250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 49 Long Ryders - Native Sons

 

In my first year at university it was much more common for people to come up to university accommodation with a record player than a television set. We had our heads screwed on in 1985. There was a communal set where you could go and catch I Claudius reruns or Citizen Kane if it was showing on one of the terrestrial channels. 

There was a mature student in our block who had a colour set where you could go and watch a football match. But from memory football wasn't a particular priority at university. There were more interesting thngs. More important things.Like being young,

 I got into an important relationship in my second term with a beautiful Chinese Malaysian girl. She had a Singaporean friend with a colour TV on the ground floor on campus. It was the World Cup in Mexico in the Summer term,. The Hand of God, Mundial. 

Min and I snuggled down  under the duvet and watched games. But we both far more interested in the snuggling than the outcome of the match. People forget. When you settle down to the 9 to 5 and start yo chip away at your mortgage and the binge watch and the ninety minutes takes over and somehow stretches out to actually mean more than The Bronte Sisters and Scorsese and Astral Weeks. 

What means more than these things. A legalised war on a field of grass. Not to me it doesn't.I can watch a match of footbal and enjoy it as much as the next person but essentially these days for me mostly it boils down to jumping up and down when your team scores. .  .

Back in my home block one of the girls upstairs had a record player. She lent me Hoodoo Gurus, Stoneage Roses and Long Riders Native Sons. Both debut albums, both slightly retro tecords  in different ways but entres. Signposts to all kinds if great music . Nuggets, CBGBs, Australian pioneers from ; Buffalo Springsteen, Byrds and Gram from Native Sons.

I saw Long Ryders in my first year. They were supported by That Petrol Emotion who had come from the ashes of The Undertones and seemed a natural broadening of that palate. Both band seemed like  primer courses. Get out of the venue get a bus into town. Go to a record shop. Find out where they came from . Form a band or write a book. Listening to Native Sons now it thinks Punk is a great thing. It thinks C & W is a great thing. It thinks the British Invasion is a great thing. It's forty years old and it's a pretty great thing too. Form that band. Write that book.