or the songs around in those days, but something switched my ears on. If you’re going to get your first taste of music, there are worse places to do it than in Philadelphia in 1976. Glam rock and progressive rock totally passed me by (being largely English phenomena), and instead the airwaves were filled with Simon & Garfunkle and Billy Joel, who really grabbed me. Yeah, I know he’s not cool now and fresh evidence indicates that he probably did start the fire, but The Stranger remains an album etched into my ears.
Rolling Stones playing Start Me Up stands out because they played a massive gig at JFK Stadium and everyone knew someone who knew someone who was there. Bruce Springsteen’s Hungry Heart reminds me of pizza parties and has a great live feel that makes it sound like the best house band in the world. I don’t think anyone eats more pizza than an eight year old kid from Philly. John Lennon’s Starting Over was something else I loved and my mum used to play a lot of Barry White. McFadden and Whitehead’s Ain’t No Stopping Us Now was everywhere because they came from the city and it was adopted by its baseball team as the song to accompany them on their march to win the World Series over the Kansas City Royals.
I would stay glued to WIFI 92 and soak up the J Giles Band, Devo, Blondie, maybe a little Earth Wind and Fire, and local popsters Hall and Oats. Daryl Hall signed a birthday card of a girl in school. The first album I ever bought was Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall. I got it second hand at a garage sale and the first song damn near killed me. Quincy Jones’s arrangement of Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough was insane. Funky bass and guitar over disco strings and soul horns and this guy singing two octaves above anyone else – what’s not to like?
Age 10-15, 1982-1987
I left the US and moved to France, where my mother discovered Sasha Distel, Yves Montant and Nana Mouscouri. Not cool French singers, not the dramatic gitanes-smoking singers pouring it out from the depths of their soul like Jacques Brel, Edith Piaf or Serge Gainsbourg, but poor-quality dittifiers of the kind of songs that would be performed on Saturday night variety shows where people would clap along on the 1 and 3 beat instead of the 2 and 4. Like a granny claps, with each hand spending more time holding the other one instead of being in the air moving towards the next clap.
There were some good somewriters around then, Etienne Daho for decent pop, Francis Cabrel was a good folk-tinged guitarist with great heartfelt songs like Sarbacane and Animale, Laurent Voulzy wrote some good ballads like Belle Ile en Mer, Telephone were a bloody excellent rock band who did new wave/punk/pop/rock better than anyone I have ever heard. Listen to Ca C’est Vraiment Toi and try not to be blown away. If anyone was doing their stuff in English at the same time, they would be legendary by now.
As a ten year old, I didn’t have a record collection to speak of, so I discovered my dad’s records, which was a life-changing experience. Jazz. Bebop and freeform jazz. We had a live recording of Sonny Rollins playing Swing Low Sweet Chariot with a band that included bagpipes and it is incredible. One of his signature tunes is St. Thomas which will make you smile. Charlie Parker playing The Gipsy is still something that can stop me in my tracks, and Dizzy Gillespie playing with him on Caravan is something you can’t sit still to. All those guys, Ray Brown, Thelonius Monk, Buddy Rich, even big bands if they were hard enough – not Glen Miller, but the bold dissonance of Stan Kenton, the drive of Benny Goodman, the measured cool of Duke Ellington, the fiery arrangements of Count Basie.
I pretty much dispaired at the state of 1980’s pop, and while all the cool kids were listening to Echo and the Bunnymen and The Smiths (which I still don’t get, by the way) I was sneaking off with my dad to the Nice Jazz Festival, making bootleg recordings of people like Miles Davis (1980’s fusion-era You’re Under Arrest and Bitches Brew), Lionel Hampton (a legend in France, whose Flying Home sounds like hope), Dave Brubeck (Take Five), Woody Herman, Keith Jarret, Herbie Hancock and Art Blakey.
These old and dead guys were my heroes, and not only was the festival so informal that I got to walk among them, I actually got to meet a few of them. Not only did I talk to Dizzy Gillespie over lunch – my lunch, not his; I was eating while he spoke to me – but he recognised me the next day. One minute I’m a face in the crowd, and the next Dizzy Gillespie is calling out to me: “Cliff! Cliff! My man the Cliff. How you doing?”
I never did get much into pop, but somewhere in the mid-to-late-80’s I discovered rock like Ace Freehley (but strangely not Kiss), ACDC, Quiet Riot and Led Zepplin. The Police rocked my world and still do. Duran Duran were cool because I liked harmonies in pop. Men at Work wrote some good songs – the Cargo album with It’s a Mistake and No Sign of Yesterday is great. They were overshadowed by their big hit Down Under, which hung over them. Overkill is another good song. Frontman Colin Hay continues to write stunning songs and deserves more attention.
