The Fun Lovin’ Criminal, author, TV personality and BBC 6 Music radio DJ picks six essential slabs of classic wax from his diverse music collection…
Miles Davis – Birth Of The Cool 1957
“This record kind of defines how jazz is now. Before that, it was all big band, Louis Armstrong kind of stuff, and he charges in with this really great mixture of inspiration and improvisation.”
801 – 801 Live 1976
“They were nailing some hard emotions and difficult time signatures, and they only did three gigs. I love a lot of Brian Eno’s stuff, but on 801… they were hammering that shit! There were some cats in that band! It got me into the idea that if you’re going to play in a band, you have to play with people who are better than you.”
Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin 1969
“That whole record is taking the blues and the spiritual cacophony of what was going on at the time and mixing it together the best any band has ever done… The shit John Paul Jones was doing was monster, Bonham was one of the best drummers ever and Robert Plant could sing the panties off a nun!”
Chic – C’est Chic 1978
“Nile Rodgers is a monster guitar player. He knows his jazz, his blues chops… I hang out with Nile and try to pull his coat on everything he does. You could be like Steve Vai and dick around in a weird minor key, but I didn’t listen to Steve Vai on the radio when I was a kid. I wanted to write songs that’d get on the radio.”
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced 1967
“I had to jump out of aeroplanes in the Marines and so did Jimi – that’s where the similarities end! The way he wrote songs, they were amazing, with bizarre, complex rhythms. The mystery is even more now – you watch YouTube and still don’t know what the fuck he was doing!”
Beastie Boys – Licensed To Ill 1986
“When I was a kid, I was drawn to hip-hop, but this made a whole load of sense to me. Kerry King, Rick Rubin doing all his horrible distorted stuff… it was a perfect snapshot of the evolution of popular music that made me realise whatever I wanted to do musically, I didn’t have any borders to cross, ’cos everything was wide open.”
