Pete Bentham - Top
Ten Albums
This isn’t necessarily my all-time top ten albums as that
probably changes every week and would be impossible to do. So I’ve picked ten
albums that I have loved or been influenced by at some stage of my life. Don’t
expect anything obscure or clever. Bill Shankly said that “Football is a simple
game made complicated by idiots”. I think the same about rock & roll.
The Rolling Stones – Out of our Heads (1965)
This is their third album and the one where they really
started to write their own songs, although it is still mostly rhythm and blues
covers. For me it’s just at the right point in their development after they
were a gigging R&B band and before they became a big stadium band. They
were a great rock and roll band that wrote brilliant pop singles like Satisfaction. Also, they looked great at
this stage. I picked this record but I could have picked something by The Who,
The Kinks or the Small Faces all of whom I was obsessed with when I was a kid
and mostly because they looked like bands are supposed to look – like a gang. I
hated the way bands looked later on with long hair and double denim, like
binmen or something. Then when punk happened I thought ‘Great, bands look like
bands again’.
Recommended songs: The
Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man, The Last Time, Hitch Hike.
Motown Chartbusters
Vol 3 (1969)
I grew up in Widnes near Liverpool. The north west has a big tradition of soul music as you
know from Northern Soul/ Wigan Casino etc. Everybody had Motown, Atlantic and
Stax records in their houses and this one is the best of a series of twelve
albums that were released between 1967 and 1982. It contains classics like This Old Heart of Mine, Heard It Through the
Grapevine, Get Ready and Roadrunner
by my favourite Motown artist Junior
Walker & the All Stars. I always think that a great song is a great song
whatever type of music or band it is and I think I got that from growing up
listening to Motown. This is real pop music and I’ve always tried to make the
Dinner Ladies a pop band in the best sense. Plus Motown production is so simple
and raw. It’s nearly all just bass and tambourine.
Recommended songs: Roadrunner – Junior Walker,
For Once In My Life - Stevie Wonder, You're All I Need To Get By - Marvin Gaye
& Tammi Terrell
David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders
from Mars (1972)
This is probably in most people of a certain age’s list. In
the early Seventies at the time of the prog rock nonsense, there was really
only Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy and Roxy Music with any of the style and flash that
you want from a band. I think a lot of great rock & roll song writing is
about feeling like an outsider. I think it’s why most of the great rock &
roll music has been made by young people because you have that feeling of
alienation and not fitting in. I reckon that’s why Bowie’s Ziggy alien
character appealed to a lot of kids like myself. But some of us still have that feeling in
middle age!
Recommended songs: Five Years, Soul Love, Suffragette City.
Dr Feelgood –
Stupidity (1976)
The godfathers of UK punk. It’s hard to describe how fucking
unspeakable awful music was for a few years before punk and how big an impact
punk made on young music fans. Some people
who weren’t there make ridiculous statements like the Sex Pistols
were fake or were a boy band. The cultural impact of the Pistols was like a
bomb going off. But the bomb had been planted a few years before by the
Feelgoods. They had got onto the fact that rock & roll had lost its way and
needed to get back to basics about three years before anyone else. Their
influence was early raw rhythm and blues records and they had the short hair,
suits, skinny ties and played fast short songs. They influenced loads of the
early punk bands on both sides of the Atlantic. They also had Wilko Johnson,
the world’s only rhythm guitar hero and the reason I’m in a band and play a
black Telecaster.
Recommended songs: Roxette, Going Back Home, She Does It
Right.
Modern Lovers – Jonathan Richman & the
Modern Lovers (1976)
This was recorded in 1971/72 but wasn’t released until 1976
because it wasn’t considered fit for human consumption in the era of stadium
rock and concept albums, when in fact it was just way ahead of its time.
