Ten Records that Changed My Life
(can't remember who this was done for, or when - 2003?)
1/ Sex
Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks, 1977
Awoke me
to belief in rock as a revolutionary, world-historical force - a faith I've
still not yet fully shaken off.
2/ Ian
Dury and the Blockheads, New Boots and Panties, 1978
Awoke me
to the possibilities of rock as poetic language (Dury) and awoke in me a
feeling for funk and disco (Blockheads).
3/ Public
Image Ltd, Metal Box, 1979
Awoke me
to the power of bass weight and dub space,
something that would keep on reverberating across an entire continuum of
Jamaica-into-England music, from ska to UK garage.
4/ The
Byrds, Younger Than Yesterday, heard 1982/released 1967
Awoke me
to Sixties psychedelia and its mystical dreams of self-surrender and recovery
of the lost child within.
5/ The
Smiths, "This Charming Man", 1983
Awoke me
to Morrissey, the most charismatic frontman and fascinating pop intellect
since Bowie, and to the poignant glory of his refusal of the 1980s.
6/
Schoolly D, self-titled, 1986
Awoke me
to the fact that rap was the major new pop music art form of the Eighties,
avant-garde in form and almost Marxist in its coldhearted
dissection/dramatisation of the capitalist psyche.
7/ Beltram,
"Energy Flash", 1990
Awoke me
to the dark Dionysian delirium of rave -- to the fact that techno was the new
punk, or new heavy metal - either way,
the rock of the future, and the future of rock.
8/ Omni
Trio, "Renegade Snares (Foul Play Remix)" , 1994
Awoke me
to the fact that jungle's breakbeat science was the major new pop artform of
the Nineties - regardless of whether it would ever become pop music in the
Top Ten hit sense (it wouldn't, but it would get around).
9/ Dem 2,
"Destiny ", 1997
Awoke me
to the fact that jungle's spirit of playful invention had migrated into UK
garage and especially its subgenre 2step, which this track defined and
blueprinted.
10/
Dizzee Rascal, "I Luv U", 2002
Awoke me
to the fact that grime (the UK finally coming up with its own ferociously
original counterpart to rap) was the major new pop artform of the first decade
of the 21st Century.
