10 Favourite Albums

Since I know no-one can possibly care about my Top 10 favourite albums (yeah, like I've looked at all ten of any of yours) I'll get this over and done with in one go. Ten fave albums, in no particular order. You may care to play Top 10 Albums Bingo with this list. If more than 2 of these albums are on your list, or even in your collection, I'll be amazed.

Well Well Said The Rocking Chair - Dean Friedman

   It's hard to explain to kids today how much impact a comic-book loving humorous singer-songwriter can have on an impressionable teenager, but from his first single Ariel I was hooked. It's hardly as if he was singing about my life - though picturing himself reading the Howard The Duck Treasury Edition on his album cover let me know we had a bit in common - but I loved the way he did it. Where some people see cheesiness, especially in his classic Lucky Stars, I saw humour, and an artist who was having fun playing with pop music, telling stories and breaking the mould. It was from this album that I learned the term S&M (no coincidence that, on his edition of Radio 1 Star Special in 1979 he chose Tom Lehrer's Smut), and heard for the first time the authentic sounds of a New York Deli (in The Deli Song, subtitled Corned Beef On Wry - do you see what he did there). I can still be found, in my car, knacking my voice trying to sing along to the bombastic closing track Don't you Ever Dare. And I couldn't give a good goddamn.

The Higher They Climb The Harder They Fall - David Cassidy

   No one said this list was going to be cool. But anyone who thinks David Cassidy is the least cool part has never listened to this album. This concept album. Yes, you heard me. As David's pop star career went into a nosedive, he made this album about a pop star whose career has gone into a nosedive. The two minute drama in the middle, Massacre On Park Bench, is tragi comedy genius and shows that, though his mental health and self esteem were to decline a lot in the years that followed, at this point he had a good deal of perspective on who he was and what his painful career amounted to. I can recommend his autobiography Come On Get Happy if you want the backstory on the unhappy life of a teen idol, for which this album provides a perfect soundtrack. 

The Rutles - The Rutles

   No Beatles in my list, just The Rutles. I bought this album on CD (in America in 1991, when it was as yet unavailable in the UK) long before I bought any Beatles CDs (in fact I only ever got round to getting Sgt Pepper). Neil Innes' songs sum up the Beatles' career, in many ways better than The Beatles. And they stand alone as singalong classics. When Oasis came along, I compared them unfavourably to The Rutles, and I think I still do. (For the record, The Rutles' movie has dated badly, but the music has got better with age).

Widescreen - Rupert Holmes

   I'm proud to say I was a Rupert Holmes fan long before he started appearing on the Gilbert Gottfried podcasts and it turned out he's a fantastically witty and intelligent guy with an encyclopaedic knowledge of movies. On this movie-themed album he throws every idea, every orchestral twist, and probably some actual kitchen sinks into a set of songs that can be misconstrued as unintentionally funny - Letters That Cross In The Mail and Terminal having some gloriously cheesy storylines with terrible puns - until you realise he knows just how cheesy he's being, and he's loving it. I made a movie of Our National Pastime in my first year at art college, and I'm so glad I did. When everybody else starts becoming Rupert Holmes fans, I'll be able to point at that movie and prove I was there before all of you!

Flood - They Might Be Giants

   Straying into territory some might call acceptable, even respectable, here's the album where I discovered the geeks' geeks, TMBG. They can do no wrong, and here's an hour of them doing not so.

Cosmic Thing - B52s

   Oh, we're being far too popular again aren't we? But what can I say? There's not a bad track on this album, and if geeks are allowed to dance, then let them dance to The Deadbeat Club.

Tonic For The Troops - Boomtown Rats

   The Boomtown Rats became unfashionable very quickly, and were soon outranked by the cooler spokesmen-for-a-generation like Paul Weller and Elvis Costello, and their fellow Dubliners U2. But for a brief time they were the smartest, and most successful, new wave act in town, and hits like Like Clockwork and Rat Trap knocked spots off all comers. Bob was also the best value for money pop star in a TV interview since The Beatles - fact. The tracks on this album, though occasionally musically narrow in range, are nostalgic fun and still listenable. Ouch, damned with faint praise. But brilliant.

Day At The Races - Queen

    It's hard to choose a favourite Queen album, cos they're far too popular and everybody else has heard of them, and you hear them all the time on the radio, and when that Freddie biopic finally comes out you won't be able to move for them. But for the duration of 7 albums (which, because it was the 70s, came out in less than 6 years) they were the greatest band on the planet, and can take responsibility for the musical part of my musical education. If there was anything done on a pop record that Queen didn't have a stab at doing better than everyone else, I don't know what. I remember Elvis Costello mocking them on Radio 1's Round Table saying "Bryan May is to the guitar what Roy Castle is to the trumpet." Somehow he made that sound like a bad thing.

The Stranger - Billy Joel

    Once again, I'm not sure why I felt middle aged Jewish singer songwriters from New York were saying so much about my life, but this record shares shelf space with the likes of Stephen Bishop, Janis Ian, and of course Dean Friedman. And I like it just the way it is. Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, isn't it? Jumpers for goalposts... (This is the record that pretty well tells the world how old you are. In 40 years time, possession of Ed Sheeran and Adele will do much the same thing).

Life - The Cardigans

    They subsequently slagged their own album off as being an early work that sounded like old sixties songs. Which just goes to show you why you should never ask bands about their earlier, best, work. The best pop songs to come out of Sweden since Abba. And, since I've never owned an Abba album (he lies, he has Abba Gold, but the classic albums were only ever on loan from his sister), The Cardigans are in the chart, and always getting a replay. Rise and Shine everyone, I've finished my list, you may relax.

Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing for The Beano, Marvel, Doctor Who et al, runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries and art centres - email for details, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. View the promo video here.