Damaged | Black Flag | 1981 | Spot | #363 I’ve made a point with every album so far to download the lyrics and do a bit of background research on the artists. This is surely something I won’t be able to keep up every day - not if I want to get any actual work done - but I’ve enjoyed the insight it has given me so far and I’m glad I kept it up on this occasion. On first listen this album is just obnoxious, rebellious teenage-angst, but after reading through the lyrics and giving it a few more plays I realised that it touches on deeper issues and even recognised in places the same attitudes and frustrations of today’s disenfranchised youth. ...

Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables | Dead Kennedys | 1980 | Cherry Red | #365 One of my earliest memories of discovering punk was when I became infatuated with Stiff Little Fingers’ Inflammable Material, something I found in my mum’s CD collection when I was too young to really understand what they were yelling about. I remember feeling so chuffed with myself that I had discovered this genre which none of my other friends had even heard of. I’d go to school with a portable CD player that conveniently fit snugly into my trouser pocket (no mp3 players back then) and run an earphone cable up my shirt sleeve and into my palm so I could covertly listen in class when I pressed a hand to my ear. That’s how I surreptitiously learned about The Troubles at school despite it not being on the syllabus. ...

Songs of Love and Hate | Leonard Cohen | 1971 | Columbia | #366 I promptly realised how difficult (yet worthwhile) this is going to be as soon as I started. Not so much the listening to an album a day part – that’s easy – but rather finding time every day to collect my thoughts on it and write something coherent. I have zero experience with turning my thoughts into words (apart from my tedious rants on social media that I occasionally subject people to), and so it takes me forever. On the plus side I already feel good about having listened to one album today that I probably would never have otherwise picked up. And really that’s exactly the point in this challenge, this wordy bit is just ancillary – a check to make sure I’m actually doing it. ...