I know writing an entire blog about less than four minutes of music is self-indulgent, but then so is the song - in the very best way.

Released this week in 1978, not only is Fade Away and Radiate unlike anything else Blondie ever wrote, it's unlike anything else full stop.

Written by Chris Stein, who described it as a 'psychedelic love song', it's a haunting scene visited by the spectral guitar genius of Robert Fripp while on extended sabbatical from King Crimson. His presence seems to lift the entire band to a new dimension - when his hypnotic solo drifts in halfway through, the descending bass line, tribal drums and faraway vocals spiral into a gothic vortex that is hard to describe: "The beams become my dream, My dream is on the screen".

The everyday nature of the song's meaning only adds to the weirdness - Blondie guitarist Stein wrote it about his long term girlfriend Debbie Harry's habit of falling asleep in front of the TV: "Wrapped like candy, in the blue, blue neon glow."

Add in the fact that as Track 4 on Parallel Lines, it follows three absolute punk-pop bangers (Hanging on the Telephone, One Way or Another and Picture This) and it's a bit like going for a walk in a sunny local park only to find yourself suddenly plunged into The Red Room from Twin Peaks.

There's a late 70s European feel here - Roxy Music, David Bowie, Ultravox - and as Fade Away fades away, it nods to the reggae direction the band would soon embrace.

As Classic Rock magazine noted, the song "suggested what might have occurred had The Shangri-Las met Lee Perry and Eno in Berlin". That never happened but Fade Away and Radiate did - what a glorious gift.

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This week marks 50 years since the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival Riot, an event of huge social, political and cultural importance in the UK.

Sparked by simmering tensions over police stop-and-search practices, far-right agitation and the attempted arrest of a pickpocket, the riot saw hundreds of police officers and carnival goers injured. It was a line in the sand for race relations in the UK - but its reverberations echoed loudly in the music world too, literally and otherwise. With punk on the rise and heavy rock increasingly shunned as an embarrassing older brother, 1976 was a tipping point in youth culture.

The lazy narrative at the time was that while punk was in tune with the real world and social issues (largely true), heavy rock was lost in a fantasy world of dragons, demons and debauchery (largely untrue - with apologies to Rainbow Rising!). But, as was often the way, the respective genres had far more in common than the media liked to admit - in the case of Notting Hill, they both delivered an unforgettable anthem.

In the punk corner, The Clash famously responded to the events of Summer 1976 with their explosive debut single White Riot - singer Joe Strummer and bassist Paul Simonon had been at the carnival that day and witnessed events first-hand.

In the heavy rock corner, fellow Londoners UFO gave us Lights Out - "from the back streets there's a rumblin', smell of anarchy". It's as much a treasured anthem for rockers as White Riot is for punks.

And while music history is littered with Us v Them rivalries - The Beatles v The Stones, Oasis v Blur, Tupac v Biggie - the truth was that punk and heavy rock bands generally coexisted in deafening harmony. For years, The Damned and Motörhead were almost interchangeable (in 1978 Lemmy stepped in on bass and the pair toured together much later). The Ramones were loved by hordes of rockers just as AC/DC had a decent punk following. John Peel was an early Def Leppard cheerleader, and Saxon supported The Clash in '77. I could go on.

Half a century on, both genres are notable for the longevity of their artists (The Damned, Buzzcocks, U.K. Subs, AC/DC, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden and many more are still touring) and the dedication of their fans (Rebellion Festival attracted 8,000 punks to Blackpool earlier this month and Download Festival sold out as it often does). Like the events that inspired the two anthems, the music and the fans are still making headlines.

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The burnt out Ferrari, Manson Family mayhem, rampant drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness, five marriages and death by drowning tend to get in the way, but the truth is that Dennis Wilson was a sensitive visionary who stoked the fires of his brother's genius before gifting us his own cosmic confessions of love and heartbreak.

Famously the only Beach Boy who could actually surf, it was drummer Dennis who encouraged Brian to celebrate 60s California surf culture in the band's formative years and Dennis who recognised the psychedelic wonder of the now revered Smile project when others just shook their heads in bewilderment. He was his brother's greatest advocate even when fanning the flames of Brian's creative brilliance left his own songwriting ambitions flickering in the shadows.

But the passage of time has shone greater light on his stunning body of work. Just listen to Forever from The Beach Boys' 1970 Sunflower album - written by Dennis with friend Gregg Jakobson and featuring Dennis on lead vocals. Right up there with anything the band ever recorded. Around this time, he also contributed Be With Me (from the 20/20 album) and Cuddle Up (from Carl & the Passions - So Tough). Both are beautiful.

Other songs from this period lurked in the vaults until much later - (Wouldn't it be Nice to) Live Again was scheduled for 1971's Surf's Up but only emerged on a 2013 box set. Similarly, Carry Me Home was recorded for 1973's Holland yet only appeared four years ago in another box set. Listening to them, you simply have to ask why they weren't released at the time. Band politics were almost certainly a factor, but that's a story for another day.

