First recorded for ZE Records’ 1981 compilation A Christmas Record and borrowing heavily from Bernard Edwards’ bassline from Chic’s ‘Good Times’, ‘Christmas Wrapping’ became the hit The Waitresses never thought they would have. A hardy festive perennial about a busy single woman who’d rather be alone than endure the agonies of Christmas, Patti Donohue’s cool girl delivery has been approximated but never bettered via covers by Haim, Kate Nash and Spice Girls (not to mention a bizarre duet between Kylie Minogue and Iggy Pop). Yet its release also smuggled something rather more sinister into the homes of unsuspecting singles buyers. A premonition of the first day of the new year, ‘Hangover 1/1/83’ was meant to be a throwaway B-side, something quickly knocked off in an Akron basement studio that no one would give a second thought to. For a small but committed fan base it’s taken on a greater meaning. Its lurching bassline, tricksy detuned guitar figures and elemental keys all provide a chunky, slightly garish Xmas carpet for the swaggering saxophone magic of Mars Williams. An Albert Ayler acolyte who made hay smudging the clean lines in pop’s playground (as other Waitresses highlights ‘Pussy Strut’ or ‘I Know What Boys Like’ reaffirm), Williams’ would apply his mysterious muscularity in the service of Psychedelic Furs once the Waitresses finished their shift.

Yazoo began with a wanted ad in the music press, with bluesy Basildon singer Alison Moyet on the lookout for a gigging R&B band. In an unexpected twist of fate, her best response came from Vince Clarke, an old school acquaintance trying to figure out the next leap forwards after writing Depeche Mode’s debut Speak & Spell and suddenly pressing eject. A classic case of chalk and cheese – an expressive soul singer and an introverted computer boffin – the contrast worked famously on both sides of their first single. Opening with a snatch of Moyet’s laughter over Clarke’s tinkling futuristic synths, ‘Situation’ was an ahead of its time dance banger, much less melancholic than the stunted devotion of ‘Only You’. Where it was easy to imagine that arriving couched in Dave Gahan’s twitchy baritone, Moyet made ‘Situation’ her own, her power-packed turn helping it resonate across the pond, where Sire chose to issue it their first A-side, apparently against Yazoo’s wishes. Its resonance is still felt there, after François Kevorkian’s 12-inch remix topped Billboard’s Hot Dance Club chart for four weeks.

Pegging Necro as a one trick pony belies his skills as a producer. New York’s hyper intense lord of gore has shown his proclivity behind the boards on releases for a shady cabal of rappers such as Sabac, Goretex, Mr Hyde and his fleet-tongued brother Ill Bill, mangling movie samples with deep bass figures, scything strings and a seamless grasp of hip-hop beat science. While those skills were sharply focused on both sides of his fourth single, the low pianos and crying horns of ‘Empty The Clip’ just edge it over ‘Morbid’, despite the A-side’s killer hook. Referencing alleged axe murderer Lizzie Borden, 90s TV anthology Tales from the Crypt and Klaus Mann’s Mephisto along the way in his brutal dead-eyed Brooklyn monotone, Necro’s dispassionately clipped tone made razored raps like “Be quiet like bodies dead at morgues/Or be tortured and fed to dogs” sound even more creepy. It pointed the way towards 2004’s The Pre-Fix For Death, a morbidly obese set of violent hymns for a disturbed world that housed career high ‘Beautiful Music For You To Die To’ plus a glut of metal-infused horrorcore only suitable for those with strong guts.

Billy Bragg’s live shows have often shown his delicate way with a Woody Guthrie ballad. His thoughtful take on ‘I Ain’t Got No Home’ is right up there with the more expansive portrait he painted of Guthrie alongside Wilco on 1998’s Mermaid Avenue, as they essayed their way through his unpublished archive with skittering grace. One of four covers backing the A-side’s Johnny Marr and Kirsty MacColl-enhanced summery tale of new love (freighted with murmured fears of commitment), Bragg turned to regular touring partner and English alternative country authority Hank Wangford (a medical doctor who started treading the boards after meeting Gram Parsons) for this intimate duet. Their take on Guthrie’s protest song about the racist media portrayal of victims of 1948’s Los Gatos plane crash found Bragg putting his estuary drawl to one side, delicately harmonising with Wangford over the gentle strum of a low acoustic guitar and a higher-pitched mandolin. Clearly heartfelt, it’s pointed lines about illegal workers and death in the service of capitalism seem ever more resonant in a post-Brexit landscape punctuated by the mad racist warbling of Suella Braverman and co.

