I was wondering what would be the perfect song to play on the hottest day we’ve ever had when I remembered this… a song that immediately conjures up a sweltering summer’s day in New York.

It’s a celebration of smashing open fire hydrants to cool down in the spray – a summertime lark that ends, darkly, with our African-American perpetrator being shot by the cops for carrying a monkey wrench.

It’s essentially a Black Lives Matter anthem from 1981. It’s also one of the earliest examples of hip-hop.

J Walter Negro is the alter-ego of a graffiti artist called Marc André Edmonds (aka ALI) who reinvented himself to write and sing/rap this tune.

I think I first heard it, like so much else, on the John Peel show, and I remember buying the 12-inch on import.

It was a popular tune with the DJ at The Old Globe in Mile End, where I used to meet up with a few mates from the punk period – Steve and Lana, Ronnie and Jo and John Wardle, better known as Jah Wobble.

It’s probably that DJ who first introduced me to funk during that brief interlude when punk had fizzled out and a raft of post-punk groups – The Pop Group, Gang of Four, Au Pairs, Magazine, A Certain Ratio – were injecting elements of funk into their sound.

At the same time an artier end of funk was emerging from the East Coast of America in the shape of Grace Jones in Philly and New York’s No Wave scene, while the pioneering Ze label brought us Kid Creole and James White (aka James Chance), Bill Laswell’s Material, Was (Not Was) and Lizzy Mercier Descloux.

Anyway. As the temperature rises towards 40C in London today, what wouldn’t we give to have a monkey wrench today so we could find a fire hydrant and Shoot The Pump.