Cover Versions
Selecting your favourite vinyl isn’t as easy as it sounds
By Paul Richards
If you’re sick and tired of your timeline filling up with other people’s favourite album covers, spare a thought for those of us having to choose them. It’s a seemingly innocuous means to fill the locked-down days. Someone on Facebook challenges you to name your favourite albums. Each day, you offer up an illustration of the album artwork. There are different versions, but the one I’m doing is 20 albums over 20 days, no explanations, no order, and I have to nominate someone else each day.
That’s where the fun stops. For a start, how do you interpret the rules? Does it have to be an album you actually own on vinyl? Is this a game for record-collectors only? I have a hundred or so LPs, in a 1970s wooden record cabinet that belonged to my father. I don’t have Peel-style rooms with floor-to-ceiling shelves of vinyl, worse luck.
I grew up in the heyday of vinyl 45s and 33s. Then, on the eve of going to university, I ‘lent’ a stack of my records to a couple of friends. I taped my favourites onto TDK cassettes and took a tape carry-case to my new life as an intellectual. I kept about 20 or 30 of my absolute favourites at home (The Who, Small Faces, The Beatles, The Jam, The Smiths). Of course, I never saw the ‘lent’ records again (I’m looking at you, Anne and Caroline).
Many of the albums I would like to have put into the top 20 (Led Zep II, for example) are no longer mine. Others, for example the best albums of the Britpop era (Sleeper, Pulp, Blur, Oasis, Echobelly, Menswear) were bought as CDs, and the later stuff (Kaiser Chiefs, Kasabian, Dandy Warhols) is simply downloads without corporeal form. There are plenty of great albums I rate highly, but I don’t actually own them on vinyl. That’s the first dilemma.
Then there is the question of what qualifies. People are watching. This is Facebook. It’s all about a carefully curated set of choices which create an overall impression of musical cool. I don’t know about you, but I’m immediately judging people I’ve known for decades who, it transpires, like Marillion or Phil Collins. Simultaneously, there are people playing the game whose musical taste is brilliant, by which I mean similar to mine. I feel they’ve got it covered when they include The Housemartins’ London 0 Hull 4 or Café Bleu by Style Council or Quadrophenia by The Who, so I don’t need to.
My top 20 ended up as blend of sixties classics, soul, jazz, new wave, and punk. There’s nothing dishonest about these selections. But if the game allowed explanations, I would have included all kinds of records which mean something to be, but which devoid of context make me look like a dork.
For example, one of the first records I bought was by Darts, a 1970s do-wop revival act, bordering on ‘novelty’, with a couple of minor hits including a cover of the Ad Libs’ Boy From New York City. Their album reminds me of listening to it with my best friend in 1978 who is now dead. Without the explanation, it appears that I judge Darts to be more significant artists than Art Blakey or David Bowie (which believe me, they were not). Music is subjective.
Or the soundtrack to My Fair Lady. This belonged to my parents, and I played it on a dansette because I liked the tunes when I was 8 or 9. Or my father’s jazz records: Sarah Vaughan Live in Japan was his favourite, and so it could be in my Top 20 because it reminds of him. Or Rattlesnakes by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. It reminds me of those far-off days in a black polo neck, suede jacket, with a copy of Simone de Beauvoir poking up from the pocket. But I played it endlessly on tape not vinyl.
Then there is the thorny issue of ‘Best ofs…’, singles collections and compilations. I’ve included a couple because the album itself has a memory, or served as a gateway to new tracks. That’s why my last choice was Made In Britain Rhythm and Blues a compilation of British 1960s ‘R&B’ bands issued by Decca in 1983. I was 15 at the time, and it let me into the world of Small Faces, Them, The Pretty Things, The Graham Bond Organisation, Davy Jones and the King Bees, and Rod ‘the Mod’ Stewart. But are compilations cheating? They ae usually issued by the record company to cash in, rather than because of the artists’ creative impulses. That doesn’t stop The Beatles Oldies But Goldies or the Buzzcocks’ Singles Going Steady being fantastic.
The fact is that most great ‘records’ were sold as 45 singles. That’s true of most sixties pop, all of Northern Soul, the greatest punk singles, and ‘hit factory’ labels such as Stax or Tamla Motown. My favourite song of all time is Tracks of My Tears by Smoky Robinson and the Miracles, but under the rules of the game this doesn’t feature anywhere in my 20 top albums. The same goes for the Zombies’ She’s Not There, or Aretha ‘s version of Night Time (Is the Right Time), or Dusty’s Spooky, or hundreds of others that would make it the desert island.
So album must mean album, not your favourite music of all time. You can see why this is torture. It’s about turning the deeply personal over to the public for their gaze and judgement, like publishing your teenage diaries. It risks offence (sorry Classical, Folk and Hip Hop), embarrassment and public shame. There’s a danger of betrayal too, with a treasured album not making the cut (wot no Different Class?) Music is never just music. It is the stored memory of a teenage party, a road trip, a holiday, a lover, the living, the dead, and our own lost selves. It may have sold a million copies, but it belongs to us only, no one else. It makes us cry a river, or smile, or look good on the dancefloor. Music is the window to our soul.
Here are my 20 albums over 20 days, no order, and explanation.
Day 1 Oldies but Goldies The Beatles (1966)
Day 2 My Generation The Who (1965)
Day 3 Dusty in Memphis Dusty Springfield (1968)
Day 4 The Queen is Dead The Smiths (1986)
Day 5 Moseley Shoals Ocean Colour Scene (1996)
Day 6 In The Studio The Special AKA (1984)
Day 7 Searching for the New Soul Rebels Dexy’s Midnight Runners (1980)
Day 8 Revolver the Beatles (1966)
Day 9 Armed Forces Elvis Costello and the Attractions (1978)
Day 10 Blue Train by John Coltrane (1958)
Day 11 Hits of Marvin Gaye Marvin Gaye (1972)
Day 12 The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society The Kinks (1968)
Day 13 Small Faces Live at the BBC Small Faces (2012)
Day 14 Stone Roses Stone Roses (1989)
Day 15 The Specials the Specials (1979)
Day 16 The Clash The Clash (1977)
Day 17 Help the Beatles (1965)
Day 18 Snap! The Jam (1983)
Day 19 Talking with the Taxman About Poetry Billy Bragg (1986)
Day 20 Made In Britain Rhythm and Blues Various Artists (1983)
Paul Richards is a writer-for-hire.
