Spacemen 3/Wooden Shjips - split 7-inch single (2010)

Having written about the first single I ever bought last time out, this is the most recent - and it's definitely the stuff of vinyl geek dreams.

A limited edition red vinyl single featuring previously unreleased Spacemen 3 material with artwork drawn by an original member of the band plus a cover of one of their finest tunes by San Francisco freaks Wooden Shjips thrown in for good measure. Not exactly a steal at nine quid but who needs new socks when there's this to buy?

Split singles are about as indie as it gets - a show of comradeship and a treat for the fans - not to mention a good way to get a bit more cash over the merch desk on a tour. Oasis would never have bothered with a split single. Too small time.

Mind you, Metallica and Black Sabbath put one out together in April to celebrate Record Store Day, so it would seem all things are possible.

This is actually the second Spacemen 3 split single I've got, the previous one coming free with a fanzine in 1990, with the Spacemen and Mudhoney covering each other's songs to great effect.

The 'new' Spacemen track here is labelled Big City (demo) and though it certainly went on to become the track of that name, this version must have been called something different when it was recorded as the chorus is nowhere to be heard.

The burbling synths are in place but sound more inspired by The Silver Apples, Suicide or Kraftwerk than anything being played in dance clubs of the time, while the heavily phased guitar lines are present and correct as Pete Kember once again manages to make an asset of his limited skills.

But the melody and lyrics are totally different and the song starts with a spoken intro similar to Let Me Down Gently from 1989's Playing With Fire album. Like several of Kember's songs from this period, it's not clear if it's about a girl or about his fellow Spaceman Jason Pierce.

The band was crumbling at this stage, with 1991's final album, Recurring, basically two solo albums glued together, with Kember and Pierce only playing together on one song (Mudhoney's When Tomorrow Hits, from the previous mentioned fanzine vinyl, which had already come out a year earlier and predated the album sessions).

'I felt so tied up/And I wanted to be free/And I wanted to be you/And I wanted you to be me/Yes, I was blind and I thought I could see/And I'm sorry I'm not what you needed me to be'. Make of that what you will.

It's not hard to see why Kember decided to have a rethink, taking the song in an entirely new direction apparently inspired by attending a particularly druggy Happy Mondays gig and his own experiments with ecstacy.

Giving the synth line a techno sheen and ditching the original bummer lyrics for lines such as 'All of my friends can be found here', 'Let the good times roll' and the final bliss-struck pay off of 'Waves of joy/ Yeah, I love you too' took Big City out of the bedroom and down to the disco. Of course, this being Spacemen 3, it still sounded to slow and stoned to actually work on the dance floor but it was fascinating to hear Kember absorbing the sounds of the era into his usual esoteric stew of influences.

The final version may be superior but this is still a charming work in progress, with its clear links to the Playing With Fire era.

On the flip side is Wooden Shjips version of I Believe It, originally a gospel-inspired devotional drone from Playing With Fire that's dominated by keyboards and features Kember at his most wide eyed and awe struck.

The Shjips take it to the garage and swathe it in fuzz guitar while Ripley Johnson rolls out a bluesy psych solo that owes more to Pierce than Kember.

I must confess to being in two minds about the Shjips. At times, particular the Volume One compilation of early singles, they seem utterly inspired with their endlessly refracting motorik boogie. But at other times, they strike me as absurdly stunted, locked in by a limited palate and chugging endless round in addled circles.

But I Believe It finds them at their best, with Johnson's echo-drenched whisper suiting the lyric just as well as Kember's rather more committed original version did and the Shjips managing to draw on the Spacemen's Perfect Prescription era sound to breathe fresh life into the song.

With Kember and Pierce seemingly no nearer to settling their differences than when the Spacemen finally split in 1991, this two-song morsel is a fine reminder of what a great band they were.

Fans of Big City may also find this Erol Alkan remix of interest.

My first single: Booker T & The MGs - Green Onions (1980)

I bought my first single from Woolies in Stockport in January 1980, when I was ten years old. I think I paid 59p for Green Onions out of my Christmas money, though it may well have been cheaper.

I can't recall what spurred me to actually buy it, though I dimly remember it standing out on the radio at the time - a taut, short burst of instrumental R&B played at walking pace, kind of slow and tense and groovy at the same time.

I'd been taping the Top 40 on Sunday evenings for a while and already bought my first album (Blondie's Parallel Lines, sadly on tape) so experiencing the rite of passage of buying your first single was surely overdue. Other kids at school must have been talking about what they'd bought, so I headed off to nail my colours to the mast.

I may have cheated myself of the full experience by heading to Woolies, where I was probably served by a kindly middle-aged lady, rather than some intimidating High Fidelity-style bloke disgusted by the idea of children buying music. I suspect I was also accompanied by my mother, come to think of it.

Still, despite the unpromising circumstances, Green Onions turned out to be a fine choice for first single. Quite why it wasn't something terrible like The Monks' Nice Legs Shame About Her Face or The Buggles' Video Killed The Radio Star I'm not quite sure. M's Pop Muzik and The Knack's My Sharona must have been in serious consideration about that time, because I loved both, but thankfully Green Onions was the winner when it came to parting with my money.

