In the age of the digital download, Jeff Harford rediscovers the album ...
Others require no such attention, their pitted surfaces seemingly impervious to beer, Bacardi or bile.
Show me a pristine copy of 1977 debut album (I'm) Stranded by Brisbane band The Saints and I'll show you a collector who hasn't employed it for its intended purpose, someone who has never thrashed it at full volume while substance-addled friends and strangers cartwheel around the living room.
To say it is one of punk's essential releases is to tell only half the story. The remaining half is personal to each now greying mid-lifer impacted by its raw energy.
As with other vital albums of that wonderful year (The Ramones' Rocket To Russia, The Clash's The Clash, The Sex Pistols' Never Mind The Bollocks, Wire's Pink Flag), its association with feelings of having something new, thrilling and vaguely dangerous to champion kicked off a chain reaction of related changes in our lives.
(I'm) Stranded shares more in common with The Ramones' three-chord buzzsaw pop than British punk's more stylised rock.
Indeed, The Saints eschewed stovepipes and spiky hair in favour of the everyday garb of the suburban rockers they had been since forming in 1974.
The primitive brutality of The Stooges' self-titled 1969 debut can be heard in Ed Kuepper's wall-of-distortion guitar sound and there's even a touch of Iggy in singer Chris Bailey's drawling sneer.
The album was recorded in two days, and sounds it.
Numbers such as Kissin' Cousins and Demolition Girl might have been written on the spot, such is the crudeness of their structure.
But it's precisely that urgency that fuels the album's intense, rebellious spirit.
Such is the euphoric, joyfully angry nature of the title track and Erotic Neurotic they should be played until your stylus is ground to a rounded nub.
