Good Vibrations

Floy Joy. Kajagoogoo. Scritti Politti.

Don’t you miss analog — musty paperbacks, unspooling cassettes, slip-sliding negatives, sepia prints?

Ours was a touchy-feely world once.

I have a stubborn wedge of vinyl I’ve hauled from room to room, house to house, decade to decade. One hundred records. Exactly.

All of them savaged by cats.

I hadn’t looked at them in years.

I did today.

These ten stood out:

DON’T WALK, BOOGIE: 20 Great Disco Sounds from EMI

I lived in Dallas until I was fifteen. A few months before leaving the U.S. for good — or so I thought — I committed my first crime.

I joined one of those mail-order record clubs: twelve albums for a penny and a promise to buy more later. I knew I’d be in England when the bill came due. I scanned the catalog, chose a few I knew and several I didn’t — including this one, for obvious reasons.

I mean.

Bronski Beat, “Smalltown Boy”

Was it a challenge? A map? Or a middle finger in Jimmy Somerville’s rear-view mirror?

An anthem for sure.

I wonder how many other gay boys ran away, turned away before the decade was out.

Whitney Houston, WHITNEY HOUSTON

She was clearly being launched with precision, and I wasn’t a fan of ultra-shiny American acts.

Then I saw her first video — in a studio, at a mic, soft black clothes, one shoulder bare.

Flipping it now, I’m startled to see the Serenity Prayer — the one from AA — printed at the very top.

Echo & the Bunnymen, Ocean Rain

I was romantic — a Romantic — but not quite a New Romantic. Less pomp and frill, more likely lost in an indigo cavern, “The Killing Moon” on repeat.

I even had a head of sad, floppy hair.

Irene Reid, The World Needs What I Need

My first relationship introduced me to heartbreak, struggle, and danceable soul. That brief season — a fourth-floor Regency flat on the rainy English coast — was massively influential.

In terms of my photography, so was this cover.

Wah!, “The Story of the Blues”

“First they take your pride / Turn it all inside / And then you realize you’ve got nothing left to lose”

I love this song. I love the little yellow price tag just as much.

Freeez, Southern Freeez

I met most of my friends in London, and just before it, en route to the capital.

That time is packed with ambition, vibes and velocity. Camberwell squats. The West End. Double-decker buses. The Tube.

This Brit-funk track reminds me of dusk.

It shimmers. It glides.

It lives in my hips.

B.J. Thomas, Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head

This album belonged to my parents. ’Nuff said.

But there’s more.

Indianapolis has had no business shaping my life. But it has. And it started here, in 1969:

“God didn’t make those little green apples / It don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.”

I sang it constantly.

My life in the States began five years later, thanks to a corporate executive from Indy with G.I. Joe hair. He spoke with the croak of a smoker, and his face looked like bark.

He has a lot to answer for.

The most generous person I’ve ever known grew up there. We’ve been together twenty-five years.

More recently, I was stranded there with the worst person I’ve known.

It rained. All the time.

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, “Forest Fire”

I coulda been somebody. Instead, I was an idiot.

I sped from my rural English bedroom to Big City London at “hurry the fuck up” mph, landing a job as assistant to a celebrity photographer — just like that.

David Bowie. Grace Jones. Live Aid. Lloyd Cole.

Up. Up. Up.

Then I botched a Fashion Week shoot.
He yelled.
I stormed off.
He apologized.
I sulked.
He called. And called.
I didn’t answer.

I do have this autograph, though. So there’s that.

A reminder of what might’ve been.

Everything But The Girl, Eden

My favorite band.

This, their first album, was released in 1984 — the year Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt left university. My own college years were about to begin. It feels, in retrospect, as if my path shadowed theirs: “Another Bridge.” “Imagining America.” “Walking Wounded.” “Missing.”

There’s little doubt I’ll keep hauling this block of ragged nostalgia from room to room, house to house — into another decade, perhaps.

Even—

Another one of my favorite things.