It came in a brown sleeve marked with the Atlantic logo - no picture sleeve sadly - and had been re-released 17 years after it was originally a US hit because it featured in Quadrophenia, to the sight of a preening Sting dancing at a Mod disco. Not that I was aware of any of this at the time.

Booker T & the MGs had disbanded back then, so there was no Top Of The Pops appearance.

I recall the huge sense of investment I felt while listening to the weekend chart after I'd bought it. Surely it would go straight to No.1 now I'd slung my resources behind it. In truth, it crept to No.7 and started to slide the week after. I felt slightly cheated.

Not that it put me off listening to the record. I've played it on and off for the last 30 years and never grown tired of it. Some of the music of your youth you lose interest it or turn against only to return to because it has such a nostalgic pull. But Green Onions has always sounded great.

It's been claimed that Green Onions in some kind of drug reference but Booker T Jones, who was just 17 when he wrote the song's great Hammond organ riff, insists it refers to a cat whose walk inspired the loping pace of the song.

That rather more innocent explanation suits the memories it evokes. Playing it now still brings back my parents' old stereo, with its wooden trim around the edges, large radio dial and top-loader tape deck.

Most of the music of my youth reminds me of friends and places but Green Onions is all about still being at home, heading into the final straight of primary school, fooling myself that I a big kid now because I was about to head off to secondary school.

Ah, Pannini stickers, the smell of cut grass on the school field, jumpers for goalposts...

Factory work: how records get made

Tucked away in the Guardian's Money section the other week was a curious little article about what was supposed to be Britain's only surviving large-scale vinyl record factory, based in Middlesex.


Back in the 1970s it was owned by EMI and used to press 1million records a week, nowadays it's down to 100,000 a month and the equipment is all 40 years old. Check out this slideshow about the place.

It looks like something you'd find at Manchester Science and Industry Museum, just up from the old machines from the cotton mills.

Making records is a messy, sticky job requiring elderly gentlemen in overalls to tinker with large, complicated machines. Lovely. Some things is life are worth sweating over.

It's the equivalent of watching your photographs swim into view in a little basin of chemicals in a dark room you've set up in your cellar, rather than churning digital pictures out of your printer. We all need a little soul in our lives, after all.

However, a few days later, it transpired that the wonderful if rather unimaginatively titled Vinyl Factory had not been the country's only old-school LP producer after all.

Police raided an industrial unit in West London to find two 'German men' presiding over a large pirate vinyl operation involving 200 record 'stampers'. It sounds faintly like something out of 'Allo 'Allo. Presumably an Italian escaped through the toilet window.

Apparently these dastardly German chaps were printing up various hard to find records, including Rolling Stones live bootlegs, and they even the equipment to make coloured vinyl. Perhaps I should put in a cheeky bid to the police for the machinery - after all, it's probably leaking oil over a corner of the station at this very moment.

Most of their output must have made it's way on to Ebay and various record shops, with a fair few collectors nervously checking recent costly purchases for a scent of bratwurst.

Which goes to show that this recent trend for rubbish-sounding but incredibly limited edition records to sell for massive money simply due to their obscurity and lack of availability might not be the best way to invest your money after all.

I'm firmly of the belief that you should buy vinyl to play it, otherwise you're missing out on the best part of the fun.

I might even get hold of a few cheap Stones bootlegs on lovely coloured vinyl now...

Neko Case - Blacklisted (2002)

Consider yourself lucky if you're reading this in Europe because you can still legitimately consider Neko Case to be your own wonderful little secret, that amazing artist that should be massive but only you seem to appreciate.

Case finally cracked it in the States last year with Middle Cyclone, crashing straight in at No.3 on the album chart and securing performing slots on David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon etc.

But in the UK, she's still lumped in with the alt.country scene that went out of fashion in the mid-Noughties. When she played Manchester on the Fox Confessor Brings The Flood tour in 2006, there were barely 150 people in attendance - but we all went home with big stupid grins plastered across our faces.

Blacklisted was the first Case album I ever heard, taking a punt due to being intrigued by The New Pornographers power-pop tune Mass Romantic she sang on and the fact that the Calexico/Giant Sand folk were all involved.

The front cover just added to the intrigue - she lies shoeless beneath a van stuffed with someone's possessions while a plane flies overhead.

She'd already played dead on the front of 2000's Furnace Room Lullaby but here she looks straight into the camera with a faint smile on her face, despite her position.

On the back cover, she's again on the floor but this time her red hair is framed by golden hay and shadowy deer look on - the idea seems to be that Case is an untameable force of nature, which is never less than unpredictable and usually outright dangerous in her songs.

The gatefold sleeve inside includes a dedication 'for the ladies' and features a list of the impressive support cast she's rustled up, including Dallas Good, John Convertino, Joey Burns, Howe Gelb, Kelly Hogan, Jon Rauhouse and Mary Margaret O'Hara.

Put the record on and it doesn't take long for Case's dark and mysterious country noir to hook you in, particularly when it frames her honeyed swoop of a voice, frail and tender one moment, fierce and strange the next.

If Case was more interested in playing the record company game, she could have sold millions without breaking sweat. Just listen to her version of Runnin' Out Of Fools that appears on side two. Not many can take on Aretha and hold their own but Case does just that, wringing every ounce of regret, need and defiance out of the song.

