It’s taken nearly 45 years for me to find out that Blondie’s 1978 hit single was a cover version. This is the original from two years earlier – the only record ever released by The Nerves.

To be fair, it’s one of those rare occasions where you can’t choose a favourite – both versions are sublime. They’re also almost exactly the same, apart from the change of gender in the Blondie version.

A short-lived power pop band, The Nerves were formed in Los Angeles by guitarist Jack Lee, bassist Peter Case and drummer Paul Collins in 1974. They all wrote and sang, composing a song each on their four-track EP, with Lee taking two – including this one.

Their career was over by the time Blondie appropriated their best song but by then they had supported The Ramones across the US and Canada.

With hindsight, it seems entirely likely that someone from the Blondie camp saw them then, or was at Max’s Kansas City when The Nerves played a four-night NYC residency in 1977.

Officially, however, they first heard the song when they were on tour in Japan and their bus driver put it on the cassette player and began tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

The Nerves also made a live album recorded the same year in Cleveland supporting Devo and Pere Ubu, whose singer David Thomas also put them up during their stay in Ohio.

After the split, Case and Collins recorded an album as The Breakaways before Collins formed a band called The Beat, whose most notable contribution to pop history was to make our Two-Tone favourites change their name to The English Beat.

Case, meanwhile, formed The Plimsouls who made the power pop classic A Million Miles Away – a song so transcendently perfect that you wonder why on earth they weren’t massively successful.

And Lee, who was rewarded with a second composition on Parallel Lines – Will Anything Happen? – went on to write Come Back And Stay, a top 5 hit for Paul Young.

As for Hanging On The Telephone, it’s been covered by artists as diverse as L7, Cat Power and Def Leppard, while The Nerves became posthumous cover stars on the sleeve of the 1993 compilation album DIY: Come Out And Play – American Power Pop (1975-78).

That included Hanging On The Telephone and When You Find Out, another track from the original EP, and a previously unreleased Nerves number, One-Way Ticket, appeared on the 2005 compilation Children Of Nuggets.