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Richard Watt

The 60at60 index

  • Yes, there’s a playlistNovember 6, 2022
    Took me a while, but now there’s a playlist. Four tracks missing – one I replaced with a live version Read more
  • And finally…October 19, 2022
    What a long, strange trip it’s been.
  • 60. 3rd Secret, 3rd Secret, 2022October 16, 2022
    Spoiler alert – it’s on this list on merit
  • 59. Stranger Heads Prevail, Thank You Scientist, 2016October 9, 2022
    Some things have come full circle:
  • 58. Folklore, Big Big Train, 2016October 2, 2022
    We do things differently in Canada.
  • 57. Falling Satellites, Frost*, 2016September 25, 2022
    I blame Dire Straits.
  • 56. Hand. Cannot. Erase., Steven Wilson, 2015September 18, 2022
    But the modern world has its distractions
  • 55. Takk…, Sigur Rós, 2005September 11, 2022
    I don’t know what the last album I bought on vinyl was (I mean the last album before the revival Read more
  • 54. In Absentia, Porcupine Tree, 2002September 4, 2022
    I think it’s fair to say that the magazine market was in an uncertain phase
  • 53. Prophesy, Nitin Sawhney, 2001August 28, 2022
    I saw some spectacular things in those years
  • 52. Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, 2000August 21, 2022
    I looked out of the windscreen to discover I was approaching the outskirts of Leeds.
  • 51. Deserter’s Songs, Mercury Rev, 1998August 14, 2022
    I am a member, therefore, of the ‘forum generation’.
  • 50. OK Computer, Radiohead, 1997August 7, 2022
    In the late autumn of 1975, I heard a song on the radio which changed my life. 
  • 49. Milk and Kisses, Cocteau Twins, 1996July 31, 2022
    I’m not kidding myself; I’m barely qualified to talk about childbirth
  • 48. (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, Oasis, 1995July 24, 2022
    And everyone sang along.
  • 47. To The Moon, Capercaillie, 1995July 17, 2022
    I’m not sure what we learned, but we had fun.
  • 46. Stanley Road, Paul Weller, 1995July 10, 2022
    I sometimes struggle to clearly identify with the 1990s; it doesn’t have a ‘feel’ for me the way the 1970s and 1980s did
  • 45. Concert Program, Penguin Café Orchestra, 1996July 3, 2022
    I was apparently now the kind of person who went to concerts in a suit and tie
  • 44. Flyer, Nanci Griffith, 1994June 26, 2022
    What never changed along this journey from sparse folk to over-produced pop was her ability to tell a story.
  • 43. A Night in San Francisco, Van Morrison, 1994June 19, 2022
    I’m old enough now that I enjoy making my younger colleagues groan with my tales of how it was in the old days
  • 42. Achtung Baby, U2, 1991June 12, 2022
    In one other respect, CDs were essential to our situation in the early 1990s, in that they took up way less space.
  • 41. Flood, They Might Be Giants, 1990June 5, 2022
    Listening to new music for the first time in the car while hammering along a major trunk road in between convoys of heavy goods vehicles off the ferry is, perhaps, not the perfect listening environment
  • 40. The Seeds of Love, Tears for Fears, 1989May 29, 2022
    So, less than half an hour after setting off, I pulled in to Toddington services in search of music.
  • 39. Kite, Kirsty MacColl, 1989May 22, 2022
    I don’t remember how Kite came in to my life, but I can’t imagine having ever lived without it. 
  • 38. New York, Lou Reed, 1989May 15, 2022
    It’s an album for which the adjective ‘coruscating’ might have been coined.
  • 37. North and South, Gerry Rafferty, 1988May 8, 2022
    I spent hours painstakingly working with Letraset to make up a set of slides I would show to prospective employers
  • 36. Spike, Elvis Costello, 1987May 1, 2022
    They probably had day jobs in banks and accountancy firms, and they wrote and sang songs like the ones we would have written, if we had a tenth of their talent.
  • 35. Graceland, Paul Simon, 1986April 24, 2022
    So, you might be asking yourself, what is this album doing on this list? 
  • 34. Steve McQueen, Prefab Sprout, 1985April 17, 2022
    I mean, how can you not love an album which starts with a passionate cry of “Antiques!”?
  • 33. Hatful of Hollow, The Smiths, 1984April 10, 2022
    I’d have a few more of those over the years, haven’t been right yet, and hope I never will be.
  • 32. Eden, Everything But The Girl, 1984April 3, 2022
    It might, after all, have been forty minutes of industrial noise terror or worse
  • 31. The Top, The Cure, 1984March 27, 2022
    The Beast was not a quiet, contemplative place to listen to the subtleties of an album
  • 30. Grace Under Pressure, Rush, 1984March 20, 2022
    Rush also always challenged the listener by moving on to the next thing before they got bored of the last one
  • 29. Body and Soul, Joe Jackson, 1984March 13, 2022
    It’s a time capsule inside a time capsule, this album, and it predisposes me to love it
  • 28. High Land, Hard Rain, Aztec Camera, 1983March 6, 2022
    There were posters everywhere advertising the ‘Sound of Young Scotland’, and although it took me a while to come round, I did eventually get there
