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Backtracking a little for this post. While I was feeling my way tentatively into the world of punk rock I met two people who are still friends and who had a large influence on me. I can’t quite remember how I came to meet Dean Poole and Mike Jones but I’m guessing it would have been through the loose affiliation of punky types that lived in the Penarth/Dinas Powys area. There were a few bands about at the time that we would have congregated together to see in some village hall or scout hut. Bands such as Ridicule, Rancid (not...

By way of continuation from my previous post - after the censorship of ‘Reality Asylum’ by the pressing plant on ‘Feeding the 5000’ Crass decided to start their own label Crass Records, so that they would have complete control over their own output and also to allow them to create a platform enabling other artists to release music, people who were coming from a similar place ideologically. They also took profit out of the equation and all Crass records releases were tagged with ‘Pay No More Than’ making them more affordable. There were a number of great releases on the...

It was sometime in 1979 - I’d been to see a Welsh rugby match with my dad and we’d called into Virgin Records which used to be located opposite the castle in Cardiff. My dad would most likely have been browsing for something by Bob Seger, Rolling Stones or his favourite artist Rod Stewart. Our musical tastes did occasionally collide much to my teenage embarrassment - one of my first vinyl purchases was going ‘halves’ with my dad to buy ‘Dance Away’ by Roxy Music. We also shared a fondness for The Pretenders...I’ve often wondered since if he had the...

As I’ve thought more about my own remit ie. the notion of an album ‘shaping’ you - implying it’s not just about the music necessarily, it’s more about the effect an album had on you as a person I can see that a lot of these choices will be from my youth as that’s when most ‘shaping’ occurs. I am hoping for a few late entries though. Ziggy Stardust is not my favourite Bowie album - that accolade goes to Diamond Dogs, with its Burroughs indebted dystopian lyrics and music that bridges glam rock and funk/soul. But it was the...

Choosing 10 albums that shaped me so not necessarily the ten favourites which shift like the sands anyway. First off has got be Sex Pistols ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’. Hearing this at 12 in 1979 was an absolute revolution in my head. Music had all been largely nice and poppy until I heard this - the anger and the energy just blew all the childish cobwebs away and fed directly into a growing sense of teenage angst. The day ‘shit got real’. Don’t listen to it much nowadays but when I do or hear any of the singles, it still...