James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 8: How To Make Friends And Influence People

It’s always been my personal belief that the eighth letter of the alphabet should be ‘H’.

Which it is.

I’m not saying I’m responsible for that fact. That’s not for me to say.

If others wish to credit me then that’s up to them.

But, which album has the honour of representing ‘H’ today?

H is for How To Make Friends And Influence People

Terrorvision were a British band that enjoyed most of their success during the ‘Britpop’ period of the nineties.

But Terrorvision were not ‘Britpop’ so much as ‘Britrock’.

They were also not a band that ever took themselves too seriously. Nor really did the British Charts, as Terrovision rarely troubled the top ten.

By far their biggest hit, ‘Tequila’, came in 1999, but aside from encouraging lots of impressionable young people to drink tequila when they might otherwise have not, (ahem), it really came at the end of their modest period of success.

And although their 1996 album ‘Regular Urban Survivors’ did enjoy more sales than this 1994 effort, ‘How To Make Friends And Influence People’ was really the album that brought them to the attention of my friends and I.

I’m not sure, revisiting it now, that it really deserves to go down as one of the great British albums.

But it was a lot of fun back then and it was equally fun revisiting it for this post.

‘Discotheque Wreck’ and ‘Pretend Best Friend’ were both favourites back in the mid-nineties but the track that first brought them to my attention and remains a regular on my playlist is ‘Oblivion’.