But Blacklisted is far too twisted and unfathomable to have taken on the mainstream, as Case acknowledged at the time: 'I'm not out to become Faith Hill, I never want to play an arena, and I never want to be on the MTV Video Music Awards, much less make a video with me in it.'

She's stayed pretty true to those words ever since. Middle Cyclone is her most pop-friendly record to date but check out the video for single People Gotta Lotta Nerve (in which she only appears in cartoon form), featuring the chorus 'I'm a man-man-man-eater' and a verse about a killer whale 'eating your leg and both your lungs'.

Just in case you're still not sure if she's as tough as she makes out, enjoy this on-stage banter (Case is well known for her amusing mid-set rambles, as showcased on 2004's The Tigers Have Spoken live album).

Murder hangs heavy in the air from the off on Blacklisted, with the lyrics for Things That Scare Me sounding like they've come from the pen of Jim Thompson or James Ellroy: 'The hammer clicks in place/ The world's gonna pay/ Right down in the face of God and his saints/ Claim your soul's not for sale/I'm a dying breed who still believes/ Haunted by American dreams'

Deep Red Bells sides with the potential victim and was influenced by Case's memories of living in Seattle when the Green River Killer was at large in the 1990s.

The mood can only get lighter, so how about a two-minute love song?

Outro With Bees is slow and gentle, with Burns on cello and Gelb on pump organ, as Case lilting tells her lover, while he has a glass of wine in his hand, not to get too comfortable: 'So it's better, my sweet/ That we hover like bees/ 'Cause there's no sure footing/ No love I believe'.

Humour starts to creep in with Lady Pilot ('She's not afraid to die') and a cover of Look For Me (I'll Be Around) that strips out all the neediness and comes on smoky femme fatale in a manner part Eartha Kitt and part Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction.

But, as great as the covers are, it's the originals you want to listen to because Case's lyrics are so gripping.
Pretty Girls is a song to female solidarity in a doctor's waiting room, finishing with the line 'I won't tell you I told you so', while I Wish I Was The Moon Tonight bends heavy with sweet melancholy soul.

The title track explores youthful fever one day finding peace but it's the album's willfulness that makes it such a pleasure.

The fact that Case has become a major selling act in the States on her own terms in the States is to be celebrated. Just as long as everyone continues to ignore her over here and I can carry on feeling smug about it...

AC/DC - Powerage (1978)

Our starcross'd lovers met in 1971 when he stepped down from a stage in Adelaide and her observation of 'That's a well packed lunch' was greeted with the response: 'Yes, two hard-boiled eggs and a sausage.' Such backstage banter usually leads to a quick tourbus bunk-up, followed by a slightly awkward goodbye, but Bon Scott and Irene Thornton were married less than a year later.

A disastrous stint in England, while Bon failed to get his hippy prog band Fraternity off the ground, took the gloss of their nuptuals, though, and the couple split in 1974. The offer of replacing AC/DC's original singer Dave Evans soon followed in September, as the band realised their early glam rock incarnation wasn't really working out.

With Bon onboard, AC/DC begin their slow climb towards becoming the fifth-biggest-selling band in US history - and the singer quickly gained a reputation as a wild man, always to be found with a drink in one hand and a dame in the other.

Despite his hellraising public image, Bon continued to write lovelorn letters to Irene in Australia. In one he pretends to write as a friend of his, saying: "There is no one in the whole wide world he loves more. Bon is very lonely and he misses his beautiful young spouse with all his heart."

This strange state of affairs continues until 1978, when Irene declares that she wants a divorce. Bon agrees - and the experience inspires the lyrics to his band's finest 40 minutes.

Stirred into the usual Bon mots about booze, sex and rock'n'roll, this makes for a revealing look of a life spent forever on the road - moments of abandon and ecstasy mixed with loneliness, boredom and frustration.

Musically, Powerage is glorious runaway train of supercharged rock'n'roll boogie, the Young brothers churning out a seemingly tireless sturm und drang stream of classic riffage. Angus provides all manner of squealing solos to drive the songs to ever greater peaks of delirium, while Bon's leather-lunged caterwaul charges in over the top. The effect is as electrifying as Angus on the front cover - you can't help feeling a wave of energy off the vinyl.

But listen to the lyrics and it starts to sound like the walls are closing in - Rock'n'Roll Damnation is half a celebration of Bon's life of excess and half a rueful acknowledgement of what it's going to cost him (he started receiving treatment for liver damage a year later at the age of 32, so his body was probably already starting to rebel against the punishment).

Riff Raff sides with the unloved Common Joe while Sin City is a shopping listing of Bon's favourite indulgences ('Lamborginis, caviar, dry Martinis, Shangri-La!') that starts with the insistence 'I'm gonna win' before reality dawns in the mid-song breakdown that no one has 'a hope in hell' when the pack is cut and the dice loaded.

Perhaps it's easy to read things into the songs because we know that two years later he'd be found dead in a friend's car aving succumbed to acute alcoholic poisoning, but it's hard to escape the feeling that Bon already knows he's on a highway to hell, that escaping back to his wife and living quietly is a dream he'll never realise.

As he sings on Up To My Neck In You: 'I've been up to my neck in pleasure/I've been up to my neck in pain/I've been up to my neck on the railway track/Waiting for the train'.

