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Steely Dan - Gaucho (1980)

One of the LPs in my collection that seemed just right for setting the mood on a Saturday morning. The music may have more to do with jazz sophistication than rock sensibility, but it's still a thrilling ride. It had to be, considering that Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are bona-fide musical geniuses and unyielding sticklers for perfection (the album was recorded in more than half a dozen studios over a three-year period!).

Though their beatnik whimsy and smarter-than-thou asides on songs like 'Babylon Sisters', 'Glamour Profession' and 'My Rival' tend to be tiresome at times, Fagen and Becker know how to hook you with their sinuous melodies, which are brilliantly burnished by the state-of-the-art production. And the long A-list musician lineup — Larry Carlton, Steve Khan, Mark Knopfler, Hiram Bullock, Rick Derringer, Michael and Randy Brecker, Steve Gadd, Joe Sample... — ensures consistency of performance throughout. Fans had to wait a decade after this to hear another new Steely Dan album... Just imagine that!

Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours (1955)

I've been a Sinatra fan since my early teens, and this album of ballads, one of the crowning achievements of his early career, has been a long-time favourite. The man sure knew how to get into a song; he makes exquisite art of all the 16 numbers here, including ultimate torch pieces like 'What is This Thing Called Love', 'When Your Lover Has Gone', 'I'll Never Be the Same' and 'It Never Entered My Mind'.

Perfect for late-night or "wee hours" listening, the set offers compelling testimony not only to Sinatra's standing as one of the greatest and most rivetingly emotive singers of all time, but also to his stature as a formidable interpretive master in the front rank of American popular music's pantheon of torch-bearers.

Isley Brothers - 3 + 3 (1973)

The local Columbia distributor used to run a record store on Penang island in the '70s that I used to hang out in almost every Saturday. I would walk in with ecstatic anticipation and scour the shelves like a ravenous groove rat for new releases I had heard on the John Peel Show or read about in NME. On one occasion, I remember hearing 'That Lady' and 'Summer Breeze' (the Seals and Crofts song) from this LP at the shop and deciding to buy it on the strength of just those two tunes. Only problem was, I could afford only one LP from my school pocket money, and I had already chosen Argent's 'In Deep'. Imagine my disappointment!

Anyway, I managed to borrow a copy of the album and was quite thrilled to discover neat soul-inflected versions of James Taylor's 'Don't Le Me Be Lonely Tonight' and the Doobie Brothers's 'Listen to the Music'. After all these years, the music still sounds fresh and stimulating.

The Moody Blues - Days of Future Passed (1967)

Despite being generally lumped in the prog-rock bag together with other groups from that era (Renaissance, Nice, even Deep Purple) which often used a full orchestra in their recordings, the Moody Blues always seemed pretty pop-centred and lightweight to me. That didn't mean I disliked the band. On the contrary, I loved their early works, especially this enduring symphonic-pop showcase which was conceptually way ahead of its time.

There may be a touch of pomposity about the proceedings, but it all seems of a piece with the spirit of the music, which is more about style than substance. In any case, 'Nights in White Satin' is still a magical song to me, even though it was somewhat inescapable on my favourite radio station, Radio RAAF Butterworth, during much of the '70s.

Thin Lizzy - Johnny the Fox (1976)

Another Thin Lizzy album I first heard on John Peel's show (there was a weekly BBC World Service shortwave broadcast in the '70s). I actually liked this better than its predecessor, Jailbreak, mainly because the songs rocked harder and the band's trademark double-guitar attack was tighter.

The poor CD transfer makes the album a tough listen now, but the songs still have plenty of appeal, especially 'Massacre' (apparently about the charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War) which was covered by Iron Maiden.

Rick Wakeman - The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1975)

This was one of the few LPs in my collection that friends of mine who weren't mad about music (never figured out what was wrong with them!) could sit through without whining and groaning. As a concept album centred on the Arthurian legend, it's somewhat overscored — Wakeman throws in everything from rock and ragtime to jazz and dance hall into the mix, sometimes within the same tune! It's also somewhat overdressed (rock band, orchestra and choir all going at once!), with vocals parts that at times overwhelm the music and rhythms that just never seem fluid.

But cluttered and clunky as the proceedings were, they had a strange appeal that kept use going back to the record every few months. The CD transfer underscores the inadequacies of the recording, but though it doesn't seem to have aged well, the album is still worth hearing, if only for Wakeman's Moog solo on the largely instrumental 'Merlin the Magician' and to get an idea of the splashiness of the concept-album trend that was prevalent in '70s prog-rock.

Jeff Beck - Wired (1976)

The follow-up to 1975's phenomenal 'Blow By Blow' finds Beck fiercer, flashier and funkier than ever, though there're some lyrical moments on the album ('Sophie', 'Love is Green') to balance out rip-roaring workouts like 'Led Boots', 'Blue Wind' and 'Head for Backstage Pass'. Jan Hammer, the synth world's equivalent of a shredder, is a perfect foil on the uptempo tunes, but there's never a moment's doubt who's the boss here.

I played the 'Wired' (lusted after a white Strat like the one on the cool cover for years!) and 'Blow By Blow' LPs a lot through much of the late '70s and the '80s, and got the CD versions soon as they hit the shops. It's music that never seems to go out of style!

Nick Drake - Bryter Layter (1970)

The first Nick Drake LP I bought (around 1973) and the album that contains some of the late English singer-songwriter's brightest, most hopeful songs, plus three gorgeous instrumentals. Many of the pieces feature lovely string arrangements, and the melodies, especially the sublime 'Northern Lights' and the melancholy 'At the Chime of a City Clock', haunt your head for days after your first listening session.

I still have the LP (Pink Moon, too), a British pressing in fairly scratch-free state, though it's the excellent 4-CD box set, 'Fruit Tree', that sees a lot of player action these days.

