FURTHER AND BETTER PARTICULARS ::: 5 ALBUMS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

Current mood: NOSTALGIC
Category: NOSTALGIC Music

OK...

So, I don't normally do these formulaic questionaires that spin around myspazz like stupid little helicpoters, but yesterday i did a bulletin with 5 LPS that have changed my life and today I revealed 5 (of many) songs..

It was as i was walking to Tescos along the canal an hour or so ago, that i started to think it'd be more satisfying to add a little as to why these stood out, so here we go...

5 ALBUMS (in no particular order)


1. The KLF - The White Room

I almost completely missed The KLF the first time around.

Basically, I had my head up my rock and metal ass and was saving the world, and because this entailed moving about and because I didn't have any kind of portable player, I wasn't listening to a hell of a lot of pop music full stop between 1990 and 1992..

It was aroundabout late 94 early 95 that I heard about Bill and Jimmy as The K Foundation and it was then that I became interested.

At that time, I was doing a lot of work on the road protests (for free - as per fucking usual), and spent a period of months staffing the office of the No M11 Link Road campaign not too far from where i now sit in East London..

The second centrepiece of that campaign was Claremont Road - an entire sqatted street where the impossible frequently happenned...

By the impossible I mean things like this huge great 120ft high fucking scaffold tower being built entirely from stolen scaff poles, using decaying terrace houses as a base, built by people with no training in scaffolding.

It rermains the finest contemporary art work I have ever seen...

The office in which I lived and worked was immediately beneath this tower and this, believe it or not, is me on the right standing on the roof, with my girlfriend of the time on the left...

When the street was evicted, 5 people held out at the top of this tower for 5 days in the freezing fucking cold. They welded themsleves in.

And the best bit, is that when the hundreds of police moved in they took out the power from the entire street and were amazed to find it made no difference. All the electric was being bootlegged off lamposts and generated with generators.

They hit DEAD!!! and the sound system, which was located with the 5 people at the top of the tower, burst into action playing The Prodigys - Break & Enter (which would have made it onto this list had Lian Howlett not been a cunt about using it for the soundtrack to a video about what happenned)

It was a pure Rock 'N' Roll moment - the like of which The Arctic Monkeys will never know, no matter how many times they dress up as the Wizzard Of Oz...

What's more Rachael Whiteread, Tracey Emin and Damian Hurst can all kiss the ass of the people who concieved and built it!! (Incase you're wondering I had nothing to do with it)

This photo is of the street being evicted. Frankly, it looks fucking great and it was completely fucking great!!

And here are some vids to give you a feel for the chaos of the place. Few lived there for more than a few months without going slightly crazy - that is slightly MORE crazy than they already were...

The first vid's by Coldcut and accompanies the track Panoptician from the LP More Beats and Pieces








Anyway. At one point the K Foundation with all their KLF money were loooking around for ideas and one of these ideas was to put a couple of tanks at each end of the street.

A meeting was arranged between our people and Jimmy and Bill, but it didn't work out.

Shortly afterwards The KLF burnt the million and it sent the hardcore campaigners into spasms 'We could have had that money for this, that or this!!!' they hollered

I just thought burning cash was brilliant...

So I bought The White Room on cassette from the Notting Hill General Goods Exchange for 3 or 4 quid and spent the next 6 months listening to it in a White Room on the other side of town..


2. The KLF - Chill Out

After The White Room in London, I moved to The Lake District tout fucking suite. I mean, I had no idea what I was doing in London after Claremont was gone and I needed countryside. I went to live at Brathay Hall.

Brathay Hall is a development training centre where management and misbehaving kids are sent to float rafts across Lake Windermere in order to build teamwork...

I worked there as a domestic assistant (cleaning,washing up) for 6 months and it's there that my infatuation with Chill Out started.

I now know this LP back to front. I've tried copying it several times, have tracked down almost all the original samples, and each section reminds me of someone different from a different place at a different time..

It's the best ambient LP barring none...



3. The Aphex Twin - Richard D James

All you need to know about this one is in my review of said LP which can be found in the second half of this blog


4. Vai - Sex & Religion

This one taught me all about what can be done with a basic formula - About how it can be stretched and pulled..
The vocals are stunning and I love the guitar work and production.
I fell in proper love for the first time to this LP too..


5. St Etienne - So Tough

This album is London. Everything about it is London. I love the tracks, the samples inbetween the tracks. It's London, London, London.

Currently listening : So Tough By Saint Etienne Release date: By 09 March, 1993

10:46 - 9 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

	MollyCoddle	Write a book (again)!!!! Write about your life!!! Posted by MollyCoddle on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 at 18:23 [Remove] [Reply to this]

	The Paul Giovanni Music Blog...	But that nuclear book was my life... It continually flashed back to these situatrions to compare them with the nuclear world i was then in... And no cunt gave a shit... Posted by The Paul Giovanni Music Blog... on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 at 18:29 [Remove] [Reply to this]

	MollyCoddle	:(( I give a shit...I started looking at some of the 48 Days stuff last night actually - and I'm going to download the chapters from your other site later. Posted by MollyCoddle on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 at 18:46 [Remove] [Reply to this]

	The Paul Giovanni Music Blog...	Well good for you. That makes about 10 readers in total...:+) I know I do, but I can't complain, I enjoyed the whole game, made £2500 off the nuclear powers and am now enjoying my life in a yuppie, gatted flat in London... I wake up and do whatever i damn well please and that's worth a huge ammount... The world works in mysterious ways... pg) Posted by The Paul Giovanni Music Blog... on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 at 19:03 [Remove] [Reply to this]

	The Paul Giovanni Music Blog...	AND i'M STILL AROUNDABOUT 10 YEARS OFF MY WRITTEN PEAK.... Life is beautiful whichever way you look at it.... )))))pg Posted by The Paul Giovanni Music Blog... on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 at 19:42 [Remove] [Reply to this]

	Enter Glam Band	Richard D James is a great album. I saw Aphex Twin live before he got all glitchy and he was great then too. It was Moby, Orbital, Aphex Twin, and Young American Primitive. I never saw Richard D James the whole show. He had some guy dancing on stage and for the longest time I thought Richard just pressed play and danced to his own music until I read that he had a dancer. Apparently Mr. Aphex was playing the music off to the side somewhere. Posted by Enter Glam Band on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 at 20:42 [Remove] [Reply to this]

	The Paul Giovanni Music Blog...	Yeah, he has all sorts of tricks to keep the crowd occupied.. I like his early, middle and late stuff and I can't wait to hear the archive he has kicking about that's never been released - that is if i'm still alive when it surfaces.. Posted by The Paul Giovanni Music Blog... on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 at 22:33 [Remove] [Reply to this]

	Emily	Agreed about the KLF. That is still one of my favorites to this day. Those guys were just fucking crazy and fantastic. They colored a lot of my early 1990s memories, especially The White Room and Justified and Ancient with Miss Tammy Wynette. Posted by Emily on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 at 20:59 [Remove] [Reply to this]

The Paul Giovanni Music Blog...

Yep. It's double high quality pop music.. Posted by The Paul Giovanni Music Blog... on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 at 22:34 [Remove] [Reply to this]