He's fantasising about tying Irene to a railroad track on What's Next To The Moon, hoping to convince her to take him back. In the chorus, he confesses 'It's her love that I want/It's her love that I need'.

On Gimme A Bullet, he's bemoaning 'Long distant lips/On the telephone/Come tomorrow, come to grips/With me all alone' before the feelings of powerlessness turn to anger on Kicked In The Teeth Again, which starts with a desperate wail of 'Two faced woman with your two-faced lies'.

Throw in a song about a girl overdosing on Gone Shootin' (which may have been where the Bon on smack rumours started, though spending your last night alive hanging out backstage with The Only Ones probably doesn't help) and this hardly fits in with the image of the twinkle-eyed wild man, which perhaps explains why Powerage remains neglected.

But I've saved the best to last because not all of Bon's woes were woman-related as he reveals in Down Payment Blues, one of the finest lyrics he ever wrote. Angus and Malcolm slow the pace down a little and sashay out an ebbing and flowing groove as Bon uses dry wit to reveal the reality of having spent a decade playing in rock bands but still having to avoid the rent man and struggle to feed his cat.

As he puts in the final verse: 'Feeling like a paper cup/Blowing down a storm drain/Got myself a sailing boat/But I can't afford a drop of rain'.

AC/DC went on to hit paydirt with the 49million-selling Back In Black, featuring Brian Johnson on vocals, which was released in July 1980, five months after Bon's death. His last letter to Irene - Bon never stopped writing even after she divorced him - finally arrived in Australia around the same time.

Considering the millions ending their marriage must have ultimately cost her, Irene probably finds Down Payment Blues a tough listen nowadays.

In 2003, she was invited along as AC/DC were inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame, despite the fact that she'd split up with Bon by the time he joined the band. During the evening, Angus told Irene that she was 'the only one Bon ever trusted', which is probably about as gushing as a Glaswegian-turned-Aussie-ocker ever gets.

Opal - Happy Nightmare Baby (1987) and Early Recordings (1989)

I once sat in a dressing room with Mazzy Star after they'd played a spellbinding gig at Manchester's Hop & Grape at the start of the first European tour to support So Tonight That I Might See back in late '93/early '94.

Despite having just performed what still remains one of my favourite gigs, they were a quiet bunch afterwards, close knit in the corner and keeping to themselves.

Many of best bands have a cult-like quality about them and the way they circled around David Roback brought that to mind.

I was there with the support band, who were old friends, and in contrast to the main act they were in a lively mood after playing in front of one of their biggest ever crowds.

Drummer Keith Mitchell was the only one who was happy to mix, explaining why he'd played such a dark venue in sunglasses by telling us that when he'd first auditioned for Green On Red, Dan Stuart had told him he could have the gig as long as he played in the shades he'd first turned up in - when he auditioned for Opal, Roback also insisted on the sunglasses. 'Looks like I'm stuck with f**kin' things,' he shrugged.

Another former Opal member, Suki Ewers, was also back in the band that night, playing keyboards and guitar despite not appearing on the album.

That chemistry between Roback, Ewers and Mitchell dated back in 1984 when they had first played in Opal together, the now largely forgotten precursor to Mazzy Star, who laid down much of the blueprint for what was to come in two curiously different albums.

Both are long out of print, including on CD, which is a great shame. Like much of the Paisley Underground stuff of that era, some reappraisal is surely due.

Happy Nightmare Baby was their only album while together, with the Early Recordings compilation following in 1989, two years after they'd split.

The big difference between Opal and Mazzy Star is Kendra Smith, the singer who Roback stole from The Dream Syndicate and wooed into his bed and new band after himself leaving Rain Parade following their debut album in 1983.

Early Recordings mainly comprises the first three EPs released by the new band, the first under the name Clay Allison.

One of the first things Roback and Smith recorded together was a cover of the Velvet Underground's I'll Be Your Mirror (not on either of these albums), which also featured Susanna Hoffs of future Bangles fame,  and it set a template for what was to come with Opal.

Their early efforts were dreamy and laidback, Roback mainly playing acoustic guitar with Ewers' keyboards given plenty of prominence and Smith centre-stage.

The VU's sweeter moments, including Sunday Morning, Femme Fatale and Jesus, come to mind, with blues and 1960s folk-rock influences mixed in, rounding out a plaintive, slightly naive sound.

My Only Friend (which those of a cynical bent could read as a heroin love song in the Lou Reed mould), Grains Of Sand and Northern Line are all gentle, lazy, subtly hypnotic and pretty much perfect.

Ewers provides two sweet and simple songs, Strange Delight and Brigit On Sunday, the latter of which she also sings.

Roback has a stab at lead vocals as well on Lullaby, a slightly gothic children's song. The final track, All Souls, is almost hymn-like.

Letting these hazy, entrancing songs wash over you is wonderful when you're sat on your sofa but you could imagine how they got drowned out by audience chatter when they played live.

You could certainly see how they came to the conclusion that turning up the guitars was the way to get noticed - which is exactly what they did on their long delayed debut album, Happy Nightmare Baby.

HNB arrived four years after the band had formed and seems determined to make its mark, opening up with Rocket Machine, which borrows heavily from T.Rex with its psychedelic swagger and almost exaggerated guitar riff.