The world of Dennis Wilson came into spectacular focus this week in 1977 with the release of his debut solo album Pacific Ocean Blue. But this wasn't a creative Eureka moment - four of the songs were originally recorded in 1974/75 and the roots of opener River Song go back as far as 1970. Even so, it is a classic 'whole is greater than the sum of its parts' album. With that in mind, I hesitate to call out favourites, but Time and End of the Show are breathtaking.

At times, Pacific Ocean Blue overflows with so much grace, power and emotion that it is almost impossible to listen to. As studio manager Trisha Campo said: "It wasn’t so much music as much as his soul coming out."

There's a final poignancy to his legacy in that follow-up album Bambu has never been officially released in full. It's a fitting metaphor for his talent and indeed his life - the well was so deep that we never got to the bottom of it.

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It's the riff that changed everything. Just not for the band that created it.

Depending on your point of view, when The Kinks released You Really Got Me as a single this month in 1964, they either (a) invented the hard rock riff (b) lit the fuse for proto-punk, or (c) both of the above.

What is beyond dispute is that when guitarist Dave Davies slashed his speaker cone with a razor blade, he made not just distortion but history. With all due respect to the bluesmen and Link Wray, the power chord had broken through, and guitar shops would never sound the same again.

But for The Kinks themselves, the reverberations were nowhere near as far-reaching as they should have been. With You Really Got Me a Top 10 single in seven markets - including the US and the UK - the foundations were laid for the band to join the British musical invasion across the pond alongside The Beatles who had dazzled 73 million Ed Sullivan Show viewers just months earlier.

But by 1965 their American dream was in tatters when they were hit by a four year ban by the American Federation of Television and Recording Artists - according to reports, this was either the result of the band not paying their union fees following a Dick Clark NBC special or a punch being thrown following 'anti-British' comments made at the TV studio. The band's rowdy on-stage behaviour has also been cited as a factor.

Either way, the timing was terrible and by the time they'd served their four year ban in 1969, their moment had passed. Ironically, it was an American band featuring two brothers that reaped the rewards of the iconic guitar anthem fourteen years after The Kinks - Van Halen's adrenaline-charged version of You Really Got Me was the band's 1978 debut single. 80 million album sales and rising.

Years later, Dave Davies was congratulated by a gig-goer for a 'great cover of the Van Halen song'. Talk about kicking a man when he's down!

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A friend sent me a video last week. It was Glen Hansard talking about an encounter with one of his musical heroes, Van Morrison.

Here's an exec summary: Young Dublin busker Glen invited to Van's private 50th birthday party (not by Van but by a mutual friend); at the party Glen answers a call for 'Any Requests?' - not well received by Van and ignored; Glen is then asked to play some of his own songs (again, not by Van); Glen starts to play, Van leaves the room; Van returns to the room and agrees to play Glen's original request - accompanied by Glen; they then play a Bob Dylan song together before spending the next few hours trading songs over a bottle of port.

Unsurprisingly, Glen believed the experience changed him forever. Clearly, inspiration on this epic scale is for most of us the stuff of dreams but Glen's tragic death last week serves as a reminder that when inspiration knocks on your door, you should always open. On that particular occasion, Glen could have easily left after a difficult start to the evening. But he didn't - he stayed, he learned and he emerged a different man.

Some of the magic that Van imparted was floating in the air when I saw Glen play in Manchester a couple of months ago. The weather was warm, but the atmosphere was warmer. He is perhaps the only contemporary artist who could credibly inject equal passion into a cover version of hardcore punk band Discharge's Drunk With Power and Irish trad anthem The Auld Triangle in the space of the same half hour.

I was due to see him again in a couple of weeks, ironically at a tribute concert for another of his heroes, Jason Molina who died in 2013. They are now on the same stage together.

If there's a lesson for us as music fans, it's that when you sense inspiration, run towards it because these moments are precious and can never be taken for granted. Consider who we've lost in the last three years and the way shared inspiration bound them together - it's no coincidence that Glen sang Fairytale of New York at Shane MacGowan's funeral and led a musical tribute to Sinéad O'Connor in 2023, or that Shane and Sinéad duetted together on Haunted, or that all three of them contributed beautiful and highly individual versions of The Foggy Dew. Inspiration does not exist in a vacuum.

Since 2025, we've lost Ozzy Osbourne, Clem Burke, Afrika Bambaataa, Mani, Roberta Flack, David Ball, Jimmy Cliff and many more. Inspiration is rare and arguably becoming rarer, so always keep it close. RIP Glen.

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Left on Mission and Revenge. It was the proposed title of The Sisters of Mercy's second album. And while the record itself never saw the light of day, the mission and revenge it promised tore the heart out of the band in a plot worthy of Machiavelli himself.

