In the early Seventies my brief flirtation with Welsh rock bands seems to have extended to a third, Budgie.

Unlike Man and Sassafras, with their twin guitar line-ups and proggy tendencies, Budgie were a stripped-back power trio of guitar, bass and drums.

I bought their 1973 album Never Turn Your Back On A Friend, perhaps attracted by the sleeve, one of those gatefold affairs with Roger Dean artwork involving animated fantasy figures.

In this case a man wrestles with a giant budgie on a mountaintop and the band’s name has a logo spelt out in that characteristically curly lettering, which I used to copy in my exercise books.

Musically, I think I was attracted largely by the opening track Breadfan, a frantic number built on one of the most colossal riffs in the history of heavy rock.

The song’s brilliance is in beginning with the riff on its own, played on the guitar several times over until it drills itself into your head. Like a budgie pecking at a cuttlefish bone, you might say.

The bass and drums arrive like a sledgehammer… only for the heaviness to be dissipated by Burke Shelley’s high, rather weedy wail.

On reflection, I think it’s the vocals that deterred me from heavy metal in most forms – the histrionic shrieking of a Robert Plant or an Ian Gillan or, the nearest parallel here, the high-pitched howling of Rush’s Geddy Lee.

Still, it’s a top tune, and the album was OK at the time, even though I can’t remember any of it after the opening two numbers, the second being a turbocharged take on Baby Please Don’t Go.

The third, I now discover to my horror is a reminder of how heavy rock groups at the time were obliged to include the obligatory “slow one” – while the fourth involves that other ghastly trope of heavy metallers, the drum solo.

I have now lost the will to plough any further. So I will leave you with this.