The folk and blues influences have been traded in for The Doors, Television, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Buffalo Springfield.

Roback plays the guitar god like never before or since, overcooking it at times but anyone who enjoys the slowly unfurling fronds of psychedelic guitar he's trademarked will find much to enjoy here, particularly in Soul Giver and Siamese Trap.

Ewers is still very much central, also beefing up her sound and bringing to mind Ray Manzarek's organ style in the ways she plays off Roback.

The one song HNB shares with Early Recordings is She's A Diamond, which hightlights the new direction perfectly - a bluesy acoustic lament to start with, it's now a chugging slice of swaggering riffage.

Magick Power even comes over all mystical with its lyrics about 'electric children over the moon'.

Roback did a slightly dodgy job of producing, with everything sounding rather murky and the vocals too weak, which didn't seem to help sales, along with the general confusion caused among the band's small fan base by the change in direction.

Smith quit halfway through the following tour, while they were supporting the Jesus & Mary Chain.

She was rapidly replaced by a teenage Hope Sandoval, who also ended up replacing Smith in Roback's bed. This version of Opal didn't last long before they transformed into Mazzy Star and therein lies a while other story.

Years later, Sandoval would break up with Roback and end up with William Reid of the J&MC. There's a weird symmetry in there somewhere...

Smith later emerged with a mini album and a solitary full LP, both of which are patchy but interesting. The 4AD website claims she was last heard of living in a cabin without electricity in rural California. This cover of Joy Division's Heart and Soul from 1995 is the most recent sighting.

Tangerine Dream - Rubycon (1975)

Since the release of Julian Cope's Krautrocksampler in 1995, a host of German bands have been rescued from obscurity and given overdue praise for their wildly exploratory and fearlessly groundbreaking work of the late Sixties and early Seventies.

The likes of Can, Faust, Popol Vuh, Harmonia, Amon Duul II and Cluster are all now considered to be strikingly original innovators, with their influence to be found across a wide range of indie, rock and electronica acts.

Neu! have just been given the deluxe box-set treatment that would have seemed laughable when their third album was released to minimal public interest in 1975.

The disintegration of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger's partnership in the wake of Neu! 75's dismal sales was in sharp contrast to the fortunes of their fellow Germans Tangerine Dream at the time.

Having signed to Virgin Records in 1974 in the wake of John Peel naming 1973's Atem as his album of the year, TD - then comprising Edgar Froese, Chris Franke and Peter Baumann - decided to explore a new sequencer-driven sound that resulted from Franke's experiments with the Modular Moog's control-voltage analog sequencer during live performances.

The following album, Phaedra, reached No.15 in the UK charts, sitting comfortably in record collections of those of experimental bent alongside the likes of Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Soft Machine and Traffic.

Strangely, the album bombed back in Germany, selling just 6,000 copies, which probably explains why the band were delighted to take up Richard Branson's offer to record the follow-up at his Manor studio, in Shipton on Cherwell in Oxfordshire, where Mike Oldfield had previously recorded Tubular Bells.

Surrounded by gothic splendour, looked after by those 'helpful ladies at the Manor' who get a mention in the sleeve credits, and on a high from their recent successes, TD rose to the occasion, quickly recording Rubycon during the month of January 1975, prior to its release on March 21. The record business moved faster in those days.

With just one track per side, Rubycon seems to draw together some of the strands from their previous five albums, ranging from the slowly creeping tendrils of sound that that open Rubycon part one, recalling the quieter moments of 1971's Alpha Centuri, to the grand swell of the rhythmic patterns that emerge to continue Phaedra's experiments.

Part two starts with a darker, howling atmosphere that recalls the Ligeti-influenced epics of 1972's mammoth Zeit double LP before returning a more sequencer-driven style.

The results must have been mindblowing when you were reclining on a beanbag in the glow of your lava lamp back in 1975, and they still sound suprisingly original now considering the endless acres of dreary and predictable trance that eventually emerged in its wake.

Listen to my 35-year-old vinyl version (£2.99 second hand from Sifters) closely now and the snap, crackle and pop of the format gently impose themselves during the quieter passages, but that just adds to the period charm for my money.

Virgin packaged Rubycon in a beautiful gatefold sleeve with pictures taken by Froese's wife Monica on the front, back and inside.

The bluey green 'splash' pictures on the front and back give the impression of a moment in time being captured, which seems apt considering the speed TD work at, having now reportedly released more than 100 albums during a career into its 43rd year.

The band's spell on Virgin alone, which lasted from 1974 to 1983, resulted in over 20 releases, including studio albums, soundtracks, live LPs and Froese's solo efforts.

Having been born out of a scene based around experimentation and improvisation, Froese has stuck with those principles, issuing albums as snapshots of where he or the band are up to.

By way of contrast, Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider released just 12 albums in their 40 years together in Kraftwerk up until 2008. Kraftwerk's decision from 1973 onwards to do their improvising behind closed doors and to perfect their ideas before releasing them has led to the band widely being seen as one of the most influential of the 20th century. Less clearly is more.

Tangerine Dream, it must be said, have released plenty of mediocre crap over the years, often stretching ideas to the point of tedium, resulting in their finest moments being rather neglected nowadays. Neu! and TD's critical standing seem to have reversed over the course of three and a half decades.