We'll come back to the mission, let's start with the revenge. On the back of their critically acclaimed 1985 debut album First and Last and Always, The Sisters of Mercy started compiling songs for the follow-up. The problem was that singer Andrew Eldritch didn't like guitarist Wayne Hussey's new material and Hussey didn't think much of Eldritch's either. The former was intent on exploring new keyboard-led frontiers while the latter was keen to expand the band's pioneering path of post-punk harmonics.

There was no middle ground on offer so Hussey and founding bass player Craig Adams left the band. This is where things got interesting.

In early 1986, Hussey and Adams tried to lay claim to the name The Sisterhood by arranging three UK live dates. But the canny Eldritch was not having that and hastily released both a single (Giving Ground) and album (Gift) under The Sisterhood name. Legally, this left Hussey and Adams high and dry and Eldritch the proud owner of a £25,000 record company advance against royalties, a fact he brazenly celebrated on the album's opening songs Jihad and Colours which both begin with the spoken words 'Two-Five-Zero-Zero-Zero'. German speaker Eldritch clearly understood the concept of schadenfreude and rubbed salt in the wounds further with the album title - Gift means poison in German. Revenge, a dish best served draped in black humour.

After a few days as The Craig Adams and Wayne Hussey Band (to record a BBC session for Janice Long), Eldritch's former colleagues picked at the bones of the abandoned second album title - having been served their revenge, they at least salvaged The Mission as a name for their new venture. They celebrate forty years together this year.

But what of the music that could have featured on Left on Mission and Revenge? We know that Hussey submitted Garden of Delight and Dance On Glass - Eldritch may not have approved but both found their way onto The Mission's debut album Gods Own Medicine, the former as the group's second single. As for the dark lord himself, his plan for the mythical record included the aforementioned Giving Ground, subsequent monster hit This Corrosion and No Time to Cry 12-inch B-side Bury Me Deep.

Looking back now, the musical differences of 1986 are clear to hear and since then both The Sisters of Mercy (Eldritch retained the name) and The Mission have contributed much, in both the studio and live arenas. But there's still a nagging sense of what might have been - in the end, the tension of two camps pulling in different directions proved too much, but a hybrid of Eldritch's epic sweep and Hussey's reverb-heavy theatrics remains an intriguing possibility that will always keep us wondering.

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If you think a sense of possession lies at the heart of the UK's most idiosyncratic Number One single, you'd be right.

Because not only does Kate Bush share the same birthday as Emily Brontë (July 30), she also shares the childhood name of the main character in the book that inspired the song.

I am, of course, talking about Wuthering Heights, a record as wild as the moors that frame the ghostly turbulence of Brontë's classic novel. As a child, Kate was known as Catherine, the name of the book's tragic protagonist thrillingly brought to life in the song.

With 140 years separating their births (1818 and 1958), they may be generations apart, but it's fair to assume that as a fiercely strong, independent woman, Brontë would have approved of the fact that by defying record company wishes (EMI wanted James and the Cold Gun to be her first single), Kate's musical interpretation of the novel made her the first woman to top the UK charts with a self-penned song. She wrote it when she was just 18 and recorded it in one take.

Today, the book and the song are all but inseparable - but this seemingly cosmic connection could have easily floated by. Indeed, Kate was inspired to write the song not by the book but by a 1967 TV dramatisation. She caught the last few minutes, was hooked and subsequently read the book. Lucky us.

Eight years ago, Kate acknowledged her debt to the original author by writing an inscription for Brontë's 2018 bicentennial memorial stone. Like the song, it is a monument to her talent.

Her message read: "She stands outside." You should know, Kate.

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Isn't it always the fleeting moments that are the most powerful?

In 2024, Ozzy Osbourne was finally inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but stricken by Parkinson's disease, he wasn't well enough to perform. As an all-star band launched into a tribute version of Crazy Train, the camera pans to Ozzy and uber-fan Jack Black who had just presented him with the award. Seated at the side of the stage, they are both passionately singing along and visibly moved by what for Ozzy must have been close to an out of body experience - holding on tight to a treasured gift as it slowly, painfully slips through your fingers.

One year after his death, we know exactly how Ozzy felt. Just as he watched Crazy Train disappear into the distance, we watched his mythical, magical presence ebb away on a huge tide of goodwill and love. I was lucky enough to be there for his final farewell in Birmingham just weeks before he died. As were Metallica, Slayer, Guns N' Roses, Tool, Pantera and many more. All unpaid, all covering at least one Black Sabbath or Ozzy track - in the case of Guns N' Roses, four of their six songs were by Sabbath. That is what you call respect.

