Haystack

Carefully climbing
Then a leap of faith into
A handy haystack

Closer by Joy Division

This album was a difficult listen back in 1980 and the passage of time hasn’t made it much easier. Knowing how desperately ill lead singer Ian Curtis was during the recording and then hearing lines like “Gotta find some therapy … gotta find my destiny, before it gets too late” hits home in a way that very few songs do. Perhaps he could have been helped, but there are too many ‘what ifs’ to answer.

The sound of this album defined the 80s for me, being the antithesis of plastic pop for yuppies. Without this album we wouldn’t have had so much of the music that exploded from the Manchester scene throughout that decade and beyond. As with Bowie’s Blackstar, this deserves to be listened to properly and not shuffled or playlisted.

Mushrooms, Evening

Fried mushrooms for tea
As the evenings draw in
And gentle rains fall

The Idiot by Iggy Pop

Iggy Pop is one of rock and roll’s greatest survivors. After the Stooges broke up in 1974, he had a moment of clarity and realised that the drug culture of LA and his heroin addiction in particular was going to kill him, so he moved to France with his pal David Bowie (who was at a similar low point in his life) and they recorded an album together.

The Idiot feels like a reset for both of them, as they kicked their respective drug habits, and experimented with new sounds, bouncing ideas off each other in the studio before handing the tapes over to producer Tony Visconti who made sense of them and pulled the album together. There’s a notable shift from the proto-punk of Raw Power, with synths, saxophones and moody lyrics, but contrary to some opinions this is very much an Iggy album and informed his subsequent work.

Idiot-tastic!

Chilly, Bee

Single chilly bee
Lifted to a sunny spot
Sipping some sugar

Sheer Heart Attack by Queen

I remember the first time that I saw Freddie Mercury on Top of the Pops, with long hair, a fur jacket and half a microphone singing Killer Queen. It was thrilling and transgressive in a way that I couldn’t articulate at that age, but it felt like the future. I didn’t listen to the rest of the album until I was much older, but it still brings back the same feelings.

This was the album where Queen perfected their sound, particularly Brian May’s unique guitar, but all of them were firing on all cylinders. There’s a lot going on here, with a mischievous sense of humour in the opening of Brighton Rock and the jaunty Leroy Brown, combined with some of the hardest rock that Queen ever produced.

It’s sometimes overlooked in the Queen discography, falling between Queen II and Night at The Opera, but I think it’s one of my favorites that never grows old. Listening to Now I'm Here on headphones this morning was still a spine tingling experience to hear Freddie’s voice coming from different directions of the soundscape, and as with all of the studio tricks on this album was one they managed to pull off in live gigs too.

Dynamite with a laser beam-tastic!

Night, Walnut

Night time by the fire
Carefully cracking walnut shells
Feasting on the fruits