Age 15-20, 1987-1992
I left home for boarding school at 14 and embarked on a voyage to discover everything. From having no records to being among 200 kids that had plenty meant I was on a steep learning curve. I got into a lot of classic rock: The Beach Boys (Warmth of the Sun), The Beatles (Get Back), The Who (Babba O’Reilly), The Stones (Can’t You Hear Me Knocking), later Bruce Springsteen (Glory Days). I got into a lot of hippy stuff like The Band(The Weight) , JJ Cale (After Midnight), Joni Mitchell (Coyote). I thought Guns and Roses were a joke, but admitted to liking some songs.
I still listened to jazz, and liked some fusion like Steps Ahead, Weather Report, Spyro Gira and The Mahavishnu Orchestra. But nothing could have prepared me for Loose Tubes. They were a big band, at least 30 strong, with the harmonies hell-bent on a follicle awareness drive, wierd time signatures that actually work and the best arrangements I have ever heard. They were like Beck meets an orchestra of Beck meets Zappa via the Clash. But that makes it sound too cooly-cool-arty-but actually-crap. Like, “I’ll listen to this until they leave” cool music. But it wasn’t because it was great.
James Taylor. God I love James Taylor (Baby Buffalo, Traveling Star). The pure and honest warm tenor from the soul, made to bring his deceptively simple songs to life. He’s the I reason picked up a guitar and I learned by playing along to his records. Later I joined a band and met my wife and had kids – that sounds crazy, but that’s how it happened and it’s a lot to be thankful for. What I love about music starts and ends with James Taylor.
Age 20-25, 1992-1997
Grunge hit me hard. The first real grunge I heard was probably Dinosaur Jr’s Freakscene or L7’s Pretend We’re Dead. Smashing Pumpkins (Rhinoceros), Sugar (A Good Idea), Jane’s Addiction (Been Caught Stealing), Soundgarden (Black Hole Sun), I had time for all of them. I was kind of into Nirvana (Lithium) but not as much as Pearl Jam (Release), who I thought had more to say with better showmanship.
I went retro too, getting into Jimmy Hendrix (Wind Cries Mary), Velvet Underground (Sweet Jane), classic blues (Bill Bill Broozy, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker), Canned Heat (Going Up The Country). I also got not a little mainstream with your Peter Gabriels, your Stings, your Crowded Houses. Distant Sun remains one of my most favourite number one songs of all time ever in the world.
Motorcycle Emptiness and Faster by Manic Street Preachers stands out, too (The Holy Bible remains a favourite album). The Beastie Boys were a rediscovery, but everything on Check Your Head was an instant classic and the opening riff of Gratitute is as hilarious and cool as they are.
Age 25-30, 1997-2002
All of the above. It’s probably a sign of growing old when we continue to listen to what we listened to when we were twenty. But I take some comfort that people who are in their twenties listen to bands that sound a lot like the stuff I listened to ten years ago. I mean, Coldplay sounds a lot like Counting Crows, Dave Matthews Band sounds a lot like Crowded House.
I made some rediscoveries, like Manic Street Preachers did it again with “Everything Must Go”, a blistering ode (in my mind at least) to impermanence and consumerism. Foo Fighters’ Learn to Fly does melodic rock better than anything I’ve heard.
I started listening to different types of music, like country (Look Heart, No Hands by Randy Travis, Dixieland by Steve Earle And The Del McCoury Band), zydeco (Beast of Burden by Buckwheat Zydeco or anything by the Bluerunners), Bluegrass (Foggy Mountain Breakdown by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs), marrabenta, the rhythmic guitar music of West Africa (Aids by Mabulu), rock steady (Get Out Of My Life Woman, Byron Lee and the Dragonaires).
Age 30-present, 2002-
Until the gift of hindsight kicks in, I’d be clutching at straws to name songs that stand out, but here are a few. No More Running Away by the Ben Taylor Band, Bedsprung by Keane, Triple Trouble by The Beastie Boys.
A bit of classical? I’m saying Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring to you. Talk about your bangs and whimpers – this is it, and it still qualifies as a song, since in weighs in at just under 25 minutes.
I’ve always returned to singer/songwriter stuff through all my fickle whims of tunesmithery. Pete Atkin (My Dreams Are Troubled) was a recent and late discovery and I should probably hear Rufus Wainwright someday.
Cheers all and thanks for listening.
