I think the only Jeff Beck record in my collection is the single Hi Ho Silver Lining, which does not exactly show the guitarist at his virtuosic best. But this does: an incendiary live performance of a tune from his instrumental album Blow By Blow, recorded at Ronnie Scott’s in 2007.

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Merle Haggard’s self-penned number from 1974 has all the elements of the perfect Christmas song – a sad, sentimental, yet optimistic lyric, and a cracking tune.

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These guys were never more than a name to me – a name synonymous with psychedelic San Francisco acid rock. So too the name of their virtuoso guitarist John Cipollina.

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Some time in 1979 I was at a gig at the Electric Ballroom when a sharp-dressed man with a prematurely balding dome and pallid complexion walked past me. He was not a looker by any means, but he had a stunning girl on his arm. I recognised him as Joe Jackson; and his debut single came instantly and inevitably to mind.

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Considering rule one of punk was to adopt a convincingly anti-social working-class persona, Rikki And The Last Days Of Earth made a rookie error. They had the look – all leather and spiky hair – and they were certainly early adopters, releasing their first single in May 1977.

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I’ve had this terrible seven-inch EP by lower-league punk group Riff Raff in my collection for nearly 45 years and I had no idea until literally just now that the singer is Billy Bragg.

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Of all the crimes committed in the name of music, few deserve a capital sentence more than this 1979 performance by Punishment Of Luxury. As you would expect from a group who had the truly terrible idea of marrying punk to its polar opposite, prog.

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Amid the visceral energy and tuneless thrashing of punk, a label called Beserkley somehow surfed along on the New Wave with a bunch of records that reminded us what a tune was. This was one of the best examples – a jangly version of a song from Springsteen’s debut album by a bloke called Greg Kihn.

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I went to see Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers for the first time at Hammersmith Odeon in the summer of ’77 and he sang Ice Cream Man – six times in a row.

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I never thought I’d be singing the praises of disco tunes, least of all from a period when I was plunged deep in punk and post-punk. Until I remembered this hit by Odyssey.

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