Over the years there have been songs that caught my imagination without the artist ever finding a place in my musical life. This is one of those songs – and Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band are one of those artists.

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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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I never heard this when it came out back in 1975 – I was listening to Wish You Were Here until Horses came along – but I’ve heard that drum break sampled dozens of times in hip hop and house tunes since then.

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A Taste Of Honey were one of the few disco outfits to write, sing and play their own tunes. This was their debut single – and their only hit.

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One of my favourite singers; one of my favourite songs. What more could you want – a killer dub by The Revolutionaries? It ticks that box too.

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Jerry Williams Jr is one of the great cult figures of 20th century American music – better known by his eventual stage name Swamp Dogg.

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Fifty years ago this week Gram Parsons died in Room 8 of the Joshua Tree Inn in California, filled with morphine, barbiturates and alcohol, at the age of only 26.

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There was no escaping this song in the summer of ’77, though I was far more interested in the Pistols and the Clash than chart-topping disco tunes.

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I don’t know how I forgot this one when I was trawling through the songs of my childhood. It wasn’t a big hit but back in 1974 it seemed to be everywhere.

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I don’t know how you can make a song sound this funky with little more than a bunch of drums from Africa and Asia. But dammit, Nina Simone can. And she did.

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