But what really revealed the depth of feeling towards Ozzy were the two 'secret' supergroups who also performed on the day. Casually taking the stage at different points were Ronnie Wood, Steven Tyler, Billy Corgan, Sammy Hagar, K.K. Downing, Vernon Reid and YUNGBLUD. Joining them were event musical director Tom Morello and MC Jason Momoa - the Game of Thrones star joining the mosh pit during Pantera's set. Who else could attract such a galaxy of stars to jump on a plane and give up their precious time for free? McCartney? Dylan? Jagger? It's a short list, that's for sure.

His music, his TV series and his antics weren't for everyone. But what set him apart was that he was one of us - feted and famous, yes, but flawed and fragile too. A working-class dyslexic kid who worked in a slaughterhouse before stumbling into a musical dream like no other.

Sabbath's career was like a metaphor for everyday life - if there was a plan, rarely did things follow it. Their most famous song (Paranoid) was an afterthought, and the album of the same name was an exercise straight from the 'How Not To' marketing textbook. Originally titled War Pigs, a last-minute switch to Paranoid (the record company were worried about a Vietnam backlash) meant that the title and the cover - a charging man with sword and shield - didn't match. Didn't match, didn't matter.

When Ozzy was booted out of Sabbath in 1979, few predicted much of a future for him - least of all himself - but his debut went multi-platinum, and it was upwards from there. A comeback story for the guy who had lost everything. Could have been me, could have been you.

An everyman who achieved everything, Ozzy was one of the few yet one of the many, one of his time yet one for the ages, one of a kind yet one of us.

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Ironically, the words that best serve as his epitaph were written just months after he was born.

Bon Scott entered the world in Forfar, Scotland, in July 1946. The following year, a book called Knock on Any Door was published in America. It featured the immortal line - often wrongly attributed to James Dean - "Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse."

The book was written by a man called (Willard) Motley, no doubt a term used to describe Scott at various points in his chaotic 33-year-life. Like a demented cartoon hybrid of Robert the Bruce and Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, Bon Scott was a rock star so wild you simply couldn't invent him.

Leaving Scotland at the age of six, he (un)settled in Perth, Western Australia, and performed in The Valentines and Fraternity before joining AC/DC in 1974. It was a marriage made in hell. Like Scott, the band's dual driving force, brothers Angus and Malcolm Young had emigrated from Scotland and had to scrap for every morsel of respect and recognition they could muster in the filthiest cellars of rock'n'roll's most derelict ruins.

These hard-earned medals of pride and prejudice hung well on the bare chest of rock's most streetwise showman. But Scott was so much more than a Class A performer - he lived the life and when he drags you to Sin City, offers you Rock 'n' Roll Damnation, or picks you up on the Highway to Hell, you just know he's been there himself. Probably that morning.

AC/DC's run of albums from 1975 to 1979 is as good as anything produced in that most heady of decades. Scott's myth may be legendary, but his songs are better.

Bon but not forgotten, he would have been 80 yesterday.

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Her desperate death fifteen years ago this month changed the meaning of her sacred text forever - a personal diary of heartbreak transformed into a collective book of remembrance.

When it was released in 2006, Amy Winehouse's Back to Black mourned the loss of her relationship; today, it mourns the loss of Amy. It can't be heard any other way. Yet, though it is weighed down with sadness, it has the power to uplift too.

I feel genuinely privileged I got to see her play three times, once pre and twice post her Back to Black revelation. All three performances were truly memorable.

The first was two years before her commercial breakthrough at the Miller Stratpack concert in September 2004. The Wembley Arena event celebrated 50 years of the iconic Fender Stratocaster guitar and featured Hank Marvin, David Gilmour, Brian May, Gary Moore and many others including Amy - lest we forget, a great guitarist as well as a supremely gifted singer. She performed three songs from her 2003 debut album Frank (Take the Box, In My Bed, Stronger than Me) and the impact was palpable. Joy in her eyes, hope in her heart and the future waiting patiently for her next move. Most of all, I remember the hush - a silent respect for a 21-year-old girl shining brightly amongst a galaxy of established stars.

By the time I saw her again nearly three years later at the 2007 Isle of Wight Festival, it looked different (thousands of admiring fans, full backing band) but felt the same. Strip away the huge chart success and expanded stage show and only one thing counted - Amy. A stunning showcase of an iconic album and a performance to treasure.

The third time was just 24 hours later but Saturday sunshine had been replaced by Sunday darkness as Amy joined festival headliners The Rolling Stones for a raucous rendition of Ain't Too Proud to Beg. Chewing gum and cavorting with Mick Jagger, she couldn't have looked more at home in such revered company. Just one song, but what a moment.

Her issues and tragic death are well documented, but when I think about Amy, I think about this quote. During the recording of Back to Black's title track, producer and song co-writer Mark Ronson suggested she fixed the words to the non-rhyming chorus ("We only said goodbye with words, I died a hundred times"). She simply replied: "Why would I fix that? That's what came out."

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There are times when a single is just not enough - cream, espresso, whiskey.

And so it proved sixty years ago this week, when the 'rock' double album was born on a high tide of mid-60s creativity.