It took bassist and bandleader Byron Lee over a decade to score his first hit. Lee signed his ever fluctuating, many legged the Dragonaires to the West Indies Recording Limited (WIRL) in 1959, proving popular on the elite theatre circuit with his full-bodied take on calypso, punctuated by a rousing brass section and hyped-up MCs. As the Jamaican independence movement gained momentum, Lee shifted his dial to ska’s revolutionary R&B/calypso hybrid on the advice of WIRL boss Edward Seaga, chancing his arm as both the Dragonaires and the Ska Kings. It paid off when they was scouted to perform Jump Up as Pussfeller’s Club house band in 1962’s first Bond flick Dr No. It resulted in to a major deal with Atlantic, yet the world wasn’t quite ready. Despite exercising much marketing muscle, the super-skanking cha-cha-cha and shrill horns of ‘Jamaica Ska’ barely dented the Billboard charts (98 for one week only, although it did graze the Canadian top 30). A flip of the disc might have reversed its lowly fate. Based on an old Christian hymn, the upfront Hammond organ burn of ‘Oil In My Lamp’ proved it could withstand a no holds barred party-oriented reinvention, as cheer-led by Eric ‘Monty’ Morris’s sweet vocals. Five years later a very different version made up the B-side of Byrds single ‘The Ballad Of Easy Rider’, detailed by Clarence’s White’s arch Telecaster string-bending.

Fearghal McKee’s gift for biting, bittersweet, insightful wordplay was reflected in his onstage intensity and confrontational stagecraft – cutting himself with broken glass at early shows, dousing himself in silver glitter paint at their death throes. It wasn’t always needed when the perfectly named Whipping Boy hit their musical targets, scoring bullseyes on both sides here. The A-side’s offhand confession (“I hit you for the first time today”) was eclipsed by its properly anthemic chorus, yet their finest moment barely shaved the UK charts. B-side ‘Disappointed’ explored an equally fraught and fractured relationship over militaristic drums and pugnacious bass, with McKee’s blunt address to a wayward son (“You are not mine”) heightened by the intensity of Paul Page’s scything guitars (who knows what it would have sounded like had Steve Albini produced it, as first hoped). It’s also worth checking their cover of ‘Caroline Says II’ [‘When We Were Young’, 1995], a hark back to their early Velvets covers band incarnation Lolita. Both sound resplendent on Needle Mythology’s expanded 2021 reissue of Heartworm.

Top Of The Pops was first my portal into pop. Already struck by Sham 69’s angsty cavort through ‘Angels With Dirty Faces’, though not quite enough to buy it, I was powerless not to spend all my 45p pocket money on ‘If The Kids Are United’. A slightly earnest terrace anthem, it proved to be their most accessible hit (one that was ill-advisedly revived by Tony Blair at 2005’s Labour conference). However, it’s B-side was even better. After Walton Hop veteran Jimmy Pursey’s animated cod DJ introduction (“Okay! All you disco kids…”), Dave Parsons bluesy guitar riff morphed into a more straightforward thrash to carry the singer’s very British corollary to Saturday Night Fever, littered with lager, fights, vomit, love bites, pregnancy and smashed up jam jars. Armed with a catchy, off-centre chorus (“Don’t do it!/They won’t let us do it!”), Pursey also snuck in a topical moan at the inescapable Grease mania of the time (“Me brother thinks he looks like John Travolta/And me sister thinks she’s Olivia Newton John”). Tellingly, only the B-side appeared on Sham’s high-concept second album That’s Life – a tricksy bit of Mike Leigh-styled social realism that’s a less-knowing conceptual precursor to Blur’s Parklife – but with its great hammy intro loped off. That’s why this this B-side take is still essential.

‘Thank You Caroline’ has history in The Avalanches’ relatively slender catalogue. The B-side to the Melbourne sampling whizz kids’ very first single (1997’s flute-laced Beastie Boys/J-Pop mash-up ‘Rock City), it’s a slightly woozy, organ-dominated instrumental that lulls listeners into a world of elevator music before pulling the rug on that notion, thanks to its layered keys and great freestyling solos. The most significant comes from saxophonist Mark Ford, although it’s so cleverly treated it’s hard to tell it’s a sax. A lazy earworm that reveals more with every play, ‘Thank You Caroline’ feels like a shift from their established modus operandi – played not sampled. The song enjoyed a second B-side life when Andy Votel remixed it for the flip of 2000’s ‘Since I Left You’. He drilled down deeper into its essential otherness, separating the layers even more and adding more sinister elements (a music box-sounding xylophone, cellos, humming, acoustic guitar) to effectively create a new track. A third version of this B-side – an original demo, even further removed – surfaced on 2021’s reissue of the Since I Left You LP, itself a supernatural sampling feat that artfully reanimated over 3,500 vinyl cues.