All the early TD albums are worth investigating, though, and their commercial high water - Rubycon reached No.10 in the UK charts - is also quite possibly their finest.

 

George McCrae - Rock Your Baby (1974)

This tale starts with a singer failing to show up for a session and ends with a neglected genius being crushed under his own bulldozer.

George McCrae only got to sing Rock Your Baby because his wife, Gwen, was held up elsewhere and TK Records employees Harry W Casey and Richard Finch were determined to make some use of the after-hours studio time they were allowed by their employers.

It turned out that moustachoed former US Navy serviceman George was the owner of a dreamy falsetto which perfect matched this blissful slice of proto disco driven by Casey's gospelly organ swells and Jerome Smith's funky, propulsive guitar.

Rock Your Baby reached No.1 on both sides of the Atlantic, along with 80 other countries, on its way to selling 11million copies.

It was only denied the title of the first-ever disco No.1 because The Hues Corporation's Rock The Boat had got there a week earlier in the US in July 1974. Rolling Stone still declared Rock Your Baby the best single of the year.

Casey and Finch obviously didn't waste any time getting an album out and wisely decided not to mess with the formula.

Starting with a 6:20 version of Rock Your Baby - twice as long as the single and essentially a 12-inch version before such a notion existed - the remaining three tracks on side one all mine the same ecstatically discofied vein.

What's interesting here is how stripped back it all is. Casey and Finch were already up and running with KC & The Sunshine Band, who came with an extensive horn section.

But there's no horns anywhere on Rock Your Baby - and hardly any lyrics either.

You Got My Heart has two two-line verses and apart from that it's McCrae singing the title, saying 'baby' a lot and whooping joyfully.

You Can Have It All is even more to the point, with two two-line verses, all four of which start with 'If you want...'.

McCrae serves more as verbal percussion than a frontman, adding to the hypnotic effect of the music with his blissed-out repetition.

Casey and Finch seem to have aimed these songs purely at the dynamic of a couple using a song to seduce each other on a dance floor.

When McCrae sings 'Look at you/sexy woman' over and over again on Look At You at the start of side two, it feels exactly like the sort of thing the local nightclub Casanova would mouth while busting out his best moves to impress his target.

The mood finally falters on halfway through side two with I Need Somebody Like You, a soulful stomper you'd expect from Diana Ross.

But I Get Lifted and a two-minute reprise of Rock Your Baby  finish off the album in style.

Rock Your Baby shifted massive units but it's now largely forgotten. The reason is probably because the public just don't see disco acts as album artists.

We dance to it at weddings, we may even stick on a compilation at home occasionally on Friday nights, but the perception is that it's not to be taken seriously.

Not that Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards had any such qualms when they lifted Jerome Smith's brilliant guitar sound and took it to the bank with Chic.

Smith transfered to KC & The Sunshine Band, underpinning hits such as Boogie Shoes, Get Down Tonight and Queen Of Clubs (the later also featuring uncredited vocals from McCrae).

Even Gwen got in the act, making up for her late appearance with the huge hit Rockin Chair, a response song to Rock Your Baby.

She and George also had another crack together - producing at least one overlooked nugget with The Rub before they parted ways amid accusations of marital violence.

It all went wrong for Smith when he was kicked out of KC&TSB for drug problems in 1979. He ended up working in construction before being crushed by a bulldozer while working in Florida aged 47.

Patti Smith - Horses (1975)

 I must confess a slight preference for Radio Ethiopia, the rougher-edged follow-up from 1976, but there were too many good reasons to go for Horses.

First of all, there's the Robert Mapplethorpe photograph of Patti on the front, all moody, androgynous charisma.

Like most album art, it's far more arresting at 12 inches across, rather than the measly 12 cms of a CD - you see the faint triangle of light to her left, the fraying cotton of her sleeves, the hint of moustache. No concessions here, her stare tells you - not hostile but simply strong.

Smith had to battle hard with Arista to ensure the photo was left unchanged and this refusal to prettify anything runs through the album.

Constantly pushing and stretching her voice, she chews through the songs while experimenting with tone and melody, dropping into whispered poetry, double-tracking over herself.

When she simply sings the final song Elegie in a gentle voice over Richard Sohl's piano in a style that would fit on any of Kate Bush's first three albums, it comes as a shock.

All of Smith's fascinating contradictions are present in the first song. Opening with the immortal couplet 'Jesus died for somebody sins/ But not mine', the former schoolgirl Jehovah's Witness sounds utterly iconoclastic before breaking into a rampaging version of Them's Gloria, a three-chord paean to teenage lust from 1964.

Snearing one moment, pleading and whining the next, delirious a second after, she's totally in the moment, living it all.

Dressing in braces on the cover, singing about girls (side two also starts with Kimberly), she obviously playing with the public's perceptions here.

Perhaps this was Mapplethorpe's influence - perhaps she just wanted to be one of the boys and sidestep how women were supposed to behave in rock'n'roll in 1975.

It's ironic that she later gave up music for most of the 1980s to play the dutiful wife and mother while married to Fred 'Sonic' Smith (of MC5 fame), who proved a woefully unsuccessful provider as they lived in suitably bohemian penury with their two kids in Michigan.

