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Childhood Years, late 1960s

My earliest memories of music include hearing
the following songs on the radio in the late 60s:
Plus my dad had a large collection of classical records...
Some of my faves as a kid were:

All of the above had a huge influence on me and were largely responsible for forging the rest of my life...


Childhood Years, early 1970s

Primary school years, 1970-1974

The Beatles broke up; Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin left us; Syd Barret was no longer in Pink Floyd; Woodstock had happened (though I didn't actually find this out until a few years later)...

The next music to influence me heavily was art and glam rock, plus the continuation of the heavy/psychedelic/prog/folk rock of the late 60s...

Middle school years, 1975-1978

Bowie changed, Sweet & glam were dying out, Led Zep and Sabbath weren't as good, rock was becoming even more prog - and with the arrival & expansion of the concept album and 20+ minute tracks, we were hearing less of the likes of Yes, Floyd, Tull & co on the radio. It wasn't until the mid 80s when I (re)discovered much of the great album music from the late 60s, 70s and early 80s - even though I'm still forever discovering even more of it to this very day...

ELO were my overall fave band during this period.

New World Record and Out Of The Blue were 2 of the first (cassette) albums I ever bought.

Other than that, I continued liking all the previous stuff, plus newer Bowie - Station To Station & Berlin trilogy: Low, Heroes & Lodger, though there were a few others I liked at the time from that era...
And then came punk. Everything changed between 1976-79.

I was listening religiously to John Peel on Radio 1 from around 1977 to 1982.

I became a teenager in 1978 and was already leaning towards the more melodic/commercial side of punk in 1977, such as: The Clash, Stranglers, Blondie, Buzzcocks, Ramones, Jam, Generation X, Boomtown Rats - and then I rebelled against the system and became a punk - much to the shock of my friends, family & peers...

I never really got into the heavier Oi side of punk - with Sham 69, Anti-Pasti, Angelic Upstarts & Cockney Rejects coming closest, but not the likes of Exploited & Discharge.

A list of some of my favourite punk bands/records/albums/singles at the time:
  • Siouxsie & The Banshees - Hong Kong Garden, The Scream...
  • The Clash - The Clash, Give 'Em Enough Rope, Complete Control...
  • The Stranglers - Rattus Norvegicus, No More Heroes, Black & White
  • Stiff Little Fingers - Singles 1978-81, Inflammable Material & Nobody's Heroes albums
  • Magazine - Shot By Both Sides
  • Wire - Pink Flag, 154 & Chairs Missing albums
  • Ramones - Rocket To Russia, Leave Home, Road To Ruin...
  • Buzzcocks - Spiral Scratch, Love Bites, Another Music In A Different Kitchen
  • Skids - Into The Valley
  • Penetration - Moving Targets
  • Public Image Ltd. - First Issue
  • The Adverts - Gary Gilmore's Eyes; Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts
  • X-Ray Spex - Germfree Adolescents (album)
  • Ultravox - Young Savage
  • Rezillos - Can't Stand the Rezillos, TOTP...
  • Vice Squad - 1980-82: Last Rockers EP, Resurrection EP, First 2 LPs
  • Adam And The Ants - Dirk Wears White Sox
  • The Ruts - The Crack, In A Rut, Babylon's Burning
  • Eddie & the Hot Rods - Do Anything You Wanna Do
  • Members - Sound of the Suburbs
  • Leyton Buzzards - Jellied Eels To Record Deals, We Make A Noise
  • Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables
  • Dangerous Girls - Dangerous Girls 7"
  • The Wall - Personal Troubles & Public Issues, Ghetto, New Way, Kiss The Mirror
  • The Damned - New Rose, Love Song...
  • Bands: 999, Eater, Saints, Lurkers, UK Subs, Chelsea, ATV, Slaughter & The Dogs
  • Crass - The Feeding Of The 5000, Stations Of The Crass
  • Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks

High school post-punk years, 1979-1982

Then came the post-punk era of 1979-1982, incorporating genres & styles such as: post-punk, gothic, goth-rock, industrial, industro-goth, darkwave, coldwave, no wave, new wave, new romantic, synthpop, dream-pop, ethereal... and another era which produced some of the best music of all-time:

Dropout years, 1983-1991 ish

Another massive cultural change. I literally got the hippy hippy shake...
Gone was the all-in-black, the drainpipes, winklepickers, combat/donkey jackets, the t-shirts & badges
and in came the long hair, colourful kaftans & grandfather shirts... at least from 1983 to around 1986 anyway...

Punk had died and many of the post-punk acts (with exceptions, of course) either broke-up or went more commercial as the synths, syn-drums & drum machines began taking over...

