1. Jeff WayneWar Of The Worlds
My mum owned so few records when Scott [Mark’s brother and former Bluetones bassist] and I were growing up we kind of had to make our own taste. She had a couple of Walker Brothers and Elton John albums and this. When she was doing the Hoovering and we couldn’t watch TV anymore, we’d get everything off of the floor, pile it all up on the table and settee and then stick War Of The Worlds on really fucking loud. It created that space and atmosphere and sounds like how you think machines from Mars would sound like at that age. Oooolaaa! The artwork was terrifying too and felt like something you shouldn’t be looking at, a doorway into a grown-up world. You can’t really take the songs out of context, although ‘Forever Autumn’ is beautiful, it was a genuinely affecting album and it and it still is. I bought it on vinyl last year, a really rare version that has side 1 with side 3 and side 2 with side 4 so it could be played on a Dansette. Not a year goes by when I don’t listen to it and I can’t say that about many albums.
Have I heard the remake? It’s a disgrace and you wonder why Wayne’s got his name on it. He had the greatest singers and musicians of the period but this sounds like bad Euro disco from 15 years ago recorded in someone’s bedroom. Ricky Wilson is an innocent bystander, it’s not his fault – [Gary] Barlow is to blame for that debacle.
