People were shocked when Grace Jones performed her “One Man Show” at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in October 1981. Including me.

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The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel was not the first hip-hop hit but it was a landmark in the emergence of rap upon its release in 1981 – and the first hit to use scratching.

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Funny old time, the late 1960s. The British blues boom was coming to an end and bands were turning those 12-bar tunes into heavy rock.

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This strange but fascinating instrumental is a real one-off. I defy anyone to tell me what genre this should be filed under in a record shop. It’s got a dramatic, atmospheric vibe, as befits its status as library music, but there’s also funk lurking in there somewhere; just don’t try dancing to it.

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This song sounds as strange today as it did when I first heard it on the John Peel Show in 1981. It always does. An a capella song eight and a half minutes long, based on an operatic aria from a century earlier, it was the unlikeliest of hit singles. And yet… Such was its unique appeal that it reached No.2 in the UK charts.

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Chant! Chant! Chant! were working-class lads from the northside of Dublin and were Ireland’s answer to Joy Division: at least that’s what their publicist would have said if they had one.

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This was the first funk I ever really “got” – I remember first hearing it in a pub on the Mile End End where there was a DJ who span tunes far removed from my usual New Wave and postpunk fare.

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Sticking with the No Wave post-disco sound of Ze Records, here is the weird, eclectic and infectious debut single by Was (Not Was).

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Lizzy Mercier Descloux was one of the first artists to make a mark on the Ze label as the No Wave movement gathered momentum in New York.

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This is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. I never tire of hearing it, with its shimmering echo from speaker to speaker, Green Gartside’s romantic vocal and Robert Wyatt’s syncopated piano.

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