I was looking through some archival stuff and found this school folder divider from my last year at High School in Mt Gambier. My mother kept it as she didn't like to throw things aways (much like me).
It's a list I made - probably while a teacher was talking at us about something important - of all the precious records I had been able to aquire. I devoured books and magazines writing on rock music and followed all kinds of leads. The Rolling Stones always talked about their influences so I looked into that. The London Howlin Wolf and Muddy Waters albums had great covers and seemed extra special with all those limey players on it. (Though even I, as a hick kid, was embarassed to hear them telling Howlin Wolf how to play his own songs properly). Some were bargain bin buys , some I have totally forgotten. The next year I was totally fired up by the successive Sex Pistols singles which I had to order from a local shop which mainly sold sewing machines. I had lost interest in football at the end of 1975 after being caught buying a load of booze (On a country league football trip) while under age in a St Kilda pub (The George) and driven home in shame.
It was probably my second visit to Melbourne and I had been to Adelaide perhaps three or four times. In September 1977 I drove my FC Holden from Mt Gambier to Townsville and back again, an epic journey by myself. All my friends were living in Adelaide and telling me on their return visits about seeing radio Birdman. I was working in a timber mill in Mount Gambier. I moved to Adelaide for a couple of years in 1978.
We lived in a three bedroom house in Werona st Mt Gambier. My older brothers Phillip and Steve and sister Marianne had all left home and it was me, my parents Noel and Philomena and my younger siblings Sean and Julie. Until I got my own room we all had to listen to music through a small portable record player in the lounge room, with the tv on as well. In 1975, my mother had gotten her drivers licence and bought a brand new Honda Civic. Our first ever car. There was no phone in the house but we didn't know you had to have one.
I never experienced live music very much, being still under 18 and also living in a regional town that just didn't have any. I would still listen to most of this music. It was probably my first attempt to get into Bob Dylan and I appreciate a lot of his music but would not choose to listen to it as much as I would say, Steely Dan.
I would buy some records and try to find something good in them but eventually trade them. I tried Judas Priest (Rocka Rolla) Montrose (Paper Money) and maybe even Love (Da Capo). I tried hard to like Barclay James Harvest as records were expensive but nothing ever jumped out of that impressively stiff gatefold. My friend Steve Miller had a great record collection but his older brother Marty had an incredible stacked shelf of stuff too. He was in Adelaide studying for an endless Batchelor Of Arts. He had the longest hair in town and was a totally cool character. Their father Charlie drove a Renault sports car (which Marty and his mates borrowed and duly left cigarette burns in the upholstery of) and favoured dixie jazz. They had a great hi fi system which included a reel to reel tape player. Marty would buy albums and tape them.
Amongst our group of stoner mates we all drove around in cars listening to tapes of the Blue Oyster Cult, Joe Walsh, Led Zeppelin, The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd and JJ Cale. The reggae records were a new thing from about 1975. Natty Dread and Burning Spears Man In the Hills. Steve Miller was getting Dr Feelgood and Eddie And The Hot Rods, Graham Parker and the Rumour and Southside Johnny And The Asbury Dukes albums as they came out (though we all shamed him for buying Born To Run as it was obviously so commercial...)
I still have most of the Steve Miller Bands catalogue but have more Jefferson Starship/Airplane than Hot Tuna. The Grateful Dead have gotten better for me but like many, I timidly dipped my toe in those waters through the acoustic albums like American Beauty. Blues For Allah is much more my taste now, as well as the Live Dead version of Dark Star.
This 1993 Movie Dazed And Confused perfectly captured the pop culture of that era from an American perspective.