Appropriately enough, one of its parents was Frank Zappa and his unclassifiable Mothers of Invention - the other was Bob Dylan. And although there is some debate over which came first, both Freak Out! and Blonde on Blonde were released in June 1966.

Until this point, the double album had been the exclusive preserve of jazz and classical music, but the experimental mindset and friendly competition of music's most fabled decade eventually just overpowered the single record format.

Zappa's imagination was too much for a single album from the start (Freak Out! was his debut), while 1965 had seen both Dylan and The Beatles release two single albums in six month periods with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, and Help! and Rubber Soul, respectively.

The creative dam had to break and break it did with the arrival of Zappa and the coronation of Dylan. Freak Out! consisted of 14 songs over four sides and concluded with a bizarre unfinished 12-minute piece called The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet. As for Dylan, he also had 14 songs, including his own epic 11-minute closer Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands which Tom Waits described as 'a dream, a riddle and a prayer'.

For the other 60s big guns, this was a case of Challenge Accepted with a capital C and capital A. The Beatles responded with The White Album (1968), Jimi Hendrix with Electric Ladyland (1968), The Rolling Stones with Exile on Main St. (1972), The Who with Quadrophenia (1973) and Led Zeppelin with Physical Graffiti (1975). The world of progressive rock world be hard to imagine without the double albums of Genesis, Pink Floyd, Yes and Rush.

More than half a century on, the double album is very much alive and kicking - from Taylor Swift to Cindy Lee, The Cure to Kate Bush. Let's take a moment to thank Frank and Bob for getting us started.

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A couple of weeks ago, Pink Floyd released a new career-spanning compilation called 8-Tracks. I was giving it a spin on a green-tinted streaming platform when my eyes were drawn to an alluring object at the foot of the screen. Under the heading 'Merch' was a picture of a Wish You Were Here 50th anniversary Welcome to the Machine Multi Tool. A what??

Further inspection revealed that this product (just $25 to you) was part of the Wish You Were Here Anniversary Collection 'featuring exclusive designs inspired by the album's unforgettable music and imagery, exploring themes of absence, isolation and the music industry's pitfalls'. That's one hell of a pen knife!

Intrigued, I ventured deeper into this unexpected treasure trove. It got even better. From the same collection, there was a 'limited edition' Wish You Were Here swim cap which - I kid you not - 'stands as a small but lasting tribute to the music that continues to inspire'. A bargain at $20. Scroll right and there's a WYWH50 Stage Crew jacket, just in case you fancy being a roadie in your spare time. It's worth considering because at $125 a pop, you'll need another job. Having said that, there is a handy 1975 stage pass on the front which will get you into a gig that happened over 50 years ago. There's even a branded WYWH Wooden Keepsake box to store coins and jewellery in the unlikely event you have any money or possessions left after splurging everything on Pink Floyd merchandise.

Other than sharing my wonder at such a mesmerising cornucopia of essential band merch, the words that really jumped out at me above - if you can remember that far back - were these: 'exploring...the music industry's pitfalls'. Unwittingly, this collection of merch really does do that. Pink Floyd (a band I like a lot, especially 1977's Animals) have every right to offer fans such a vast array of products. But by doing so they highlight the gaping chasm between the top and the bottom of the music industry.

A multi-million selling band who released their final album in 2014 are absolutely entitled to celebrate the achievements of days gone by. Their legacy continues to grow. The same is true of many other artists from the 60s and 70s. Their P&Ls are ticking over nicely. But what about bands at the start of their career? For established artists, merch is the cherry on top of the cake, but for today's emerging artists, it is increasingly a base ingredient required to create the cake in the first place. No merch, no band.

I witnessed a striking example of this recently at a Big Long Sun gig. This Brighton-based eight-piece share Floyd's prog leanings but that's where the similarities end. Halfway through their performance on the first night of their UK tour, lead singer Jamie Broughton humbly requested that if the audience enjoyed the gig, they could buy something from the merch stand afterwards as it would help the band break even or perhaps earn a small amount from their nationwide trek. Without merch, they were running at a guaranteed loss. It's the case for more established artists too - last year, the respected Texan guitarist Hayden Pedigo was selling his own merch and even operating the card reader after his UK gigs. With five studio albums and a recent deal with Sub Pop under his belt, he is hardly a beginner.

So, by all means treat yourself to that celebratory swim cap, but when you do, remember that for bands in the starting lane, merch is not a lap of honour but a way to keep their heads above water.

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It had to be the car. The star of the iconic video, the emblem of a song that changed everything in the summer of 1981. Given the state of the nation at the time, it's a wonder it started at all.

The 1961 Vauxhall Cresta featured in the video for The Specials' Ghost Town may not have been manufactured in Coventry but everything else about the UK's darkest, weirdest Number One was - the poverty, the despair, the anger and the vibrant cultural melting pot that unceremoniously booted Michael Jackson from the top of the charts.

