At Sixteen

[Amor de Cosmos]

What were you listening to suspended between childhood and somewhere alleged to be “grown-up.”

Mine covered June 1964 (when I left school) to June 1965. I lived most of my life that year in the art department of Stevenage College. The rest mostly in my room, alone or with friends. No lady in my life at the beginning of the year (Oh but did I wish... !) The first arrived at the end, and we proceeded to break each others hearts in double quick time. Then there were the parties and Mondays “dahn the Mecca.” Different music for different occasions, grouped accordingly but with some over-lap of course.

Dance till you drop:

I Can't Help Myself — The Four Tops

Mockingbird — Inez and Charlie Foxx

The Midnight Hour — Wilson Pickett




1:00am Project to finish. Can’t stop now:

Al Capone — Prince Buster

Give Him a Great Big Kiss — The Shangri-Las

The Sins of a Family — P.F. Sloan

Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere — The Who




“He’s asleep on the floor... Anyone got a ciggie?”

Bob Dylan's Dream — Bob Dylan

Running From Home — Bert Jansch

Mona — Bo Diddley

Jackson Blues — Sonny Boy Williamson

[G-Man]

16... I was brought to South Africa against my wishes. There I was told that my English wasn't good enough to continue my schooling, so I had to find work. I became a waiter (silver service), working split shifts, instead of making friends, or learning how to surf. I hated not being in direct touch with German football (I'd get the results on Deutsche Welle radio, and subscribed to kicker). And I picked up learning about wines as a hobby, tutored by my boss, who was something of a collector and would get great wines to sample.

I also bought an idiotic amount of LPs. The contemporary albums I associate in particular with being 16...

Iron Maiden - The Number Of The Beast
J Geils Band - Freeze-Frame (especially, of course, Centrefold)
Dexys Midnight Runners Too-Rye-Ay
Donald Fagen - The Nightfly
Grover Washington Jr - Come Morning
Yazoo - Upstairs at Eric's
Marvin Gaye - Midnight Love

[San Bernardhinault]

Look at the cool kids, huh?

At 16 I had some pretty horrific taste in music. It was mid-80s guitar stuff, bad rock. On the less horrendous side, it was stuff like ZZ Top's Afterburner and Robert Cray's Strong Persuader. On the much more risible side it was late-era Deep Purple, Whitesnake, Michael Schenker. And, specially for Gangster Octopus, Dire Straits. You'll be amazed to learn that I smelled bad, had terrible hair, and didn't have a girlfriend...

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

At 16 it was all early Human League, Gang of Four, Kraftwerk, Joy Division and Brian Eno. In my head, I'm still there.

[Hot Pepsi]

1988-89.

Lots of Beatles, Simon & Garfunkle, U2, Cream, Midnight Oil, REM, and I was just getting into They Might Be Giants, which changed my life in lots of ways. That was the time when I was losing interest in comics and getting more into music. Most of the music I listened to then was via the radio, so it was either one of the local classic rock stations - so lots of Doors and Zeppelin as well as a lot of garbage (not Garbage, but shit like REO Speedwagon and Foreigner) and PSU's college station. In those days, the signal was very week off campus and there was only one university station - NPR and classical during the day - and then regular college student programming at night, but only played "college" music late at night. During prime time there was a blues show, a reggae show, etc. So that was illuminating. On the weekends it was all folk music (still is).

[Felicity, I guess so]

1979, forced to board at an RAF Germany school for 6 months when dad was posted home: clash, pistols, jam, buzzcocks, sham but also TRB (I spread Anti Nazi League stickers n badges around the 5th year such that several had awkward encounters with older German locals...) and I bought Quadrophenia, which I played obsessively. If that’s all too cool for school , the 4- person dorm also exposed me to lizzy, cheap trick, quo, rainbow, Uriah heep, eagles, war of the worlds etc all of which I’m nostalgically able to enjoy now . And a regret I have is that I couldn’t come out as liking chic, ABBA, hot choc etc at the discos we attended. I remember watching the girls dance to ABBA and thinking “they’re having a great time, I’ve got to beg the DJ to play one song later”

[johnr]

Well, I listened to it all year, and at 16 I attended - in terms of musical excellence (combining over the two hours an exemplary display of jazz- and classical-influenced rock alongside a burgeoning pop sensibility), as a homage to their past as well as a statement that they were moving on, and as the most astonishing and committed vocalist/percussionist/drumming performance there's been (in a small field, natch) - the best gig there's ever been. Ever. Genesis, live at the Lyceum, 1980.

