Ok, so here’s a question for anyone who ever bought an album. Like, a real, vinyl, big, flat, black plastic thing with a hole in the middle. Designed specifically so that the protective cover would be the totally perfect surface for rolling a joint on. If it hadn’t been for cannabis, records would have been little pyramids. Honest.

Anyway, you buy an album. Why? Because you love the band? Because you’ve heard it at your mates? Because everyone’s talking about it? Possibly. But generally its because you’ve heard one track, maybe a single taken from the album, maybe it was a track on the Old Grey Whistle Test, maybe, maybe. And so you bought it. And so very often then realised that, aside from that brilliant track, the rest is a total disappointment. And as albums were a ‘major investment’ at £1. 50p (in today’s money, £4,274.58), that scenario really pissed you off.

But when you bought an album and every track was, like, brilliant, every song amazing, life-changing, hairs-standing-on-ending, then that was the dream.

The first I remember is probably Sergeant Peppers. Though I was just too young to really appreciate just how brilliant it was. But as I aged, I learned the wonder and the relative rarity of a ‘perfect album’.

The first time I listened to Steeley Dan’s Pretzel Logic, on my way to sell double glazing to the good people of Swindon, who didn’t even realise they needed it, in Gary’s fabulous Triumph TR6, smoking Rothmans all the way down the M4, made me a better person. As did putting Elvis Costello’s My Aim is True on the turntable for the first, mind-blowing time. The energy, the wonder, the sheer brilliance and raw power of punk-era rock and incredible lyrics (“I know this world is killing you”), OMG.

Before those came two albums of such perfection that I’m still shuddering, 49 years later. Ziggy Stardust and Lou Reed’s Transformer. And I kind’a have to add Bryan Ferry’s These Foolish Things too just because.

Songs in the Key of Life, by Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon’s Graceland, Combat Rock by the Clash, Stevie Nicks’ Bella Donna, just… just… just…

Remain in Light wasn’t the Talking Heads finest album but it came out just as Natalie was born. And David Byrne had just sprogged too, so it was all about the timing.

Then came an album by someone I’d never really liked, more because of what they look like than anything music-related, and it was a paradigm shift. The Style Council’s Cafe Bleu. Much as I loved The Jam, Paul Weller made my skin crawl. But that album. It was simply, brilliantly, uniquely, wonderful. And still is.

Last night I watched a documentary about it, and about him. He still makes my skin crawl, just his horrible accent is bad enough, before the suedehead/mod beginnings, but as a musician and songwriter, he remains remarkable. And from the aggressively angry Jam to the soulful, heart-warming Cafe Blue was such an incredible distance to travel.

Ok, let’s hear it for ‘perfect albums’.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx