My 1001 Albums Journey

When I was about 15 I started collecting records, spurred on by my mate Lewis and my LP hoarding uncle. My dad, however, thought records were crap and belonged in the past where they'd been left. That's obviously changed seeing as he now has a Garrard and about 7 Kallax cubes. But there was a point right around the start when he saw the albums I was listening to and must have realised that I was just as impressionable as he was at 15... and it came to my 16th, (I think! Maybe I was younger...) where he gave me two albums, AM by the Arctic Monkeys and For Your Pleasure. Those who know my dad know he is quiet, outspoken, hard-working, but if you truly find something to share and talk about, you would be surprisingly endeared. I remember talking to dad about AM, why my uncle refused to listen to it, and I truly got the impression my dad thought it to be one of the great British Rock albums - like it truly defines a place and an attitude. He didn't exactly say that, mind you, the conversation was much more curt and pointed... but his quiet conviction made me believe that's how he really felt. I was really pleased to get the Arctic Monkeys. I fucking hated For Your Pleasure. I'm sure I told my dad I liked it, but I really wasn't for the SQUEEK SQUUUANK SQUORK that Brian Eno felt like he had to apply to the most basic harmonica, and Bryan Ferry's warbling, death bird cry. It's not an easy album apart from maybe a few songs, but I think how truly different it was made me want to understand it at some point, whether that was then or now. Now, I truly love it. When I was younger, I would tell myself I didn't like Rap, I didn't like Country, this, that... it's so easy to define things as being out of your wheelhouse if you're convinced they truly are bad. If I'd given For Your Pleasure even five minutes on Spotify when I was 15, I probably wouldn't be listening to Roxy now, but instead I had the LP and had to sit through every second of The Bogus Man. Fucking hell, I'm paying good money to hopefully see them play The Bogus Man in Glasgow tonight. These two LPs represent great change. Both bands created a mammoth of an album, and both bands had to change because it was the peak of what they could achieve in that form. For each group, a magnum opus, and in reality they had to fall apart and reform otherwise they would fail to reach the same great heights. To the same extent, I have changed and learned to appreciate more deeply things that sound bad... to the extent they become beautiful. I wouldn't have that if it weren't for my dad, and probably this album too. I love both, they are dear to my heart.