If 1978 was the first year in which I started buying pop music, it was thirty years ago this year that I first bought a couple of albums.

Before Christmas 1978 I owned only one album (at least that I can recall): a Rainbow album featuring Geoffrey, George, Zippy, Bungle, Rod, Jane and Freddie.  For Christmas 1978 I received as a gift a copy of the Grease soundtrack album – a double album at that!

I grew up with very little music in the house.  I think this is partly because neither of my parents have ever been the sort of people who sit down and listen to music and partly because they didn’t exactly have much in the way of disposable income through the early and mid Seventies – at least until my father went to work in the Middle East in early 1978.

I do remember, though, that they had these dozen or so albums on the shelf under the hi-fi.

Abba – Greatest Hits

The band’s first compilation from 1975 – ie it was so early in their career that they didn’t yet have their stylised ABBA trade mark with the backwards B.

Always loved this as a kid.  Even the shit songs on it – like the almost criminally bad Bang-A-Boomerang.  (How the fuck anybody could claim that was one of Abba’s greatest hits, I don’t know.)

Fortunately tracks like that were outweighed by fare such as Fernando, S.O.S., Mamma Mia, Waterloo and I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do.

It was a gatefold sleeve (Agentha and Bjorn on the front, Frida and Benny on the back), which for some reason seemed very exciting.  Definitely one of my mother’s.

The Beatles – A Collection of Beatles Oldies… But Goldies!

My initiation.  This is where it all began.

This was the Beatles’ first compilation album, released by EMI in December 1966 while the band were working on Sgt. Pepper.  I don’t know whether or not this was bought by my mother at its time of release, or subsequently – it was still in print in the mid-80s.

I was fascinated by the garish front cover artwork and entranced by the smokily atmospheric photograph of the band on the rear cover.

The album rounded up for the first time a number of Beatles hits that had only previously been released as singles.  (How quaint that musicians used to think that singles and albums should be separate entities as much as possible.)

And with the one glaring exception (the sole cover version), what a track listing:

Side one: She Loves You, From Me To You, We Can Work It Out, Help!, Michelle, Yesterday, I Feel Fine, Yellow Submarine
Side two: Can’t Buy Me Love, Bad Boy, Day Tripper, A Hard Day’s Night, Ticket To Ride, Paperback Writer, Eleanor Rigby, I Want To Hold Your Hand

How could you not want to listen to such an album over and over and over again (eg for 31 years and counting)?

Bread – The Sound Of Bread

I still know next to nothing about Bread, though I’ve downloaded this album on Spotify just so I can reacquaint myself with their oeuvre.

Allmusic.com’s review of this 1977 compilation describes them as “soft rock giants of the early 70s”.  Soft rock means it was clearly one of my father’s albums.

I only really recall the big hits now, but I used to love Guitar Man (slide guitar!  I’m telling you, I want a bouquet in the shape of a slide guitar when I go…) and Make It With You, even if I had no idea what that actually meant.

Boy George gleelessly murdered Bread’s Everything I Own to a reggae beat in 1987 to eke out his final number one: it’s sad what smack does to your sense of musical taste (see also John Lennon).

Glen Campbell – 20 Golden Greats

Holy crap, I adore Rhinestone Cowboy!

I would play the shit out of that song as a kid – side one, track one of this 1976 chart-topping album.  Three minutes of pop perfection.

Considering Campbell only had five Top 10 hits in Britain, it’s amazing that this album spent six weeks at number one between November 1976 and January 1977.

“Country boy, you’ve got your feet in LA but your mind’s on Tennessee…”

Wichita Lineman; Galveston; By The Time I Get To Phoenix: the songwriting genius of Jimmy Webb.

And this album introduced me to some standards via Campbell’s cover versions of Both Sides Now, Reason To Believe, The Last Thing On My Mind and All I Have To Do Is Dream.

Great stuff.  Spotify is downloading as I write.

The Carpenters, Singles 1969-1973

Even if I couldn’t verbalise the opinion at the ages of six and seven, I used to think it sad that sounds this beautiful should be housed in a cover so drab.  I suspect this 1973 compilation was probably one of the few joint musical purchases by my parents.