Now that's cooooollllll...

[Lang Spoon]

I bought a Carter USM single in 92. Fucking disaster, more acne than sense.

[jwdd27]

1988. It would tough to argue this was a vintage year.

I was a big Prince fan at this stage, he was pretty much at his creative peak, with Lovesexy indicating a gentle downslope had begun, but Sign O The Times, Parade, and Purple Rain had been released in the previous 4 years, plus the Black Album if you were a really cool kid (I wasn't). So there was quite a lot to go on.
I was probably still playing quite a bit of U2, although Rattle and Hum went a fair way to putting me off them.

Out of the UK's 50 best selling albums of 1988, the only albums I can remember buying are
Introducing the Hardline According to... Terence Trent D'Arby,
and Brdge of Spies by T'Pau. Oh yes.

Older stuff I liked: James Brown and Atlantic Soul, bought compilations of both.

Also borrowed my sister's Smiths records (she'd moved on to darker shades of Goth), and my parents' Beach Boys, Rolling Stones and The Who. It was a curiously Beatles-free household, to the extent that I'm still slowly discovering them.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I bought Quadrophenia, which I played obsessively.

Out of interest, was that the soundtrack, or the original release? And did it matter?

[Hot Pepsi]

1988. It would tough to argue this was a vintage year.

I was a big Prince fan at this stage, he was pretty much at his creative peak, with Lovesexy indicating a gentle downslope had begun, but Sign O The Times, Parade, and Purple Rain had been released in the previous 4 years, plus the Black Album if you were a really cool kid (I wasn't). So there was quite a lot to go on.
I was probably still playing quite a bit of U2, although Rattle and Hum went a fair way to putting me off them.

Out of the UK's 50 best selling albums of 1988, the only albums I can remember buying are
Introducing the Hardline According to... Terence Trent D'Arby,
and Brdge of Spies by T'Pau. Oh yes.

Older stuff I liked: James Brown and Atlantic Soul, bought compilations of both.

Also borrowed my sister's Smiths records (she'd moved on to darker shades of Goth), and my parents' Beach Boys, Rolling Stones and The Who. It was a curiously Beatles-free household, to the extent that I'm still slowly discovering them.

The crapness was beneficial because it compelled us to seek out older stuff and stuff not on the radio.

[imp]

I was 16 when ABC's The Lexicon of Love came out. That, along with the Associates and A Certain Ratio, were the aural backdrop to serial romantic failure.

I listened to The Lexicon of Love on Friday for the first time in years and years. What a truly all-time, pop-conquering giant of an album. But I've had Poison Arrow and Tears Are Not Enough going through my head non-fucking-stop for five days now. This always happens when I listen to an old classic. Like the refrains have been lying dormant for decades in your head, then come back with a vengeance to reproach you for all the years you neglected them. Woke up at four this morning and gave up trying to get back to sleep at five after "Excuses/Have their uses/But now they're all used up/All used up" plagued me for the thousandth time.

[Aitch]

When I was 16 I worked behind the bar in a Northern Soul club two nights a week. At home it was mainly Yes, Jeff Beck and Roy Harper. I felt mildly offended when some of the Northern Soul boys told me they liked Tubular Bells.

[Sits]

1980: first six months, O'levels and a paper round; second six months a full time job as a junior bank clerk.

So I had money for the first time. Ł4.63 a week for the paper round - just the right amount for an LP. Then Ł2,600 per year at the bank.

I was still in my Blondie/Kate Bush phase, so lots of those. With my new found wealth I bought a lot of albums I thought I should and listened to once or twice, but the ones I listened to a lot:

No More Heroes
Peter Gabriel 3 ("Melt")
Duke
Selling England By The Pound
Vienna
Oxygene
Equinoxe
The Man Machine
Christopher Cross (the least likely album by the least likely artist that I would like, but I really did)

Plus my brother's Hawkwind, Motörhead, Rainbow and Status Quo.

