Here’s a recording that never gets mentioned in lists of the best cover versions… but it probably should. It takes the Righteous Brothers song in an entirely new direction.

When it came out in 1978 my main interest was the fact that Willie ‘Loco’ Alexander had been in the final line-up of The Velvet Underground.

An alumnus of a Boston psych band called The Lost, he was brought in on keyboards by Doug Yule, his old bandmate from The Glass Menagerie, after Sterling Morrison left to study medieval literature late in 1971.

This final VU line-up, with Yule on vocals, toured the UK and Europe, though I’ve never met anyone who saw them. They disbanded before the recording of the band’s final album Squeeze: effectively a solo Yule album with the addition, trivia fans, of Deep Purple’s Ian Paice on drums.

‘Loco’ went on to form Willie Alexander and the Persistence of Memory Orchestra and Willie Alexander and the Confessions. In between came Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band, who recorded a punkish album in 1978.

This was – and still is – the highlight, especially the bit where Willie’s overemotional vocal breaks down and he sobs “Gimme a break”… and the guitarist obliges.