There is not a single ounce of filler on this album.  Utter brilliance shines from each of its 12 tracks:

Side one: We’ve Only Just Begun, Top Of The World, Ticket To Ride, Superstar, Rainy Days And Mondays, Goodbye To Love
Side two: Yesterday Once More, It’s Going To Take Some Time, Sing, For All We Know, Hurting Each Other, (They Long To Be) Close To You

Thirty years on, I still know every lyric to at least ten of those 12 tracks.

While The Carpenters recorded plenty of material after 1973 that rightly graces more recent retrospectives, this is an irresistible way of immersing oneself in the grace and beauty of one of the most magical voices in pop music.  It does not matter one iota that Karen Carpenter mostly sang her brother’s easy listening ditties; I can only think of a couple more enchanting voices.

Neil Diamond – Beautiful Noise and Love At The Greek

I didn’t play these albums and didn’t care or know about Neil Diamond until Christmas 1978.  These were my father’s albums (although my mother was and remains a Diamond fan) and apart from liking their gatefold sleeves, they didn’t really interest me until then.

Beautiful Noise was released in July 1976 and was Diamond’s most acclaimed album until his 21st-century output with Rick Rubin.  Beautiful Noise also boasted a “name” producer – Robbie Robertson of The Band.  Perhaps it’s not entirely coincidental that the albums in which Diamond has collaborated with strong producers have produced his best work.

The album contains two great singles – the title track and If You Know What I Mean – and a succession of striking-sounding forays into genres such as gospel (Surviving The Life) and Dixie (Stargazer).  It has subsequently become something of a favourite.

Diamond took a sabbatical from live performances from 1972 until he toured the Beautiful Noise album.  Such was that album’s and tour’s success that CBS television recorded a September 1976 concert for a February 1977 television special, Love At The Greek.

Love At The Greek was Diamond’s second double album recorded in concert at the Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, following in the footsteps of 1972′s seminal Hot August Night.  Diamond retained Robbie Robertson to produce again and he does an unfussy job that captures with some warmth the beginning of the spangle-shirted, schmaltzy showmanship phase of Diamond’s career.

While the album contains some of Diamond’s biggest hits – Sweet Caroline and Song Sung Blue – it focuses mainly on his Beautiful Noise album (six tracks) and his 1974 soundtrack to the Jonathan Livingston Seagull movie (five tracks plus one more that had been intended for that album).

Demis Roussos – Forever And Ever

Don’t ask.  It belonged to my father.  I couldn’t abide it as a kid and I loathe it only marginally less now.

A compilation album of one big hit (can you guess its name?) and nine tracks of filler, released on the back of Forever And Ever topping the singles chart in July 1976.  I can only assume the UK record buying public lost their collective senses during that long, hot summer.

(Trivia: Forever And Ever was not released as a single.  It was the lead track on a four-track EP entitled The Roussos Phenomenon, the only EP to top the UK singles chart in the Seventies.  Thank you, fact fans.)

I’m sure Mr. Roussos is a splendid fellow but I simply have nothing to say about this.

The Shadows – 20 Golden Greats

One of my mother’s, this compilation was a UK number one – for six weeks in February and March 1977.  It’s like punk never happened.

It certainly didn’t in our house.  (At least not until I bought a Sex Pistols single in the summer of 1979.  Shit, I was one cool seven-year-old.*)

The Shadows’ deceptively simple and impeccably-arranged and produced instrumentals were great to listen to as a kid, even if theirs was a catalogue I would only ever “admire” and “appreciate” rather than “love”.

Whether they will admit it or not, the likes of Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler owe a great deal to Hank Marvin.  To this day, if I were putting together my fantasy backing band Marvin would be my choice for lead guitarist on the slower tracks.

I took my mother to see The Shadows live in concert in 2004 for their ‘farewell’ tour – they were getting on a bit but still musically immaculate.  I don’t feel at all cheated that they’ve dusted down their geetars one more time this year to back Cliff Richard for a 50th anniversary tour.

(*The fact that the Pistols single in question was a limp and awful cover version of a 20-year-old Eddie Cochran song is irrelevant.)

Paul Simon – Still Crazy After All These Years

Wow – an original release rather than a compilation.  I suspect my father may have bought this October 1975 album because it contained Simon & Garfunkel’s reunion track, My Little Town.