But then Patti never shied away from paying respect to her male heroes. Rimbaud gets a nod in Land, the sprawling epic that dominates side two and manages to bring to mind Camus's L'Estranger and The Doors' The End while taking a bizarre swerve into Land Of A Thousand Dances.

Jim Morrison and Van Morrison are also clear influences in Smith's shamanistic incantations on Break It Up and the glorious nine jazz-influenced minutes of Birdland, building from slow spoken-word passages to heights of delirium where the words spew out in an exhilirating babble.

Smith was 28 when Horses came out but the teenage spirit seems to still burn within her - on the punky cover of My Generation that was released on the B-side of the Gloria single, she finishes by shouting: 'I feel so goddamned young'.

You can't listen to Horses without feeling invigorated yourself.

Broselmaschine - Broselmaschine (1971)

Krautrock's wealth of musical curios has been extensively excavated over the past 15 years but Broselmaschine strangely remains in the shadows.

Perhaps the album just doesn't fit in the freak rock image with which the era is best associated.

Rather than the wild strangeness of Amon Duul II's Phallus Dei, the Faust Tapes, Can's Tago Mago or Klaus Schulze's Irrlicht, Broselmaschine contains an idyllic pastoral haze that cocoons you in its blissful shimmer.

Considering its continuing obscurity, it's curious that Broselmaschine drew more influences from England than their contemporaries.

The early Canterbury scene can be detected but Pentangle are the obvious frame of reference, as reflected by a line-up including two virtuoso guitarists (Peter Bursch and Willi Kismer) and a female singer (Jenni Schucker).

Schucker also plays flute and her dreamy vocal style - halfway between a semi-comatose Jacqui McShee and Grace Slick - gives this album much of its charm.

The other key factor is the interplay between Bursch and Kismer, the former usually on acoustic guitar while the latter plays electric.

The way Kismet's wah-wah guitar intertwines with Bursch and Schucker's flute on the intro to The Old Man's Song is just magical.

That hoary old folk standard Lassie even sounds refreshed in their hands, with Kismer's solo adding a heady hippy vibe.

Sitar and tablas give Schmetterling an Eastern flavour that fortunately never slumps into raga drone, instead skipping about impishly, introducing a funky bassline eight minutes in and even finishing off with a mellotron flourish.

There isn't a weak moment to be found on the whole album, which sustains its entrancing mood effortlessly through six songs and 34 minutes.

The gatefold sleeve's drawings of castle with butterflies, bats, sprites and mushrooms completes the groovy period ambiance.

Schucker disappeared off to who knows where after Broselmaschine's release and never graced a recording studio again.

The band recorded a second album without her as Peter Bursch and Broselmaschine in 1974 with the help of a couple of Guru Guru members, but not even the presence of Conny Plank in the producer's chair could replicate the magic of their debut.

Remainder bin treasure

Remainder bin vinyl was a source of treasure for any youngster on a limited budget.

Record companies would find themselves with a vast warehouse stuffed with unsold records and ship them out at a fraction of the cost.

An old promotional trick back in the 1970s used to be to send out vast quantities of an album and then declare it had 'shipped gold/platinium' in the hope of getting some momentum going.

It could fail spectacularly - Casablancas Records was so notorious for it that the company was given an unofficial slogan: 'Shipped gold, returned platinum'.

Once they'd given up on selling them at full price, record companies would then send out with a slightly mutilate sleeve to stop record shops from craftily flogging them at full price.

This could involve chopping a corner off or cutting out a thin slice from the sleeve. Which beats using them as landfill for road building in China, I suppose - the fate that befell the unwanted CD copies of Robbie Williams' Rudebox album.

Back in the 1980s, Manchester had a record shop originally called Yanks, then subsequently Power Cuts, that was stuffed with hundreds of these bargain records.

It was a large, bare cellar shop that would occassionally open up an extra, even bigger, room stuffed with vast amounts of vinyl, little of which cost as much as a fiver.

The staff were as curmudgeonly as you'd expect of any decent record shop and you famously had to hand in your bag at the counter before proceeding any further.

The annual sale was also legendary, with people queuing from 6am to snap up albums from prices that started from 29p.

You'd join a vast queue, convinced that there would be nothing left by the time you got in there before finally leaving with a vast bag of random goodies. Half of which would turn out to be rubbish, of course...

Nowadays new vinyl is printed in strictly limited quantities and prices seem to start at £9.99 and rise rapidly from there, so Yanks/Power Cuts increasingly takes on a Shangri-La like quality in my mind.

Link Wray - Link Wray (1971)

This was a surprise find on a market stall in Utrecht in Holland in among a box of Euro prog and 1980s synth pop.

I'd first read about this in an interview with Richard Hawley when he was promoting his Lowedges album in 2003 - Hawley obviously related to the idea of the guitarist finally making his way to the microphone a long way into his career.

Wray was already 41 when this came out in 1971, and hadn't had a hit single since Jack The Ripper in 1963.

He'd gone back to live on the farm in Maryland and 'Link Wray' is very much a family affair. His brothers Vernon and Doug both appear, and Link is proudly pictured with his mother on the back cover, where she also gets thanked for 'hot coffee and good chilli'.

