One of those bands was Simple Minds. New Gold Dream established them as unique, not that before that they released albums like Sons and Fascinations that DJs actually could play in a club even if this was a guitar/drums/bass/synth band. Sometimes I wonder why there are no more similar bands today in the dance scene — loops and plug-ins rule but it’s getting so boring to listen to the same kinds of material re-hashed over and over.

Sparkle in the Rain was the follow-up to New Gold Dream. Simple Minds had an more edgy, rock-based sound.

What influenced me was:

• The guitar player, Charlie Burchill, didn’t need to play fast blues lines, instead interesting melodic lines,  as well as using the guitar as a pad-like instrument with different delayed settings. I think 30% of my guitar playing was picked up from this person when I really analyze my normal playing habit — and a reason why I have a hard time doing solos at blues jams as I just don’t like to sound like everyone else.
• The whole band played as a whole, no need for virtuosos. The complexity arose from the various settings.
• The keyboard arrangements were very much like early day Satie or Debussy arrangements, quite cool for a rock band.
• And in general, they sounded like Simple Minds. In this age of getting gigabytes of audio in one hour from Internet, that’s important.

Most of us have been in high school rock bands. I was in a trio. We played all kinds of rock music. Anyway, for me one of my guitar heroes of late seventies was Pat Travers. He’s still good today.

I heard his first album. Got this one later. There are many reasons why this record influenced my guitar playing style and guitar rock compositions.

To start with, they dared to use other tempos than 4/4, such as the title track Heat In the Street.

Secondly, this is a record where you could hear two extremely good guitar players, Pat Travers and Pat Thrall, really work well together.

Thirdly, even if this is somewhat more complex blues-rock, it is approachable.

Fourthly, there’s tons of energy in all the takes of each song.

And the guitar sounds are excellent. Not to speak of creative solos. The drum and bass section is super-tight.

Unfortunately this configuration didn’t last long. Pat Travers also did the commercial mistake of making a couple of records with more keyboards than the fans expected, I did not mind those but then again I think he lost some of his momentum.

Initiation was actually my first Todd Rundgren album  – I hitchhiked with a group visiting schools 100 miles away from my middle school, sneaked out from the bus and purchased this album, the whole reason for taking the trip.

Anyway, some think Something/Anything is his master piece, or A Wizard A True Star. The reason I like Todd is that the beginning is just so psychedelic, crazy guitar solos and bubbling synths and when it gets the most crazy, you get a Gilbert&Sullivan style song like “An Elpee’s Worth of Toons”.

This album also had the beginnings of Utopia, such as “Don’t you Ever Learn” that then paved way for Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, Another Live and similar three-keyboard configurations.

No 1 Lowest Common Denominator is a homage to Electric Ladyland, it took me ages to figure that one out. If there’s one question I would ask Todd is: What is the solo sound in “The Spark of Life”, a super-distorted guitar or a kazoo?

Todd Rundgren is a musician’s musician.

Taking back a step, my early childhood memories is to inherit a huge pile of 45 rpms from my father and his brother. I used to listen to those rock singles daily, that included many Beatles singles with songs from Revolver and other albums. Later, in my childhood naive approach to music, I started to test the vinyl, placed it on top of a hot stove, bent the singles and otherwise destroyed them. Oh well. That’s what five-year-old kids do.

Anyway, there are many reasons why Revolver for me is one of the penultimate Beatles records:

• Fourteen songs, each different, the song styles covers a wide spectrum from happy singalong songs like Yellow Submarine to extreme psychedelic studio experiments (Tomorrow Never Knows). To pull off such an album with so many styles is just plain amazing.
• This is for me the album where Beatles were transformed from a stage band to a recording studio set of musicians. Not only that, they pioneered the whole approach of pushing the limits inside the studio.
• Anyone who wants to become some kind of songwriter should carefully study Beatles songs. This is a good album for such purpose. If you know these songs and understand the harmonic and melodic structures, you have a head start concerning writing songs — not to speak you might even make some good living doing it  if you studied Beatles and know how they crafted songs.

It’s one of my goals in this life to perform the whole set of Revolver songs, I have done parts. Solo it is easier, in a jam or otherwise ad hoc band setup the other artists need to know the songs. Some are easy, some have very complex arrangements.

First I was thinking about New Musik’s album Warp. This one came out about 1982. It was the third and last album by New Musik. This was a band, led by the producer Tony Mansfield (he has a famous actress mother) that was pushing all kinds of boundaries with synthesizer based productions in the age when there was no MIDI or polyphonic synths.

There were many reasons this album hit me. To start with, the bare minimum drums, mostly no hihats, simple Simmons electronic drum kit with a strong kick and snare, gave it a very hard attack sound. Especially as the drums and most of the rest were hyper-compressed, one of the tricks Tony Mansfield likes to use in the studio.

Secondly the combination of electronic instruments and acoustic guitars was a good one.

Not to speak of the songs, they were strong. It shows that if you have strong melodies and chord structures, you could arrange just anything around it to make the final sound of the album. As a homage this album has Beatles’ All You Need is Love, as well as one of their own compositions with the same name (!).

Tony Mansfield later produced most of Aha’s debut album and has some other work but sadly he’s mostly working in the background. Some of this production techniques are so fun to listen to.

This album is hard to find, the best is a Japanese import that you could find at Amazon. Last.fm has it as streamed album. I would also recommend the earlier two New Musik albums.