In honor of the first WXNA Record Fair on Sunday, March 23 at Eastside Bowl, March 17-23, 2025 is Crate Digger’s Week on WXNA! Today’s installment is a three-sided serving of great memories and great records!
Brian Eno – Another Green World
Anne McCue – Songs On The Wire
When I was about 15 years old, I would catch the train into Sydney with a great friend and go to all the secondhand book and record shops in the city. We’d also go to the several indie record stores and check out all the imports from England by bands like The Jam and XTC. It was an exciting time! I discovered a lot of poetry books and found a lot of cheap secondhand records, too. Our hearts and ears were open to new discoveries.
One of these was a 10-inch Benny Goodman Sextet record from the late 40s which featured the song, “He’s Funny That Way.” In those days I bought books and records based on the way they made me feel when I held them in my hands. The guy at the checkout couldn’t believe I’d want this record because I was wearing my semi-punk-new-wave gear and was so young. But I knew it was going to be great, and it was!
Later, when I moved to Melbourne I shared a house with a record nerd and he introduced me to Another Green World by Brian Eno. When I heard the guitar solo on “St. Elmo’s Fire” I couldn’t believe it. In fact, I didn’t even know it was a guitar. I had already been playing guitar for a few years by then and had even dabbled in experimentalism – banging my loose strings on the pick-up and recording from one cassette player to another cassette player. (Eventually, I got a 4 track cassette recorder!) When he told me it was Robert Fripp and it was indeed a guitar, I was committed to playing electric lead guitar forever.
Through a series of unfortunate incidents, I had to leave my entire record collection in Australia and don’t have access to it anymore. I’ll always have a strong and heartbreaking yearning for those records! So when I find a record like Another Green World in a secondhand shop over here, I am beyond
thrilled. This is one of my favorite records of all time! Eno is from another world as was his friend, David Bowie.
Music has got me through all the worst times. Hearing this record takes me back to those many nights sitting by the fire and just listening to albums with kindred spirits – it’s a lost art of communication. Just sitting and listening to records with friends. xo
The Clash – The Clash (U.S. Version)
Tommy Womack – Tommy Womack’s Happiness Hour
This copy of the American version of the first Clash album has been in my collection since 1979. It was a revelation to put it mildly. I was an angry disaffected 16-year-old senior in high school, and one of the squarest of pegs. When that album fired up on my turntable and “Clash City Rockers” roared out, I heard for the first time a fellow who was as angry as me. If Elvis Presley had contracted rabies, he would have been Joe Strummer.
As a professional musician of more than forty years, there are few notes I’ve ever played that can’t be traced back to this album. It’s still a major part of my life. I even front a Clash cover band called Tommy Gun and let me tell you, it’s a strenuous assignment to try and be Joe Strummer for fifty or sixty minutes. The least you say is that this record is that it’s a rock and roll classic. The most you could say? The words haven’t been invented yet.
The Who – It’s Hard
popGeezer – The Morning Show
My last semester in College — Fall of 1982 — was the time of The Who. I saw them twice in one weekend, and their then current album, It’s Hard, was my closest friend during that lonely Fall.
Watch this space for more Crate Digger’s stories all week long!
