awakenings

Ten Records that Changed Me 

(thing done for a German magazine in the mid-2000s if I recall right)

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.