[Jah Womble]

I was just about weaning myself off the charts - despite many of my favourite acts placing on it - and making the transition to punk and new wave. At sixteen, I attended my first gigs: SLF, TRB, Buzzcocks...

And how right I was. Although it took me a few more years to appreciate R&B, funk and disco.

[wittoner]

July 1973 - July 1974. I was reading the NME and listening to Peel but the records I actually bought were fairly unadventurous. Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road " , The Beatles White Album & 10cc's "Sheet Music" were particular favourites. My copy of Elton's double album still has the stains from when my brother threw up on it on New Year's Eve 1973. (15 year olds and whisky..never a good combination)

My brothers were a bit more cutting edge so I was familiar with "Aladdin Sane" and "Pin-ups" as well. My brother told me recently that he'd just sold his copy of the US release of "The Man Who Sold The World" in the cartoon "Oh By Jingo!" sleeve for a lot more than the three quid he paid for it on Northwich market around this time.

[gjw100]

May 1976. About to begin the process of winging my O Levels via intensive revision after a preceding 2 years of dicking around and general inertia. Bespectacled, long-haired and shy but fairly popular with my peers as I was a decent footballer and had a ready wit and way with words that made them laugh. I had never had a girlfriend although, did I but know it, I was only 2 years away from meeting the girl who would become (and who remains) my wife.

Something of a musical snob with an aversion to anything in the popular mainstream and slightly perturbed by this new punk thing that I was beginning to read about in Sounds/NME which sounded like it was the complete antithesis of everything that I loved in music. At that point I was still listening to Prog (Van Der Graaf Generator, Gentle Giant, Caravan, PFM, Greenslade), but having been led there by Soft Machine, I was also busy exploring the exciting new world of jazz-rock (as we unashamedly called it then) and buying up the back catalogues of Return To Forever, Mahavishnu, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report and, of course, ‘Bitches Brew’.

Too lazy and fond of my weekend to acquire a Saturday job, my album buying was fuelled by pocket money and the joint discovery that not only did I have a talent for studying racing form but that there was a bookmakers up the road from my school who were prepared to take lunchtime bets from under-age punters despite the obvious clue that our school uniforms provided. My lunch money went most days on a succession of Patents and Yankees that netted me a steady if unspectacular little income. Thank you Pegasus Turf Accountants of Southborough.

My main musical memory of that year is buying the new Jon Anderson album Olias Of Sunhillow (yes, I know) on the day that the Great Drought of 76 finally broke. I had walked down to the town and back, a round trip of 4 miles or so to Whites of Tonbridge, as the rainclouds gathered ominously and just made it back with my prize before the downpour started. I sat in my bedroom listening to Jon's warblings with the windows wide-open and taking in the most intense fresh rain on dry earth smell that I think I have ever experienced.

[Giggler]

I'm a firm believer that you discover the music which shapes your life in year of birth plus 16.

1997, and the Labour landslide and Bury winning the Second Division having been promoted from the third twelve months previously. Working for Ł1.80 an hour in a small mini-mart while waiting to start sixth form and buying Ł2 singles in the week of release from Our Price: Look At Yourself by David McAlmont, Love Is the Law by the Seahorses (and its beautiful b-side Dreamer), Bentley's Gonna Sort You Out by Bentley Rhythm Ace, Brushed by Paul Weller, Sun Hits the Sky by Supergrass, One To Another by the Charlatans, and the albums that they came from too. It was the summer that did it for my attention towards Oasis with the release of Be Here Now but when I turned my mind towards my dad's copies of Abbey Road and A Trick of the Tail by Genesis which remain favourites. Getting drunk for less than a tenner with my mates in the Jolly Waggoners in Bury, one of the three pubs we had to walk past on the way to school and whose staff asked us how we did on GCSE results night.

But mostly it's about Bury, which is why the second book is going to be called Things Can Only Get Better: Bury's mid-90s rise under Stan Ternent.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

1988. It would tough to argue this was a vintage year.

I was a big Prince fan at this stage, he was pretty much at his creative peak, with Lovesexy indicating a gentle downslope had begun, but Sign O The Times, Parade, and Purple Rain had been released in the previous 4 years, plus the Black Album if you were a really cool kid (I wasn't). So there was quite a lot to go on.
I was probably still playing quite a bit of U2, although Rattle and Hum went a fair way to putting me off them.