  • 27. Bad for Good, Jim Steinman, 1981February 27, 2022
    It’s not that he can’t sing at all – he hits all the notes, and he’s full of enthusiasm
  • 26. Ace of Spades, Motorhead, 1980February 20, 2022
    it was actually a kind of muddy yellow, not far off the colour of Caramac chocolate, but a little less appealing. 
  • 25. Remain in Light, Talking Heads, 1980February 13, 2022
    I do remember being hypnotised by it; humming and singing along in a semi-trance to songs I barely understood.
  • 24. Wheels of Steel, Saxon, 1980February 6, 2022
    If you guessed rapid-fire riffing and thunderous drumming, well done. 
  • 23. The Wall, Pink Floyd, 1979January 30, 2022
    I couldn’t have been that exercised about a Pink Floyd album, could I?
  • 22. Trust I (Préfabriqués), Trust, 1979January 23, 2022
    I just looked up the words.  My goodness, they were angry.
  • 21. Cut, The Slits, 1979January 16, 2022
    An essential, empowering album, and I wish there were more like it.
  • 20. Replicas, Tubeway Army, 1979January 9, 2022
    It might have been written intentionally for a sixteen-year-old science fiction reader suffering from all the usual teenage insecurities and uncertainties. 
  • 19. Sound-on-Sound, Bill Nelson’s Red Noise, 1979January 2, 2022
    From all this time away, I’d like to tip my hat to the marketing team who promoted this album, because you must have done a staggeringly good job.
  • 18. Strangers in the Night, UFO, 1979December 26, 2021
    It really is that good, and I’m going to try to explain why.
  • 17. Video-Flashback, Eberhard Schoener, 1978December 19, 2021
    I owned several albums which skipped in predictable places, and hearing songs from them on CD later in life just felt wrong.
  • 16. Dire Straits, Dire Straits, 1978December 12, 2021
    This is the first album on the list which is still, several months after I drew it up, highlighted as Read more
  • 15. Some Enchanted Evening, Blue Öyster Cult, 1978December 5, 2021
    1978 was a strange place.  I’ve already alluded to the fact that I was listening to absolutely everything available, but Read more
  • 14. Parallel Lines, Blondie, 1978November 28, 2021
    Therefore, the name of Aberdeen’s first (or not; I’m really not clear on that) fanzine was: In Reverse Order. 
  • 13. A Tonic for the Troops, The Boomtown Rats, 1978November 21, 2021
    If you’re paying particularly close attention, you’re probably wondering where all the albums released in 1977 are.  It’s a fair Read more
  • 12. Hejira, Joni Mitchell, 1976November 14, 2021
    We met the school library a little while back; there was another library which played a much more significant part Read more
  • 11. Frampton Comes Alive!, Peter Frampton, 1976November 7, 2021
    Firstly, it was cheap.  Yes, go ahead and insert Aberdonian jokes here.
  • 10. Venus And Mars, Wings, 1975October 31, 2021
    No, I have no idea why anyone had a record with them at camp.
  • 9. Physical Graffiti, Led Zeppelin, 1975October 24, 2021
    Biodegradable plastic bags.  Not where you thought I’d be going with this, was it? The plastic record bag was ubiquitous Read more
  • 8. In A Glass House, Gentle Giant, 1973October 17, 2021
    I’m going to try to stay away from talking about genre too much in these – I have plenty of Read more
  • 7. Tubular Bells, Mike Oldfield, 1973October 10, 2021
    When I write, I write about memory.  I don’t know why that is, particularly – I only identified it myself Read more
  • 6. Ege Bamyası, Can, 1972October 3, 2021
    One more album from 1972, and while it has a lot in common with the others, it’s not something I Read more
  • 5. Foxtrot, Genesis, 1972September 26, 2021
    …singing the ending with all the emotional investment of a man reading out his shopping list.
  • 4. Close to the Edge, Yes, 1972September 19, 2021
    The way I remember it, there were three main Progressive Rock (capitals intended; indeed, obligatory) bands in the first year Read more
  • 3. Trilogy, Emerson, Lake and Palmer – 1972September 12, 2021
    The first album on this list which I owned when it was still relatively recent, and the first on this Read more
  • 2. Hunky Dory, David Bowie – 1971September 5, 2021
    Hunky Dory came out when I was nine years old.  I was certainly aware of Bowie – I’d been captivated Read more
  • 1. Revolver, The Beatles – 1966August 29, 2021
    I have already written exhaustively on this blog about Revolver, so for a long time it wasn’t on the list, Read more
  • 60 at 60August 22, 2021
    60 at 60 – what to expect There will be sixty albums at the end of this process, and – Read more
  • 60 at 60August 22, 2021
    Sixty albums to mark sixty years Twenty years ago (well, nineteen as I write this), I had the idea to Read more
  • 60 at 60 – a new writing project!August 21, 2021
    It’s about time I started writing again, don’t you think? Soberingly, it’s almost twenty years since I started the ’40 Read more
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Richard Watt

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