Released 45 years ago today, Ghost Town could only have been born in Coventry, a city built on the motor industry, a city where the car represented its dramatic rise and desperate fall. In the 1950s, the UK was the world’s leading car exporter and Coventry became known as its ‘Motor City’ - workers flocked from every corner of the Commonwealth and beyond to help build the future. But by the 1970s, a rise in European and American manufacturing saw Coventry’s car output slump and factories began to close. The Specials were born into this rollercoaster chapter of the city's history and nurtured on a streetwise blend of British, American and Caribbean music that the factory workers had brought with them. These influences hallmarked the sound of the band as proudly as the world-famous logos which adorned the city's Jaguar and Triumph cars.

In June 1981, Coventry was a barometer for the nation - the country was falling apart and so were The Specials. Riots spreading, industry crumbling, unemployment rocketing and inter-band tensions closing in. All of this national and local chaos contributed to the collapsing genius of Ghost Town - it's hot outside and sweltering inside. You can hear the claustrophobia from the tiny Leamington Spa studio cellar where the seven band members were cooped up - it was so small that each member of the group had to record their parts individually as opposed to their usual group recording. This sense of isolation screams out of the confining four walls of Woodbine Street studio and captured the hearts and minds of millions who recognised every scathing syllable of the story it told.

It was Jerry Dammers who first recognised the space that could frame their analysis of the UK's downward spiral. Hearing Victor Romero Evans’ 1980 reggae/lover’s rock song At The Club, he tracked down producer John Collins to help create a similar ambience. It's fair to say he succeeded and some of the uncertainty around both the band and the song played a part - undecided on the role of backing vocals, Collins found himself with full versions from Dammers, Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple - he incorporated them all, creating the hypnotic wall of vocals that is one of the song's defining features.

Ghost Town was named Single of the Year by all three UK music magazines - Sounds, Melody Maker and NME. A divided nation agreed on one thing. And the best part of all - it still sounds like it was released yesterday. A stunning achievement.

As the much-missed Hall said: "Every band should fold after Ghost Town really, because what else are you going to do?" Car or no car, there was nowhere left to go. The Specials split up at the Top of the Pops recording of Ghost Town. The song is here to stay.

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Foster & Allen were my gateway drug to the magical and mysterious world of Irish trad.

Tucked away amongst my Dad's slim but select collection of classical, Perry Como and Christmas records were a handful of Irish compilation albums - as an aspiring rock'n'roll disciple, these Celtic ramblings were of little interest to me. But like religious incense, I was slowly intoxicated by the woozy sentimentality of the ballads of the Emerald Isle. Foster & Allen's version of I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen was on regular rotation, as was When You Were Sweet Sixteen by The Fureys. My Dad would belt out the choruses (he really could sing) and pretty soon so would I.

The former wasn't even Irish - incredibly, it was written in 1875 by a German American. But no matter, the shackles were off and, encouraged by a better understanding of Irish history and family heritage, The Pogues and The Dubliners came naturally. The Fields of Athenry permeated the pubs and terraces of the 80s and Sinéad O'Connor's fiery embrace of her homeland's unique storytelling lineage sealed the deal.

Looking back, I don't think you find Irish traditional music, it finds you. And once it's done so, it won't let you alone. From the quiet corners of Connemara to riotous gatherings like the Willie Clancy Festival in County Clare, it's a thread that gently weaves its way into your life and holds you close.

A fellow Substacker described it well recently: "In a time where the need to stay connected to our roots feels stronger than ever, music becomes a way to navigate identity - not as something static, but as a living, evolving continuum. A dialogue between place, memory and the present moment."

For me, the current band who truly capture the power of Irish trad are Lankum whose terrifying resurrection of the ghosts of the past conjures a bleak beauty as captivating as any landscape the mighty island has to offer. In an article on the great poet Seamus Heaney last year, the Yale Review described his pen as 'an excavating tool' - in a musical sense, Lankum are digging deep too and what they find, foul or fair, is almost always magic. Live, they are untouchable. It's no coincidence that despite all the Irish talent showcased in the film, the recent Peaky Blinders - The Immortal Man saves Lankum's Hunting the Wren for the blazing dramatic finale.

Lankum and other pioneering Irish artists like Lisa O'Neill, Madra Salach and John Francis Flynn may seem a long way from the radiant harmonies of Foster & Allen but the still touring duo will always be the start of a road that continues to reveal wonderful new discoveries around every corner.

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Their names may not trigger instant recognition but without Howard Trafford and Pete McNeish we may never have heard of Steven Patrick Morrissey, Mark E. Smith, Peter Hook or Ian Curtis.

Trafford and McNeish were Bolton Technical College students who made it their mission to track down the Sex Pistols and manager Malcolm McLaren in early 1976. Having successfully done so, the pair invited the Pistols to play a Manchester gig fifty years ago this week.