I like the two big hits – the splendid title track and infuriatingly catchy 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover – but I have no real memory of the seven other tracks on this album.

I didn’t like the cover of this one, so I guess I was less drawn to its content.

Simon And Garfunkel – Greatest Hits

Another of my father’s, this is up there with the very best compilation albums ever released.  Quoting allmusic.com again with approval:

This [1972] album has had over three decades to make an impact, and it says something for its staying power that, in the face of more recent, more generously programmed, and better mastered compilations of the duo’s work, it remains one of the most popular parts of the Simon & Garfunkel catalog[ue].

Damn skippy.  This really is life-shaping music.  Fourteen legendary tracks – mostly studio originals, but with a handful of previously-unreleased and uniformly excellent live tracks.

I always found The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) too whimsical for my liking, and I quickly got my fill of El Condor Pasa (If I Could), but otherwise this is flawless…

…save for the woeful sound quality.  The gain differs from song to song and the mastering appears to have been done by a very heavily stoned CBS work placement student.

If someone at Sony could actually be bothered to remaster this album properly I would buy it again now, even though I own all five S&G studio albums, two official live albums, three live bootlegs and the 2-CD compilation Tales From New York.

I need help, don’t I?

Cat Stevens – Teaser And The Firecat

Another that’s not a compilation.  This was my father’s.

I didn’t really “get” Cat Stevens as a kid.  I don’t know why because his early 70s output is obviously in the same vein as the likes of Bread and Simon & Garfunkel and I love it now, but it just didn’t grab me back then.

I do remember liking the cartoon cover with the cat that looked a bit like Bagpuss.

There are some of Stevens’ very best songs on this October 1971 release – Moonshadow and Peace Train – and it’s a lovely body of work, one of the early steps on the eventful spiritual journey its creator would subsequently undertake.

To the young Minister, though, the album probably lost points for containing Morning Has Broken, the hymn we were made to sing in school assembly.  If I had to sing it at school, I didn’t want to listen to it at home.

My father left for the Middle East in the spring of 1978 and my mother and I went on a month-long holiday to visit him, departing on 27 December 1978.  He had no turntable in his accommodation, and asked my mother to bring with her two recently-released cassettes – Rhapsody In Black and Neil Diamond’s 20 Golden Greats.  I remember going with her before Christmas to our town’s independent music shop (!) to buy them.

Rhapsody In Black was the third in the London Symphony Orchestra‘s populist Classic Rock series – after 1976′s Classic Rock and 1977′s The Second Movement.  It contained symphonic re-workings of classic soul tracks such as Standing In The Shadows Of Love, Reach Out I’ll Be There, I Heard It Through The Grapevine and You Keep Me Hanging On.

Oh, and Boney M’s Rasputin.

Bizarre in almost every way, yet oddly addictive.  The guiltiest of guilty pleasures.

(It’s worth pointing out that the LSO’s principal conductor when the Classic Rock series was initiated was one Andrew Preview, even if he didn’t sully his reputation by active involvement in the recordings.)

20 Golden Greats was the record that introduced me to Neil Diamond.

Side one, track one – Sweet Caroline.  How can you not fall in love with that song?

The album contains all his other biggest hits to 1978 – Cracklin’ Rosie, Song Sung Blue, Holly Holy, Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show, I Am… I Said and (albeit in inferior live form) Solitary Man, Cherry Cherry and Kentucky Woman.

I played that cassette ad nauseam during that holiday and, on our return home, pestered my mother into buying it on vinyl so I could play it at home.  I also quickly put Beautiful Noise and Love At The Greek through their paces and bought Diamond’s 1978 album You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.

Later in 1979 I would buy the cassettes of Abba‘s Voulez-Vous and Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 albums and Totally Hot by the angelic Olivia Newton-John, my first real crush.

With less pride but in the interests of full disclosure, I should also confess to buying (on vinyl) The Best Of The Brotherhood Of Man – though I still maintain Angelo is a brilliant single.

My parents had a small but perfectly-formed album collection and I will still gladly defend its contents (with the exception of the Roussos debacle).

Which raises an interesting question: do I like this music because it is great music, or do I like it because it was what I heard when I was growing up?

Posted via email from The Ministry of Truth