Link has obviously travelled a long way since 1958, when his guitar sound on Rumble was considered such a threat to public decency that it became the only instrumental ever widely banned by radio stations.

Moving back to the farm proved inspirational, with all the tracks recorded in a ramshackle barn pictured inside the cover and emblazoned with the badly painted logo 'Wray's 3 Track Shack'.

The backwoodsman vibe popularised by The Band lies heavy in the air, with a lack of production clarity more than compensated for by a smoked country atmosphere that just wafts off the vinyl.

But then laying it down in the barn still works for Neil Young, and it also paid off handsomely on Neko Case's Middle Cyclone last year.

Link Wray had sung on occasional tracks before, but it's still fascinating to hear his voice (reminiscent of Keith Richards) over a whole album - especially when you know he'd lost a lung to TB while in the army back in the 1950s.

Having waited so long to put his voice to the fore, Link gives the impression that it's very much from the heart.

He keeps the guitar low key, preferring to let Heath Robinson percussion instruments and the piano playing of Billy Hodges and Bobby Howard dominate on La De Da, Fallin' Rain and Ice People.

The country and the church are central to the lyrics, and Link sounds like he means every word of Take Me Home Jesus, God Out West and Fire And Brimestone.

Even when he checks out the girl dancing in the local bar on Juke Box Mama, he goes on to warn her 'you're going to lose your man'.

Not that Wray ever sounds too holy, signing off the album with a cover of Willie Dixon's Tail Dragger that hints that his heart and head are probably pulling in different directions.

Polydor was sufficient impressed with the Three Track Shack tapes to give Wray a deal and package the album with a cut-out cover featuring him in an Indian headband, which acknowledged his Shawnee heritage with a little counterculture cool thrown in to boot.

A year later, Marlon Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to pick up his Oscar for The Godfather and the plight of the Red Indians because the cause du jour.

Unfortunately Link seems to have been a little ahead of the game because despite Polydor's efforts to promote the album it sold poorly.

Still, anyone who enjoys the murky grooves of Exile On Main Street (which also came out the following year) should find much to enjoy on Link Wray.

It's equally slow to reveal its laid-back pleasures but well worth the effort.

The Flaming Lips - Dark Side Of The Moon (2010)

Where better to start than Record Store Day, with its host of limited-edition goodies designed to woo us all back to those independent record shops that are steadily going the way of all things.

Singles by Electric Eels, Slow Club, Neu! and the Stones all escaped me but considering the queue of around 500 people waiting outside Piccadilly Records just before opening time, I was still delighted to bag a copy of The Flaming Lips' Dark Side Of The Moon.

Gatefold sleeve, clear vinyl, colour inner sleeve - this is the stuff of vinyl nerd dreams. There's even a CD copy chucked in so I can enjoy it in the car.

Easy All-Stars got there first with Dub Side Of The Moon in 1993, with the songs taking to a rocksteady reggae/dub style surprisingly well. You first listened to it expecting a novelty record but the transformation was done with such obvious love and the lyrics rather suited a 1970s consciousness reggae-type vibe.

The sonic approach is very different here but the love of Pink Floyd's original LP is clearly shared.

It starts out with Henry Rollins muttering the lines 'I've mad for fucking years, absolutely years' and it takes on an ominous air. But then Dark Side... was always supposed to about mental illness, so a more dissonant take on the songs isn't so much of a stretch after all.

Rollins supplies the dialogue snippits, Peaches does an admirable job of Great Gig In The Sky and everything gets pleasingly scuffed up and bashed about.

The bass-heavy groove approach that dominated the Lips slightly disappointing Embryonic LP remains the main focus but the sprawling experimental songs of last year are replaced with 41 minutes of tight material that still manages to crams in plenty of sonic exploration.

Dark Side... is a child of the vinyl age and it shows in its pleasing brevity. When it finishes, you want to play it again - how good does that feel in the bloated CD age?

I'll bet it felt pretty good for the Flaming Lips, who seem to have been struggling with their songwriting a little since 2002's Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots.

The curious thing about Yoshimi... being that it was effectively a four-track EP about a Japanese girl saving the world tacked onto the start of a chill-out album that would sit nicely next Air's Moon Safari. Stick it on from track five next time the vicar pops round and see if you get so much as a murmur of complaint...

Anyway, no man of the cloth would be impressed with the Lips' take on Dark Side Of The Moon and it's all the more fun for it.

Wayne Coyne and co obviously got into this so they could have some fun in the studio with a few pals. As well as Rollins and Peaches, Stardeath And White Dwarves are actually given equal billing on the album cover.

You'd be forgiven for having never heard of them - and its one band rather than two in case you're confused - but the lead singer is one Dennis Coyne, nephew of Wayne, so nepotism is at work here.

Dennis actually takes lead vocals on Breathe and Brain Damage, sounding like a younger, clearer-voiced version of his uncle.

The highlight is probably Us And Them, done with great delicacy and featuring some lovely soulful Fender Rhodes playing.

It underlines what great musicians the Flaming Lips have become, which it is pretty surprising considering that Coyne admits they got as far as their fourth album (1990's In A Priest Driven Ambulance) with no real conviction that they could cut it in the studio.

Imagine any band getting that many chances nowadays...