Meanwhile, on Twitter...

• 10:30 Following the Die Hard revelation, I've never watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off either. I tried once, but found everyone in it to be hateful. #
• 13:48 "You know, I could rent you out as a decoy for duck hunters." #
• 14:27 The more you know. www.burbia.com/the-meaning-of-going-to-church #
• 14:35 It's 16 years since Kurt Cobain topped himself? I still don't get how it was a surprise tho. He wrote the song "I Hate Myself & Want To Die" #
• 15:06 I remember some friends being SHOCKED. They were into grunge tho, while I was l
  istening to the Wonderstuff, Carter, Ned's Atomic Dustbin etc #
• 15:12 I see the Digital Economy Bill's been snuck through Parliament. Meaning potential speed blocks, site blocking, account suspension etc #
• 20:45 Finally got around to reading the rest of Phonogram. Brilliant. Now I get it. "Heavy fucking Stereo" indeen. #
• 20:48 RIP Malcolm McLaren. An odious little swine, but I guess that was the point. Without him... #

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The Love Album

I was thinking about the death of Malcolm McClaren earlier and how he was so influential shaping an entire generation, while slipping on my vintage Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine T-shirt and also wound up slipping 1992 - The Love Album onto my ipod as well. Maybe it was to get the whole theme going, so I could pretend I was a 16 year old indie kid again, or something.

And then started thinking about music. I've always had a love affair with music. Not a crazed stalker, obsessive vinyl collector type relationship, but a comfortable, regular love affair with occasional kinky sex.

And listening to 1992 again, it made me realize that it was one of those albums that helped shape my relationship with pop music, back when I was still flailing around trying to work out just who I was and what music called to me.

There's probably a few of them. Rubber Soul by The Beatles was probably the first album I ever owned, and you can do a whole lot worse when your musical tastes are being formulated. But 1992 was probably the first album that I came to myself as a teenager, during that time when personalities and tastes are just reaching the boil, and acted as a huge stepping stone towards other artists.

Oh, maybe it wasn't the greatest album ever. In fact, it's definitely not, in any way, shape, or form, despite Carter's tongue-in-cheek claim at the time that they were the most important band in the world. It's all machine gun drum machines, politics and puns, ropey, snarling vocals that struggle with sensitivity before the kitchen sink crashes in and vague guitars.

But without it I never would have got into Ian Dury. I'd have never been introduced to The Jam, Billy Bragg, The Smiths, The Clash, The Sex Pistols. I probably wouldn't have listened to The Pet Shop Boys beyond West End Girls. I wouldn't have leapfrogged into a whole indie scene, Britpop, punk, electronica - I'd have been stuck listening to light rock. Hell, I wouldn't have even listened to The Man from La Mancha.

So, what was it for you? What was the pretty album that turned your head and seduced you? Maybe not the most striking one at the party, but the one who took you home and did strange and exciting things to you in the dark?

Confession time.

[Poll #1549112]