My Life In Records

The early years!: I still have a copy of Sparky's Magic Piano, this piece of ancient vinyl, sitting on a shelf next to my recording desk in my attic. I don't really know who bought it but it was the first record I remember listening to continuously on the record player in the Crowley house. It's a musical story/ narration of an American boy (Sparky) who falls asleep after a tough piano lesson. His piano starts talking to him (in a spooky piano voice) and tells him he can play anything he wants and all the boy has to do is run his fingers over the keys. So they strike up a secret deal - Sparky pretends and the magic piano plays. Next thing you know they're doing Rachmaninov. Sparky ends up on a world tour with his (magic) piano - everyone thinks he's a genius - finishing with a terrifying meltdown in Carnegie Hall. The boy wakes up to his mother calling his name. It was all a dream of course.

As far as I know, nobody in my house ever actually owned a copy of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep but it's my earliest memory of a song on the radio that stuck in my head. I remember walking along on a crowded beach at the age of 4, I reckon, and this was blaring from somebody's transistor radio. 'Where's your mama gone....far, far away..' 

I remember sitting on the couch with my little brother with this record/ We'd sing along each holding the double gatefold sleeve on our laps. 'A Day In The Life' was like this creature made up of other-wordly parts I didn't understand. It created synapses in my brain just listening to it. I think the record belonged to one of my older sisters or more likely my older brother. Though I remember my Dad once saying that he adored The Beatles.  

I discovered this record many years after it was released. I was in a secondary school in Galway. I was devoted to art and as they didn't officially teach art there, I used to go to an after-school class. I made a good friend in that classroom who I think had a hand in introducing me to this album. It stayed with me throughout my school years. I'd listen to it at home and the songs would still be in my head the next day at lunchtime when I'd walk around town and along the river by my school. 

My first year in Dublin living away from home was scored by this record. I was starting to play guitar around that time. I recall staring into the fireplace in my basement flat to the opening drones of 'Venus In Furs'. My school friend and flatmate would get kind of annoyed with me as he wanted to play his Pink Floyd tapes all the time.  

I think it was around 1988 and I was living in London for the Summer. I had made the trip with a good friend who was an amazing guitar player. I was sleeping on a sitting room floor in Hammersmith in a house rented by some other teenagers I vaguely knew from Galway. Before I found my own place to stay (and before the others in the house politely asked me to move out) I heard some music coming from someone's bedroom late one night. I knocked on the door and asked what it was. The guy who's room it was picked up the cassette and said 'it's a compilation by this guy called Nick Drake'. I got my own copy and listened to it constantly on my walkman on the London Underground.

This is the first real electric guitar lead album I ever latched onto. I think I first heard it when my flatmate in Dublin - Mol, a childhood friend played it. It was the only record in his collection I loved. Tom Verlaine's vocals knocked me sideways and the classic guitar parts of the title song ending like it starts with a beautiful call and response filigree.

A gig that really sticks in my memory was Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds at The SFX Theatre in Dublin. Search me what year that was but I'll hazard a guess and say 1990. When I discovered this record it had already been out for a good few years. I was in college at the time (studying something that really wasn't for me) and was starting to write songs. It has some absolutely beautiful songs and not only that but the sound of the bass, the organs, drums are amazing. I believe it's been remastered since. I played a gig with Mick Harvey a couple of years ago but neglected to tell him how much this record meant to me.

In 1994 I decided to move to France. I lived with my girlfriend in Toulouse by the River Garonne. It was the beginning of an amazing time for me. I was starting to play my first gigs and had a general feeling of new discovery. Initially I had absolutely no grasp of the French language, I hadn't even taken it as a Leaving Cert / final subject in school (opting for Latin instead). I started reading Henry Miller, finding amusement with this displaced anglophone in France. Thanks to late night B movies on the TV channel M6, I slowly learned my way around, even though most of my first sentences were comprised of sections of the most used parts of terrible script writing for badly dubbed action/ soft porn movies. Anyway I found this record in my girlfriend's collection. Okay Jane Birkin's jeans might me questionable to some but what a record! The vertiginous quality of the string arrangements Serge's voice, the songs.. 

Another record I discovered whilst living in France. A really good friend of mine played in a band called Diabologum and I discovered this album in his gargantuan record collection. He lived with his girlfriend in a blue cottage in a courtyard near the centre of Toulouse. We'd spend long evenings there drinking wine and listening to records. It was a formative time for me, as I was only really discovering my own voice and this record really struck a chord with me. I suppose I must have identified with it deeply. 

I'm stopping short of the last 10/15 years here. 'Live At Bloomsbury..' is probably my favourite live album I can think of. I bought in Gilbert record shop on Rue du Taur in Toulouse. It was played constantly in our rented flat in Adelaide Road in Dublin in the months before my son was born. If he turns out to be a baritone singer, I'll credit Stuart Staples.