Jonathan Richman is probably the single biggest influence on my song writing
because he fearlessly writes about anything he wants, even songs about shopping
centres and government offices. He gives you a feeling of freedom to write
about what you want and made me realise its ok to write about lorry drivers,
cats and dogs, astronauts and stuff. This
line up also featured Jerry Harrison who later joined Talking Heads and David
Robinson who co-founded the Cars Possibly my favourite album of all time.
Recommended songs: Roadrunner, Pablo Picasso,
She Cracked.
My Aim Is True –
Elvis Costello (1977)
There are hundreds of records that I could have picked from
this era but I have to pick something from my favourite label Stiff Records,
who also had Ian Dury & the Blockheads, The Damned, Lena Lovich, Madness
and loads of other great mavericks. What I love about Stiff was that it wasn’t
trying to be supercool, it was trying to be an out and out pop label like
Motown and it succeeded. They got Ian Dury, a thirty year old disabled bloke to
number one. That could never happen now.
They took on freaks like Elvis and made them stars. And isn’t that an important
part of what punk is about -making ugly beautiful? That personal empowerment
thing that people get from being a punk. Elvis is the master songwriter and
this is one of the few albums you can leave on and every song is brilliant.
Recommended songs: All of them.
The Undertones – The
Undertones (1979)
There were two camps at this time; the political….Clash,
Pistols etc and the pop…Buzzcocks, Undertones etc. I had a foot in both camps
but I don’t know if it was the Motown thing again but I think I was more into
the pop side. The Undertones were the band I most identified with as they came
from a backwater like I did and so had none of the fashion and flash of a lot
of the cool bands of the time. Songwriter John O’Neill seemed to have absorbed
a lot of the same Sixties influences as myself and you can tell by his songs
that he’d really learnt how to be a classic songwriter. I don’t think anybody
has ever surpassed the first two Undertones albums in terms of pop punk. They
are like the Beatles of the punk generation for me.
Recommended songs: Get Over You, Male Model,
Billy’s Third
The Specials – The
Specials (1979)
I love Two Tone as much as love punk. The Specials are the
perfect band in every way. They manage to combine being one of the best
political bands ever with being one of the best dance bands ever. Plus they
have a great image and practise what they preach in terms of the DIY ethic,
running their own label and supporting the anti-fascist movement. With white and black kids joining forces and
influences to create a new kind of ska, they have to be one of the most
important bands of all time. They are my blueprint for the Dinner Ladies...sing
about things you believe in but make it entertaining. It’s a much better way of
getting your message across.
Recommended songs: Do The Dog, It Doesn’t Make
It Alright, Too Much Too Young
Moldy Peaches – Moldy
Peaches (2001)
I was knocked out when I first heard this. I remember seeing
an interview with someone from 1976 about the first time they heard the first
Ramones album. He said he laughed the first few times he heard it but then
couldn’t stop playing it, making the rest of his record collection redundant.
That’s how I was when I first heard this. Sometimes it takes someone to strip
away all the bullshit and production and to just say something so simple and
honest. It gives you that feeling of total freedom just like Jonathan Richman.
I’m glad they didn’t carry on as a band, I would hate to have seen them get
professional!
Recommended songs: Nothing Came Out, Who’s Got The Crack, Steak
For Chicken
The Streets – Original Pirate Material (2002)
This was from a time in my life when I went from being
married to living with a bunch of mates in a shared house and generally
partying and clubbing a lot. It brings back great memories of that time. What I
liked about hip hop and rap when it came out was it brought lyrics to the
forefront again. Of course it’s gone shite now with the guns, bitches and bling
thing. Mike Skinner’s mixture of the everyday
and the poetic reminded me a lot of Ian Dury and John Cooper Clarke, both of
whom I love. That’s the nearest to a modern album you’ll get from me!
Recommended songs: Has It Come To This, It’s Too
Late, Weak Become Heroes
On any other week
this list could also have included:
Velvet Underground, Television, The Clash, Syd Barret, Bob
Marley, X Ray Spex, The Slits, This Is
Soul (1968) Compilation, Simon & Garfunkel, Kirsty McColl and loads of
others.