Here's where I turned retro and went all the way back to the mid-to-late 60s through to the current day, looking for all the very best music, be it folk, folk-rock, psychedelic, hippy, prog-rock, heavy rock, stoner-rock, space-rock, krautrock, post-punk, industrial, goth, grunge, shoegaze, new wave, dub, jazz, funk, fusion, Berlin-school-electronic, classical, avantgarde, ambient, you name it...

Favourite bands, artists, albums etc. from those times include:

DJ years, 1992-2002 ish

So those MeggaMusic Mix Tapes had a lot of people telling me to start DJ'ing.

I'd previously been a bass player in a number of local bands (1979-91 ish) but decided to pack it all in and go solo.

I then discovered John Peel was now playing new techno rave type music (FSOL, Aphex Twin, Biosphere, Orbital, Autechre, Neuropolitique, Black Dog, Air Liquide, etc.), Pete Tong was playing half-decent house music on Radio 1.

Then I discovered a local pirate radio station called Dream FM, broadcasting to Leeds and surrounding areas, playing rave, techno, breakbeat, electronica - and one DJ in particular caught my attention the most - DJ Simon Scott.

Scotty was playing more progressive crossover dance music, fusing elements of rock, world music, dub and psychedelia with dance beats. I was impressed. This all sounded new, fresh and different to me. There were also other DJs playing different music such as Mu who was playing beatless ambient, Chris Madden was playing dub, trip-hop and nu/acid-jazz - and all in all it inspired me to start DJ'ing... yay!

What followed was certainly an interesting 5-10 year phase in my life, for sure...
I visited record shops, got a few sets together and contacted my old mate Chris J who was actually running Dream FM and asked him if I could get a show. Next thing I know I'm on Jane's Fresh Show for an hour. I passed the test and got a show on Friday night 2-5am at first, which kept changing days and times, but usually always somewhere between 12-5am on one or more of Thursday to Sunday, from early 1993 to late 1995, maybe into 1996.

This continued on LSR (Leeds Student Radio) from 1996-98.

DJ Egg - MeggaMusic Show

Also known as simply: The Egg

Thankfully, I got myself on a number of DJ Promo lists and soon acquired a heap of 12" records, many of which were white label and included rare DJ only mixes... which was nice. Some of these mixes branched out into different styles - psychedelia, acid-jazz, trip-hop, dubnotic, world, head music, ambi-tribal, ambient, etc.

The format of the show would invariably start with Megadog-style banging upbeat hard-house / acid-trance / psytrance for the first 30 minutes to an hour (because it was a dance station after all, and I was kind of expected to play dance music, but note, I no longer play or listen to that type of music - or anything with 4/4 dance beats - or even any actual so-called dance music whatsoever - and haven't done so for many years) and then I'd switch to the more cerebral head music style (of the type I still play and listen to this day) for the 2nd part of the show, gradually moving towards more chillout vibes and usually ending on a beatless ambient note.

It was here where I first coined the term "Ambi-Cultural-Tribal-Trance".

Over the 10 years that followed, the vinyl collection increased rapidly to around 20,000. There's undoubtedly a whole heap of music on vinyl that I've forgotten or no longer even know I've got.

Back then, I used 2 record decks, plus 2 CD players - 1 for music, the other for FX.
The FX ranged from helicopters, jet planes, thunderstorms, racing cars, wind machine, echoes, psychedelic noise...

I've tried to list as much of the music as possible in both my Winamp Playlist or the Best Albums 1960-2025+ lists (obviously, the period we're concerned with here is 1992-2002 ish).

There'd be way too much to list here, so please refer to those Best Albums of the Year lists for a better picture of what I was playing back then.

I gave up DJ'ing (in a Club & FM Radio type of capacity) in around 2002 and joined the Winamp & Shoutcast team for 20 years, but that's another story.

MeggaMusic Radio did make a comeback during 2012-2020 as a Shoutcast internet stream - playing an eclectic crossover mix of psychedelia, space, neofolk, shoegaze, dream-pop, trip-hop, world/tribal, psychill, chillout, balearic, dubnotica, ambient dub, kosmische, berlin school, new age, beatless ambient and more, but then along came covid and ruined everything :-(

Most of the music I listen to today is either locally stored mp3 or via streaming service subscriptions.

Back when this all started, prior to the early 2000s and onwards, we didn't have the internet, so music discovery was mainly achieved via DJs, tv & radio, magazines, record shops, music libraries, mailing lists, word of mouth...

In the past 15 years or so I've discovered a whole heap more music from the sixties up until the present day that I never even knew existed back then. Praises be to the likes of Bandcamp, Twitter, Shoutcast, forums, file sharing apps (2000s), streaming services and internet research in general - much of which is now reflected in those Best Albums of the Year lists.


Published: 24 September 2026                      


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