Cat Stevens, Back To Earth (1978)

One of the first albums I ever bought with my own money. Strange – as I have no fondness for it at all. But at the time – many years ago – it was really important to me to own this. Because I loved Cat Stevens and his Very Best Of (CD) had been a soundtrack to my high-school years, to car-trips; something the whole family enjoyed. I chose this album – when I saw it there on the shelf – because it didn’t feature any of the songs from the compilations. I’d then find out it was his last album of secular songs. (And that stayed that way until the recent “comeback” albums – which are duds. Both of ‘em). Listening to it now, there’s no reason to be excited by this record. At all. But also no reason to be ashamed of it. It’s Cat Stevens – without the hits. And in this day and age that’s no bad thing as so many of the hits have been played to death. I’ll give this another go from time to time but it’s almost unfathomable how excited I was at the time I found this. But then, that was a different time. New to the big city, fresh from school, keen on the folly of buying records (because, really, where’s that going to go? It’s not going to become any sort of silly obsession, right?) and that was how you learned about music back then, by browsing in stores, by listening, borrowing, buying. That alone – the memory of this being the first LP I purchased – makes it something of a relic. It cost me two bucks.

Sample Track: Daytime

The Vinyl Countdown is a document of every LP I listen to, brand new discoveries and old-old favourites; extremely pre-loved, previously abandoned or with the shrink-wrap having just been removed it’s all here at The Vinyl Countdown