Urban Hat€monger ?

.......On Last FM and tell the story of how you got into these bands.

1. The Fall
First heard of The Fall back in 1992 when there was this CD sized magazine called Volume where each edition of it had a free compilation CD with picture of a tropical fish on the cover.
Volume 4 of this magazine featured The Fall's 'Arid Al's Dream'.
I thought it was a heap of shit.
Throughout the 90s I would read interviews and tour reports about fights, bust ups and Mark E Smith generally being a prick and was amused by them (My favourite being he got so drunk at an award ceremony he made Badly Drawn Boy drive him home thinking he was a taxi driver and left his false teeth in the back of his car).
When Live At The Witch Trials was given a deluxe reissue I picked it up and was blown away by it. Later when I saw all their Peel Sessions were to be released I picked that up too and over the course of those 6 CDs became a full on Fall obsessive.


2. The Clash
I've talked about my Dad finding a record box with loads of punk singles in it when I was 8 years old before. In this box was the White Riot 7 inch, which I played to death.
Sometime around 1990/91 when I was getting bored of metal I decided to give punk a try and bought The Story Of The Clash. That kept me going for several years until I picked up The Clash On Broadway on one of my trips to London several years later.
After that it was time to pick up their albums proper. Most of my plays of them recently come from live recordings & bootlegs I've picked up over the years. I very rarely listen to their studio stuff now.


3. The Rolling Stones
I remember watching some music documentary on the BBC when I was very young and they showed the Stones playing Get Off My Cloud and I just remember staring at the TV thinking it was the coolest song ever.
My mother had a few of their singles and I remember playing those on our record player often. After a false start buying a really awful live album (Flashpoint) I decided to give them a secong chance by buying Hot Rocks around the same time as I picked up The Clash album.Hearing that was when a little lightbulb when off in my head. I picked up Sticky Fingers, Exile, Let It Bleed, Aftermath, but I think it was when I picked up Beggars Banquet I was finally sold.


4. David Bowie
Been aware of Bowie for as long as I can remember. I can remember watching kids TV on a Saturday morning and seeing the Ashes To Ashes video and even then being aware of who he was. I remember him doing Under Pressure with Queen and my mum really liking that song. I can also remember when Let's Dance, China Girl & Modern Love came out and watching the videos to them on TV. I think the first Bowie record I bought was the one he did with Jagger for Live Aid.
I stopped listening to him for a few years while I did my metal thing and he did his Tin Machine thing. After that I started checking out his 70s stuff. I think the first album I bought was Diamond Dogs, but it was Hunky Dory that really clicked with me and made me want to listen to all his stuff.
Heroes, Low & Lodger I left till last (Apart from Pin Ups & Young Americans) because I knew they weren't 'Rock' albums. Heroes I loved straight away, Low & Lodger took a little more time for me to get into but I got there in the end.


5. Hawkwind
I remember the first time I ever heard Hawkwind, It was on the radio late one Friday and I was waiting for them to play Iron Maiden's 1988 Castle Donington set from the previous weekend. They played a 10 minute live rendition of Master Of The Universe. It sounded like shit, like some badly recorded bootleg with this repetitive droning noise that seemed to go on forever. This put me off Hawkwind for years.
I know I must have heard Silver Machine at some point after that on some compilation because it's on every rock compilation album released ever, but I don't think it made me any more interested. Neither did the fact that Motorhead were one of my favourite bands and the Lemmy connection with them still didn't make me budge.
Sometime around the late 90s when I was discovering an interest in Krautrock and some 70s Prog I found a 3CD Hawkwind compilation going very cheaply. I picked that up and over the next few weeks found myself liking more and more songs on it. I decided to start buying some of their albums, as it just so happens they had just released the 25 anniversary edition of Space Ritual just a few weeks earlier so I picked that up.
Ironically it was the blistering version of Master Of The Universe on this that I really loved the most. After playing Space Ritual to death I picked up their other 70s stuff. I still don't really listen to anything they did after the early 80s but maybe in time I will.

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