Here’s UK dubmeister Dennis Bovell making a cameo appearance on fellow dub maestro Elijah Minnelli’s new album, the interestingly titled Clams As A Main Meal.

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I vividly remember the first time I heard Public Enemy. It was the most exciting new music since I first saw and heard the Pistols, Ramones and Clash.

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Here’s another Northern Soul classic, courtesy of The Younghearts from Los Angeles,  California. This was their debut single in 1967, with a falsetto vocal that calls to mind Smokey Robinson.

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This is The Stranglers song Golden Brown as you’ve never heard it before – transformed into a slice of smooth jazz. And it’s wonderful.

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It’s not often you hear people describe a guitarist who doesn’t generally do solos as one of the all-time greats. But countless other guitar greats gave that accolade to Steve Cropper.

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Soft Cell’s biggest hit was the inevitable play-out song at the funeral of Dave Ball. It was never going to be anything else.

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Jimmy Cliff was one of the first reggae singers to enjoy a hit single in the UK. And one of the outliers who turned Jamaica’s national music into a global sound.

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I have to confess I didn’t know the singer of this Northern Soul favourite, Bobby Garrett, was the same ‘Bob’ in Bob & Earl, who sang the mega-hit Harlem Shuffle.

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If you’d asked me what I thought about Demis Roussos, this would not spring to mind. I would not have answered with a king of disco. 

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Sex Mask are a young post-punk trio from Melbourne and this song, Blisters, finds them collaborating with another local band, Radio Free Alice.

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