Something completely different for today – I was challenged on Facebook a while ago by a friend to name ten albums which have had a great influence on my life. I found the whole exercise to be hugely rewarding, and got a great deal of pleasure out of searching back through years of memory to identify suitable items.
So I decided that it would be silly to squander the work on ten posts scattered here and there in Facebook, and so have gathered them all together into one place – for my own convenience as much as anything else!
So here we go…
1. The first is an album which I first discovered at university (feeling very risqué at the cover), and which I still listen to now. It’s Going for the One, by Yes, full of tracks which I love (and a few I’m not so struck by). The cover image is courtesy of Wiki…
Here’s a YouTube link to Awaken, perhaps the finest track on the album, and long enough it is in two parts…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or6GSK3hvM4
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CztdAyz-A44
2. The second album goes a little bit further back than the first – back into school days in fact when this album grabbed all of us by storm. Yes, it was Pink Floyd‘s Dark Side of the Moon (cover image courtesy of WIki). Originally a London group, I have never heard them play live.
3. Day 3 of the album challenge took me back to university days again. This time it’s Wishbone Ash, and Argus, something I listened to over and over. Another British band, this time from the West Country (rumour had it that they were the loudest band ever to play Exeter University). The YouTube extract is Time Was… a splendid track to introduce this album
4. Day 4 marks a transition from things that influenced me as listener to things which I tried to imitate as player. And I start with Peter Finger, a German acoustic guitarist who I tried (almost entirely unsuccessfully) to emulate. He did wonderful stuff with open tuning as well as conventional. This album – The Elf King – is the first of his that I came across.
The track I’ve chosen from this excellent album is Sabine… well worth a listen…
5. Day 5 continues the theme of albums that influenced me as player. Peter Finger’s music was always seriously above my ability level, but John Fahey was a different story, and I tackled a lot of his work. He played a lot of pieces in dropped-D or various open tunings, of which this – On the Sunny Side of the Ocean – is one.
And in a never-before-heard-by-the-general-public move, I am linking to a very old and quite noisy recording of me playing this wonderful piece…
6. Day 6 brought another of my playing influences. This time it’s John Renbourn, and out of all his sundry guitar work I have picked something from The Hermit. Specifically, it’s a selection of three pieces originally by the Irish harpist Turlough O’Carolan, transcribed for guitar. The pieces are
1. Lamentation of Owen Roe O’Neill
2. Lord Inchiquin
3. O’Carolan’s Concerto
I played these on both guitar and lute (for a while) and loved them. The rest of the album – and the rest of Renbourn – is well worth dipping into as well!
7. Day 7 was another playing choice, and this time it’s a compendium called 10 Classic Rags for Guitar by Scott Joplin, as played by various artists.
I’ve chosen Weeping WIllow, played by Ton Engels, not because I know very much about Ton or have listened to much of his playing, but because this was a rag I worked on a lot. I’m not saying I ever got especially good at it, but it’s a nice, pleasant but challenging piece to play. I’m sure it’s available still in tablature somewhere…
8. Day 8 took me back again to my listening choices rather than playing… and back a lot of years to an album that hugely affected me and a great many other people… Tubular Bells, by Mike Oldfield. How many of us practiced saying “Mandolin” in the privacy of our rooms?
Here’s a link to the full album, original (remastered) version…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXvtDm820zI
And if you want a very different – and very compelling – version, here it is live at Montreux in 1981…
9. Day 9, and once again it’s a band which I started listening to many years ago, and still do now. I even heard them once at what was then Guildford Civic Hall (it’s much posher now and called by a much grander name). The group – Camel… the album, well it;s the first of theirs I got to know, namely The Snowgoose, a thoroughly splendid instrumental piece, thematically built around the Dunkirk “small ships” rescue.
The track? Well, it’s not an easy choice, especially as the pieces flow and merge into each other, but I’ve gone for Flight of the Snowgoose, a central part of the whole album…
Whole album
Flight of the Snowgoose
10. And finally for Day 10, last one of the series, I thought I would come into the present day, and a band which (surprisingly) I only encountered recently. The band: Kayak… the album I have chosen: Merlin, Bard of the Unseen, with its overt Arthurian theme.
Album cover courtesy of Amazon .
And the specific track is Lady of the Lake (Niniane)
Why this? Well, my own writing is tending to draw on Arthurian themes just now, and Ninane in particular is a fascinating figure who (in time to come) will get a bit more narrative treatment from me in her own story…
That’s it folks, all ten albums, spanning something like 35 years of my musical life! And a great trip it has been… and will no doubt continue to be…