Nick Drake - Pink Moon (1972)

The first time I heard it, I was 15 and full of angst and existential dread. Although the final album by the tormented English musical genius who would not live beyond the age of 26 was unrelentingly gloom-ridden, it was just the sort of music I needed for wallowing alone in strangely sweet cosmic misery.

I still have the Island LP — a '70s British pressing I bought at a Penang shop called Rockxy (sic) Music (Wisma Central, Macalister Road) run by a cool Chinese hippie dude with an encyclopaedic knowledge of rock — though it's the CD from the 'Fruit Tree' box set that gets played most of the time.

Clueless "cooligans" who might have discovered Nick Drake via the fatuous VW ad that cheapened his art are probably too dense to get any of it!