I’d never heard of The Bears until I began reading Richard Norris’s memoir, Strange Things Are Happening, and came across their debut single, On Me.

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Yesterday, as every good Catholic knows, was Good Friday – the counter-intuitively named day when Jesus was crucified. So it was only right and fitting that I spent the evening watching The Jesus and Mary Chain at The Roundhouse. And it was doubly appropriate that they finished their set with their cataclysmic anthem Reverence.

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This refreshingly primitive punk nugget by The Innocent Vicars is one of those lost gems that you unearth by chance. Or in this case because I’m reading the singer’s newly published memoir, Strange Things Are Happening (Adventures In Music).

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Is there a genre called jazz-dub? If there isn’t – or wasn’t – then I think it’s been invented on this tune. I can’t stop playing it.

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Black Uhuru were everywhere in the late ’70s. It seemed they would step into Bob Marley’s shoes after his death in 1981 – only for their lead singer, Michael Rose, to leave the group.

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Before he became a pop star singing sweet soul pastiches, Plan B was a hardcore rapper tackling social issues like the death of Damilola Taylor.

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I’m not entirely sure what I think about these posthumous recordings, where a living artist duets with a dead one. Some work well; others defile the dead artist’s memory. I think this one settles the argument in their favour.

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Here’s a slice of smooth summery jazz-funk from Southern California’s so-called Inland Empire – the area south-east of LA that includes Palm Springs and San Bernadino.

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One of the best riffs of all time when Muddy Waters recorded it back in 1955, it somehow sounds even better in the dextrous hands of George Thorogood a quarter of a century later.

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It’s always dangerous to try messing with perfection but this take on a Gil Scott-Heron classic stands up alongside his tribute to Lady Day and John Coltrane.

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