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I'm going to rule myself out of the beautifully generous prize by not choosing an LP, as it wasn't an LP that changed things for me. I'm going to choose a freebie 7". Those of you who actually bother reading my missives wil have read this before, whilst those of you who very wisely skip the nonsense I spout won't be reading anyway. So I guess I'm typing this for precisely zero people.
When I was 14, a magazine came out called The Hit. THe best description is to say it was a more mature Smash Hits. Free with the first issue was a 7" disc, featuring The Redskins, Simply Red, Style Council and a new band called The Jesus and MAry Chain. The other tracks are nothing special, but Taste of Cindy grabbed my attention, first time by being 1 minute 35 seconds unlistenable noise, but on second listen by being the most original and invigorating thing I'd heard. At that time (1985) I'd heard nothing else even remotely comparable in terms of just being different. It's still one of my top listens (slightly different to the LP version), and it was that track that was my musical epiphany; I tirelessly sought out sounds that were new, discovering two very important things, namely John Peel's radio show and Probe Records in Liverpool (still there, and still wonderful). Thus The Fall, Sonic Youth and much more came within my aesthetic grasp.
(The Hit really was rather good, as I recall. Apart from the music articles, Tony Parsons [now quite a famous writer, I believe] wrote a good column at the back that discussed serious non-musical matters. The whole thing impressed me, but it didn't last for too long.)
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