Half a century of music

50 years of tunes.

A list sort of thing.

We all love lists.

And here is mine.  My 50 albums, one per year, for the past half century.

It'll be good to see what the next 50 years bring... 

1965	John Coltrane	A Love Supreme
1966	Bob Dylan	Blonde on Blonde
1967	John Coltrane	Expression
1968	Bob Dylan	John Wesley Harding
1969	Captain Beefheart	Trout Mask Replica
1970	Van der Graaf Generator	H to He, Who Am The Only One
1971	Miles Davis	Jack Johnson
1972	Stevie Wonder	Talking Book
1973	Bruce Springsteen	Greetings From Asbury Park NJ
1974	Randy Newman	Good Old Boys
1975	Bruce Springsteen	Born to Run
1976	Stevie Wonder	Songs in the Key of Life
1977	Wire	Pink Flag
1978	Captain Beefheart	Shiny Beast
1979	Michael Jackson	Off the Wall
1980	Young Marble Giants	Colossal Youth
1981	The Fall	Slates
1982	The Fall	Hex Enduction Hour
1983	The Fall	Perverted by Language
1984	The Minutemen	Double Nickels on the Dime
1985	New Order	Low Life
1986	New Order	Brotherhood
1987	Big Black	Songs About Fucking
1988	Sonic Youth	Daydream Nation
1989	De La Soul	3ft High & Rising
1990	The Sundays	Reading Writing & Arithmetic
1991	My Bloody Valentine	Loveless
1992	Neil Young	Harvest Moon
1993	American Music Club	Mercury
1994	Portishead	Dummy
1995	Muslimgauze	Salaam Alekum, Bastard
1996	The Blue Nile	Peace at Last
1997	Spiritualized	Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating  In Space
1998	Madonna	Ray of Light
1999	The Flaming Lips	The Soft Bulletin
2000	Laura Cantrell	Not the Tremblin Kind
2001	Sparklehorse	It's A Wonderful Life
2002	Wilco	Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
2003	Paddy McAloon	I Trawl the Megahertz
2004	Wilco	A Ghost Is Born
2005	Camille	Le Fil
2006	Bob Dylan	Modern Times
2007	Shellac	Excellent Italian Greyhound
2008	Coldplay	Viva La Vida
2009	Bob Dylan	Christmas In the Heart
2010	The National	High Violet
2011	Nils Frahm	Felt
2012	Nils Frahm	Screws
2013	Courtney Barnett	A Sea of Split Peas
2014	John Luther Adams	Become Ocean

"Totally Shuffled" extract-Stevie Wonder

Because I've just heard a Stevie Wonder track on BBC Radio 6 thought it would be fitting to post this...

extracted from "Totally Shuffled -A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"

December 9^th

Stevie Wonder- If You Really Love Me-At the Close of A Century

Stevie Wonder has seemingly been around forever, but he’s only 62 years old. Not 63 until May 2013. If you are in your early twenties, then 62 seems a long way off, but as I write this he’s only eleven years older than I am. Actually he’ll always be 11 years older than me, but that’s beside the point. Bob Dylan is 71, and there’s nearly as much of an age gap between him and Wonder as there is between me and Wonder. Mick Jagger is 69, Paul McCartney is 70, Smokey Robinson is 72. All those who I’d consider as contemporaries of Wonder-in the matter of age- are considerably older than he is. It’s staggering.   

I can’t remember a time when Stevie Wonder wasn’t having hit records and being a massive star. “Fingertips”, his debut single reached number 1 on the Billboard charts when he was 13 years old and I was barely 18 months. I could map significant events in my life alongside what Stevie Wonder was doing at the time.  Starting at school: “A Place in the Sun”. Primary school years:  “For Once in My Life”, “My Cherie Amour”. Starting secondary school: “Superstition”.  O levels and leaving school; “Sir Duke”. College years:  “Sir Duke”, “Happy Birthday”.  Getting married:  “My Eyes Don’t Cry”.  Birth of my children: “For Your Love”.   

It’s got to be said that hit-wise it’s got a bit quiet for Stevie in the past couple of decades, but he’s been there or thereabouts literally all of my life i.e. he is the embodiment of “when I was knee-high to a grasshopper” and “before I could walk”. Not only do I feel as if he’s always been around, but it also seems like I’ve grown up with him. Spiritually, Steveland Hardaway Morris is the black, blind, American genius musician brother I never had.

This came home to me really when I saw him play at Glastonbury in 2010. I’d obviously known all of his hits and more-I had the classic albums and seen countless videos, but nothing could have prepared me for what was, without a word of a lie, one of the greatest live performances that I have ever seen. I remembered reading a review of one of his shows in the NME at the height of post-punk fervour and being surprised at how effusive the whole piece was. At the time, Stevie Wonder didn’t seem especially relevant and the writer who wrote the review was much more associated with the more obscure offerings from the hippest labels at the time.  For some reason this review had remained something that I was been vaguely aware of and I’d always thought that if I had the chance to see Wonder then I should do. The fact that he was headlining Glastonbury was purely co-incidental but, as it turned out, very fortuitous.

I expected a bit of a Las Vegas type turn from Wonder and although I was quite looking forward to it, nothing at all could have prepared me for what I saw. There was hit after hit. The set list was fantastic-from “My Eyes Don’t Cry” opening it to the brilliant conclusion of “Happy Birthday”. I have never been at a gig where on so many occasions I’ve ended up with a lump in my throat, a tear in my eye and the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. It was a total hour and a half of sheer brilliance. 

From that moment on I’d crawl over broken glass to see Stevie Wonder play live once again. 

Get/read/see "Totally Shuffled" here

Kindle e book 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Music-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA

Paperback

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-iPod-/dp/149495687X