The venue was the Lesser Free Trade Hall and Trafford and McNeish were now Devoto and Shelley, architects of a fledgling Buzzcocks. What happened that night changed Manchester music forever.

Estimates quote the crowd at around 40 but amongst their number were Morrissey, Hook and Mick Hucknall. All were inspired to start a band - Morrissey wrote a letter to NME (obviously!), Hook went out and bought a bass guitar the following day while Hucknall quickly assembled punksters Frantic Elevators before losing his way with Simply Red. Punk poet John Cooper Clarke and maverick producer Martin Hannett were also in attendance.

Still basking in the glow of the first gig, the Pistols returned to the Lesser Free Trade Hall six weeks later. This time, Buzzcocks were the support band and Smith, Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Tony Wilson and Alan McGee were there. It's fair to say that between them, those gathered made a seismic impact on Manchester culture.

No Trafford/Devoto and McNeish/Shelley, no Sex Pistols in Manchester. And probably no Joy Division, no New Order, no Fall, no Smiths and no Factory Records. Not to mention Buzzcocks and Magazine. And the multitude of bands who followed them.

It may have been Lesser in name, but the legacy of Manchester's Free Trade Hall is anything but.

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Say it again. "It's not their best album. It's really not their best album. In fact, it could be their worst album." OK, keep saying it because I'm not listening. Actually, more than that - I know what you're saying is true, I'm just choosing to ignore it.

This is my final and unequivocal stance on Roxy Music's seventh studio album Flesh and Blood, released on this day 46 years ago. The last part of that sentence is the most important.

The summer of 1980 is when the unknown started to become something real, something terrifying, something possible. The wonders of life were gradually unfurling in front of my 14-year-old eyes and Flesh and Blood was the soundtrack - a passport to exotica that smelt of candy floss, toffee apples, patchouli oil and cheap shandy. A fairground summer where gypsy smiles promised the world for just 50p and it was the best 50p you ever spent. Your stomach churning and you not knowing if it was the waltzer, a passing glimpse of a beautiful girl or both. Over You. Oh Yeah. Same Old Scene. Three singles played again and again in a never-ending loop where all was good with the world.

So, frankly I didn't care if Virginia Plain, Do the Strand and Street Life were 'better'. Not for me, they weren't - though it has to be said that the Love is the Drug bassline is truly monumental.

Flesh and Blood was more than the gateway to Roxy Music, it was the gateway to everything and while I didn't fully understand at the time, it is indisputable now.

Rolling Stone called the album 'shockingly bad' and 'art-rock disco'. Other reviews were similarly scathing but it didn't stop Flesh and Blood breezing serenely into the UK album chart and staying there for a year. The public voting with their sunburned feet.

Like all great music, how it sounds is the invitation to come in but how it feels is the invitation to stay. I have stubbornly remained and have no plans to move on anytime soon.

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Have you ever heard a band called Shocking Blue?

No? Think again. This obscure 1960s Dutch outfit not only wrote Bananarama's biggest hit and Nirvana's debut single, they also recorded versions of a future White Stripes classic and an iconic BBC TV game show theme tune - all on the same album!

Formed in The Hague in 1967, Shocking Blue were part of the Nederbeat scene, alongside the likes of Golden Earring who later enjoyed global success with Radar Love.

Shocking Blue's beautiful but shy, wig-wearing singer Mariska Veres oozes star quality on the band's psychedelic 1969 hit Venus, something that grabbed the attention of 80s pop trio Bananarama who persuaded Stock Aitken Waterman to give it the 'Dead or Alive' treatment forty years ago this week. It became their biggest hit, going to Number One in six markets.

The original of Venus was on Shocking Blue's second album At Home - but there was much more. Halfway through the record is Love Buzz, a sitar-driven freak-out that almost twenty years later was chosen as Nirvana's debut single in 1988. While their cover is great, other than a heavy layer of Seattle sludge, it doesn't stray too far from the original.

Remarkably, this little-known album also includes two other significant cultural touchpoints. Opening track Boll Weevil is admittedly a traditional blues standard but The White Stripes went on to close their set with it for many years and, strangest of all, another cover version on the album - Acka Raga by John Mayer - was also the theme tune for wholesome BBC game show Ask the Family in the late 60s and early 70s.

At Home is actually a great album, full stop (check out Poor Boy and The Butterfly and I), but almost half a century later, its cultural impact resonates as strongly as ever.

Sometimes, discovery is intentional but arguably it has more impact when it creeps up on you in a most unfamiliar cloak.

And so it was for me twenty years ago this week. A Balkan folk album written by an American teenager apparently fixated by German geography wasn't on my - or anyone else's - radar. Two decades on, Beirut's dazzling debut album Gulag Orkestar is in my top ten records of all time. Here's why.

