If dance music was​ rock music, then this tune, Waters Of Nazareth by French dance duo Justice, would be its Smoke On The Water.

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Here’s a new playlist for the end of Spring and… hopefully… the start of Summer. There’s seminal hip-hop, hardcore techno, primal punk, vintage soul, vintage folk-rock, funk, country and Congolese rumba. And probably more besides. 

Pete Wylie had his finest moment – and biggest hit – when Wah! released The Story Of The Blues at Christmas 1982, and reached No.3 in the charts.

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Charley Crockett is a new name to me, though I feel I ought to have heard of a guy who’s made 14 albums in nine years. His hybrid of country, blues and soul taps into that sound forged at Muscle Shoals in the late Sixties and Seventies, with smouldering horns and searing blues guitar matched to a country twang.

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Blue Cheer was never been anything more than a name to me – a late-Sixties band that I’d never actually heard. Now that I finally have… well, fucking hell!

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Mel Day first came to fame at the age of 77 as a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent. Now he’s made a brilliant slice of Deep Soul with Tito Lopez Combo.

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There was a time when the demise of a Moody Blue might have made headlines; at least in the music press. This week the death of keyboard player Mike Pinder – the last of the original members – passed almost unnoticed. But not by me.

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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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When The Adverts invited Nico to play her first gig in four years in April 1978 not everyone was excited as me to see the Velvet Underground’s iconic chanteuse in the flesh.

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The first time I heard this I was knocked sideways. I expected experimentation from Brian Eno and David Byrne, but My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts took it to a whole new level.

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