The Dream Academy - The Dream Academy (1985)

One of the most graceful, evocative and shamefully underheard pop albums of the '80s, The Dream Academy's almost forgotten debut (it's out of print in the U.S.) has withstood the test of time marvellously. That's a big deal, considering that much of the pop from that time is rather unlistenable now.

I dove into this like a dolphin long deprived of water, and spent many hours soaking up its bewitchingly lush, luscious and painterly textures. The hit 'Life in a Northern Town', an exquisitely melodic and introspective piece of chamber-pop dedicated to Nick Drake, is the most immediately alluring thing here. But the other tunes are equally strong and sweet, treating casual themes with a subdued poetic elegance and a sense of brooding romanticism.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Nightingales and Bombers (1975)

'Pluto the Dog', an infectiously chugging Moog-centred instrumental from 'Solar Fire' (1973), was on heavy rotation for a while in the mid-'70s on Radio RAAF Butterworth. It was one of the first tunes that turned me onto Manfred Mann's remarkable prog-rock outfit. Not long after that, I bought this LP and became a firm Earth Band fan.

It kicks off with a hard-rocking version of Bruce Springsteen's 'Spirits in the Night' and gets into trickier stuff, like the richly atmospheric closer 'As Above So Below' which incorporates an accidental WWII recording of flying bombers. Mann's amazing Moog solos and the often intriguing interplay between him and guitarist Mick Rogers make this a thrilling ride.

Frank Zappa/Captain Beefheart - Bongo Fury (1975)

I was never really into Zappa until I got this LP, through which I also discovered the strange magic of the astonishingly original Captain Beefheart. For some reason, I couldn't get enough of one particular track — the cunningly cryptic (or perhaps just tantalisingly absurd) 'Carolina Hardcore Ecstasy', a delightfully rocking piece of inspired hokum that climaxes with a blistering fuzz-guitar solo by Zappa.

Much of the music on the album was recorded live, but the musicians, including the indefatigable Terry Bozzio on drums, play without fluffing a note or missing a beat — as anyone would under the no-nonsense direction of Zappa the perfectionist. Even his flubbed line on 'Muffin Man' sounds scripted, though that doesn't mean there's anything stiff or stilted about the proceedings on the whole.

Ry Cooder - Bop Till You Drop (1979)

As one of Warner Bros.'s first digitally mastered recordings, the LP was packaged a bit differently than the standard releases. And I remember the thrill of putting it on the turntable to check out "the new sound", even though analogue seemed to work fine for me. I liked the music straightaway, but it took a while for me to get used to the somewhat overcompressed hiss-free sound.

While the set, a tribute to '50s pop and R&B, has some wrinkles, vibrant versions of classics 'Little Sister', 'Look at Granny Run Run' and 'Trouble, You Can't Fool Me' make the proceedings often irresistible. And Cooder's slide work is as sublime as ever, especially on a rousing rearrangement of 'I Think It's Going to Work Out Fine'.

Tower of Power - Tower of Power (1973)

Tower of Power's early '70s LPs feature some the finest and funkiest horn-charged soul ever committed to wax. This album and its follow-up, 1974's 'Urban Renewal', are true classics in the sense that the music just never seems to age. If anything, it sounds fresher than ever! And funk has never been this clever!

With ace singer Lenny Williams — arguably the most intriguing frontman TOP ever had — keeping the flame bright and strong, the group has the groove on every tune solidly anchored without constricting rhythmic flow even for a moment. And those horns! They just keep going and going in a blaze of glory or a blare of ecstasy. Just the starting place for the uninitiated.

Deep Purple - Burn (1974)

When we first heard the LP, my buddies and I were somewhat disappointed that Ian Gillan and Roger Glover weren't on any of the tracks. But as the music played on, disappointment gradually turned into excitement.

The Mark III line-up, with new vocalist David Coverdale and ex-Trapeze bassist/co-vocalist Glenn Hughes, were really cookin' on the songs, especially hard-drivin' chuggers like 'Lay Down, Stay Down', 'You Fool No One', 'What's Going on Here' and 'Burn'. It sounded like the band had coolly moved on to the next level. As for 'Sail Away' and 'Mistreated', they seem to have deservedly found their place among the most enduring songs in the DP catalogue.

Jackson Browne - For Everyman (1973)

Another Jackson Browne album I was so fond of I that I wore out the first copy of the LP within a few years and replaced it with a second one. It kick offs lightheartedly with a country-tinged version of the Eagles hit 'Take It Easy', which Browne co-wrote with Glenn Frey, and gets compellingly darker and deeper through pieces like 'Colors of the Sun', 'These Days', 'The Times You've Come' and 'For Everyman'.

There's some comic relief (the fiddle-fuelled 'Ready Or Not') and a bit of good-time boogie (the slide guitar-propelled 'Red Neck Friend') in between, but it's the introspective moments that reveal Browne's admirable ability to wed words to music and offer stunning portraits of human strife.

Boz Scaggs - Boz Scaggs (1969)

Forget about 'Silk Degrees', enticing though the pop-inflected 1976 chart-topper is. It's this brilliantly gritty Atlantic debut that shows what made the purveyor of blue-eyed soul tick in his prime. A remarkable ride that rolls together influences ranging from Motown to Southern rock, the album engages from the very beginning and keeps you hooked right through the aptly-titled closer, 'Sweet Release'.

Scaggs, who performs with a renewed surge of intensity on almost every track, gets superb support from the crack Muscle Shoals rhythm team. And the late Duane Allman lays down some blistering guitar on the 12-minute-plus 'Loan Me a Dime', a Hammond-drenched minor-mode blues ballad that has become a cult classic. Grab it!