Perhaps more than any other album I own, it takes you somewhere - if you're tempted to press the 'WTF is he on about now?' button, please just give the opening title track four minutes of your time. If it moves you, there is a whole world of joyous sightseeing to explore.

At the time, a review from the much missed Drowned In Sound said this: "We are the Gulag Orkestar. We are this tattered and glorious mess of bodies lit by spare flames and moonlight and surrounded by friends and soon-to-be-friends. Such is the feeling that this album exudes with every thump, crash, rattle and clap. It's an album you're invited to and told to bring warm coats and a hip flask. A party both boisterous and intimate, in a tunnel, a field or a forest." When you're in it, you're really in it.

Perhaps most impressive of all is that this atlas of our global musical landscape was created by someone so young - Beirut is New Mexico native Zach Condon who turned 20 just before the album was released. Apart from writing and singing all the songs, he also plays trumpet, piano, organ, flugelhorn, ukulele, mandolin, accordion and percussion. Precocious, moi?

It feels churlish to pick out individual tracks but when it comes to lifting you off your feet, Postcards from Italy (another rogue geographical reference!) is an Artemis II of a song.

Today, Beirut has recorded seven albums and five EPs, dabbling in everything from French chanson to Mexican funeral marches via an early flirtation with electronica. It's all brilliant and live he expands our horizons yet further. If you're going to get lost, Beirut is the perfect place to do it.

“We’d lie on the floor of the studio, turn off the lights and let it wash over us.” You can say that again.

This quote is from 10cc bassist Graham Gouldman and he's talking about the band's monster hit I'm Not In Love which was released this week in 1975. With its exultant multitracked wall of choral voices, there is nothing before or since that sounds remotely like it.

But this palatial anti-ballad - with its unlikely roots in Halifax and Stockport - was just one interruption away from being thrown in the bin. As the band struggled to bring its lofty vision to life, studio receptionist Cathy Redfern interrupted the recording session to pass on a message. Her voice sparked the idea for the whispered 'big boys don't cry' middle section and she soon found herself starring on the UK Number One single.

The other voices, incredibly, are tape loops of just three people - Gouldman and bandmates Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. At Creme's suggestion, they created the wall of sound through tape loops painstakingly recorded one note at a time over a period of three weeks. Each member sang each individual note 16 times to create 48 voices for each note and this was then fed through the mixing desk to create the warm, velvet harmonies that lift the song to a higher place.

Ultimately though, the song belongs to 10cc keyboardist Eric Stewart - his story and his lead vocals.

A few years after meeting his future wife Gloria at Halifax Town Hall, she questioned why he didn't express his feelings for her anymore. I'm Not In Love was his response and the lead vocals you hear are the first take from the session at the band's Strawberry Studios in Stockport.

These proud Northern towns may not be Casablanca or Venice, but they gave us arguably the greatest love song ever written.

Marketing plans. Social media campaigns. Influencer strategies.

Want to hear the 1976 version? Watching an incredible new band, legging it to the nearest phone box in between sets and telling your mates to drop what they were doing and get there quick.

Having never played outside Australia before, that is exactly how AC/DC's career took off in the UK fifty years ago this week. After the band's planned tour support slot with Back Street Crawler fell through (main man and former Free guitarist Paul Kossoff died on a US flight in March 1976), record company Atlantic had to move to Plan B - back to grass roots and a free gig at a West London pub.

Things didn't start well. With little fanfare, a measly 30 people gathered in The Red Cow. However, one high voltage blast of AC/DC was enough to have them running for the exits in the very best way - the Scottish/Australian mongrel upstarts were playing another set and not to be missed. Listen to set opener Live Wire, It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll) and T.N.T. today and you'll see why the second 45-minute set was packed, with more than 100 people squeezed into the room (not to mention the thousands of others who no doubt claimed to have been there!).

Apparently, at one point, legendary lead guitarist Angus Young was playing a solo on the shoulders of a roadie up and down the busy Hammersmith Road while the rest of the band carried on in the pub. Remember this was the very early days of punk - the Sex Pistols had played a low key debut the previous November but the Bill Grundy TV appearance and Anarchy in the U.K. tour were still six months away. AC/DC were proto punk, whether the industry thought so or not.

A couple of prestigious gigs followed at London's iconic Marquee club in May and by June the band were on the road, starting with a frenzied homecoming in Glasgow (both Angus and Malcolm Young were born there, and singer Bon Scott was from nearby Forfar). A letter to their record company from the City of Glasgow District Council described the audience as 'entirely out of control'. Job done. Next was a summer residency back at the Marquee, the Reading Rock Festival and a headline show at the Hammersmith Odeon. By the end of the year, their UK success was signed, sealed and delivered.

Today, AC/DC are arguably the most well-oiled marketing juggernaut on the rock'n'roll highway but their journey to international stardom started in a West London phone box. A timely reminder that great live music sells itself.