Out of the UK's 50 best selling albums of 1988, the only albums I can remember buying are
Introducing the Hardline According to... Terence Trent D'Arby,
and Brdge of Spies by T'Pau. Oh yes.

Older stuff I liked: James Brown and Atlantic Soul, bought compilations of both.

Also borrowed my sister's Smiths records (she'd moved on to darker shades of Goth), and my parents' Beach Boys, Rolling Stones and The Who. It was a curiously Beatles-free household, to the extent that I'm still slowly discovering them.

Like yourself and Reed, I'm from the Class of '88 (and my birthday is very early January so years and my ages line up nicely for this sort of thing).

Predominantly bought and/or attended very untrendy (then and now) white rock - The Alarm and The Cult in particular - while tapping a foot in a guilty pleasure style to dance tracks like Beat Dis, and pop like Joe le Taxi, on Saturday morning repeats of the Roxy on ITV.

Went to Los Angeles for two months in the summer, discovered alternative radio in the shape of KROQ, and opened up doors into American and British bands I'd never heard before (and many I'd never hear again). Def Con One by Pop Will Eat Itself was daytime playlist material, which was mind blowing having grown up on Radio 1. Also gained kudos back home by seeing The Alarm (opening for Bob Dylan) and Stiff Little Fingers (in what was then a rare reunion show). My brother (the host) had Now and Zen by Robert Plant on constant rotation when the radio wasn't on, and I still go back to a couple of tracks from it (and I'm not a Zep fan by any stretch) as they remind me of that time.

Came home in the autumn and the big deal in our social group was the long awaited release of Fishermans Blues by the Waterboys, initially something of a disappointment after expecting a continuation of the 'big music', but a grower and an album I still go back to (and saw them do in full a few years ago, one of countless times I've seen them over the years).

But basically, even if we didn't know it at the time, waiting for the Stone Roses to break through and teach us rock lads that dancing was acceptable.

I'd say 18/1990 was the more formative time for me musically. [Edit - that wasn't meant as a reply to Giggler, but it is definitely the case for me and I suspect a lot of people].

[Satchmo Distel]

September 1982-September 1983: A compilation by UB40 ('The Singles Album'), John Lennon's 'Shaved Fish', The Beatles 'Revolver', then in summer 1983, 'Shipbuilding' by Robert Wyatt and 'Pills and Soap', Elvis Costello.

Then 3 months into my 18th year (Dec 1983) I heard The Smiths on Peel's Festive 50 and I turned into a new phase of young angst-ridden adult.

[elguapo4]

1980, I am the youngest of four with two older brothers, one 5 1/2 years older,the other by two years, at that age I am just getting away from the elder bros collection (Lizzy,Rainbow,Meatloaf) and into the punk and ska of the younger's interest, within a year I was ploughing my own furrow with 80s electro pop (Depeche Mode,OMD,ABC) I still love bits of all three as well as appreciating 60s music more than I did at the time

[Bermuda Iron]

"I'm a firm believer that you discover the music which shapes your life in year of birth plus 16."

Agreed. 1985 saw me attempting to start A Levels, whilst at the same time applying to join the military, and ultimately being successful. For reasons lost a little over time (probably attempting to be different), I moved on (in both hairstyle and 'fashion') from ska to indie, especially, and predictably perhaps, The Smiths and The Fall, both of which remain vital parts of my music pleasure. At the time I was therefore mixing Specials and Trojan collections with Hatful of Hollow and Perverted by Language. Moved from suedehead in boots to bequiffed shambler in charity store clothes.

[Felicity, I guess so]

The original Quadrophenia it was, I don’t think the film was out til a year or so later

[Lang Spoon]

What was vitally important aged 15-18 before skedaddle away to the Biggish City, was Sleeves record shop. They had almost everything for a bowl cut eejit 91-94. In a town whose retail had emphysema even then. I know there’s everything online now (but not really). it seems a shame to have even more limits on where teenage misfits can gather in the great real-time, doubtless just nostalgia but.

[Jah Womble]

The original Quadrophenia it was, I don’t think the film was out til a year or so later

Quadrophenia the movie didn't emerge until 1979, some six years after the original Who album.