The Black Bullet 6.4 – Miles Covered 224.0

You’ll find John Martyn’s seminal album, Solid Air (Island Records, 1973), in the folk jazz category if you can find a record shop to look for it in. It has a cool persona and pungent memories for me, although I vastly prefer the acoustic tracks to the electric ones. He never bettered this album, like so many musicians the first is a distillation of everything that has gone before, the subsequent ones are generated on a different timescale, in a different space. Often this makes the first one special.

Other special first albums released about that time are Lonesome Crow by The Scorpions (Metronome, 1972) and Dire Straits' Dire Straits (Phonogram, 1978). Like Solid Air they both have an interesting jazz influence which takes the edges off the base musical style. Rock and folk tend to be pretty straight up and down without the swing provided by a dolop of jazz.

Scorpions guitarist, Michael Schenker, was a teenager when Lonesome Crow was recorded. It's really gritty, he attacks his sections with gusto and you can hear him clicking his pedals on and off as he jumps around - it's like you're there in the studio with headphones on. Interestingly enough both these bands changed drummers between first and second albums, and lost their jazz influence.

My girlfriend’s older brother used to get stoned when their parents were out and play John Martyn, Led Zeppelin and Hendrix on this state-of-the-art system her dad had installed, to listen to classical music. We’d flop on giant Italian leather settees in front of the stereo, or go up to her bedroom for some privacy, as the music and then the dad shouting drifted upstairs. This was the house in the dell that I drove by the other day [TBB 6.2], which made me feel so nostalgic.

The property was a little unkempt, don’t know who lives there now, maybe it’s still her parents and the place has just outgrown them. It could have been anywhere, I supposed, as I crawled past. I’d been listening to Solid Air on the way over but had to turn it off as I drew near. It was cold and rainy and after couple of circuits I’d actually had enough, I flicked on Kasabian to lift my spirits and bring me back to the present.

I sat up and said to myself, I’m a father now, with a second child on the way, and, thankfully, this is where my luck and experience has brought me, but it was nice to remember being so excited about things, and to think it played out right down there, thirty years and a few car lengths away.

Some old friends have popped up on Facebook, which has enhanced this dreamy springtime feeling. I realise how important old friends are in watering your connections with the past, and what this means as you get older. Now I've got more years behind me than ahead. Nearly there, I tell myself, nearly there.