The Ramones had a late-career peak in 1985 when they released their first protest song, the anti-Reagan anthem Bonzo Goes To Bitburg.

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When I first heard Domino on The Cramps’ landmark debut Gravest Hits EP, prompting the birth of psychobilly in 1979, I had no idea it was a Roy Orbison song.

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Anyone who’s ever had that sinking feeling as they get ready to go to work will empathise with this song. The title says it all.

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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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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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Here is the MC5’s infamous hometown performance by a Detroit highway in July 1970.  Thirty-four years later I finally got to see them play for myself.

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Here’s a trio of songs for Christmas – one for opening the presents, another for after dinner at the end of the day, and one for Boxing Day.

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This lost gem from 1976 is a little piece of punk history – the first single to be released by a West Coast punk band. A double A-side of Hot Wire My Heart and Baby You’re So Repulsive (surely a contender for best punk song title), it was the debut single by a San Francisco band called Crime.

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One of the great singles from the punk period, Spanish Stroll has nothing much in common with the rest of the CBGBs crowd. But that’s where it came from. And it’s just a classic, with that lazily strummed guitar intro and the spoken word Spanish bit in the middle.

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Here’s an oddity from the depths of my punk-era singles collection. It was only decades later that a friend picked this obscurity out and recognised two of the names on the sleeve – not as musicians, but as music journalists.

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