Looking the part and with a great psychedelic name, the Electric Prunes were among the first US garage bands to make moves. Ex-Rolling Stones producer David Hassinger claimed credit for the California band’s eerily distinctive sound, epitomised by 1966 hit ‘I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)’, after a real-estate agent friend discovered them literally practicing in a garage. Hassinger continued to magick up great psych mystery from his charges on its follow-up, co-writers Annette Tucker and Jill Jones going back to basics on the A-side’s distorted Bo Diddley stomp. This powerful B-side runs rings around it. Breezing in above a choked rhythm guitar and high lead line, Michael Weakley’s atmospheric drums set the scene for James Lowe’s wide-eyed opening gambit: “Queen Bee, give me so much honey/I never feel the sting.” While Lowe’s growing paranoia is sweetened by Dick Hargreaves’ full-bodied organ solo, a more sinister tension writhes through its second act, the seemingly wronged singer going deeper into his vortex of despair, as like a drunken and desperate priest he urges his quarry to “Confess!”

Responsible for the amazing cover to B-Side, Kid Acne was best-known for his graffiti skills when this single raised his profile. Part-financed by Lex’s label dalliance with EMI, it allowed the South Yorks rapper to significantly beef-up the sparser beats of previous outings, with MIA producer Ross Orton and local bass legend Rob Gordon joining forces. Nowhere is this more concentrated than ‘Oh No You Didn’t’, from its thundering real drum intro and declamatory “Oi!” to the distorted bass figure that pervades thereafter. It’s driven forward by Acne’s animated raps and aerated zingers, whether pillorying the inked idiocracy (“Nincompoops, what do you do?/Get tattoos and think your Zulus”) or just spitting nonsense rhymes for the sheer thrill of it (“Captain Caveman wearing Raybans/Wasting spraycan down the wastelands”). While a stuttering chorus that plays off Catherine Tate’s catchphrase is a little obvious, it’s more than compensated for by the more oblique references (Cillit Bang, welly-wanging) that became a scholastic feature of wonky parent album Romance Ain’t Dead. Slowthai’s ‘Doorman’ would tap into a very similar energy over a decade later, creating the festival anthem Acne was denied.

Malcom McLaren’s ability to be in the right place at the right time never deserted him. Having fanned punk’s whirlwind with Sex Pistols and celebrated cassette culture with Bow Wow Wow, his mission to tap into world music energy on his first solo LP hit a critical swerve within days of his entourage (producer Trevor Horn, engineer Gary Langan) starting their global trek in New York. While McLaren was already well aware of hip-hop – startled by spotting Afrika Bambaataa in a pink Sex Pistols T-shirt – when he saw a group of Bronx kids rapping, graffing, breaking and scratching in a Manhattan club he knew it had taken a new turn. He didn’t miss a beat. He co-opted some of its players (significantly DJ duo the World’s Famous Supreme Team) into the early sessions for Duck Rock. It spawned both the first British hip-hop single ‘Buffalo Gals’ and top three skipping anthem A-side ‘Double Dutch’ (whose resemblance to Boyoyo Boys’ 1975 single ‘Puleng’ would go legal). This 12-inch only flip was the bomb though – a virtual Art Of Noise/Bronx collision, its electro bass and busy scratch bricolage offset by Anne Dudley’s opulent piano tinkles. Its time capsule video even added Rock Steady Crew, Keith Haring and graffiti artist DONDI to the mix. This B-side later led-off 1984’s remix mini-LP of the same title, a party-hearty celebration of scratch-mix culture that wafted McLaren into the US charts.

From their original incarnation The Dominettes in 1957 onwards, this band ate up members for breakfast. Only Steve Gibbons would survive the endless culls. After joining in 1960 the singer and guitarist orchestrated a shift away from straight rock ‘n’ roll as they rose to the top of the feisty West Midlands live scene. Rechristened The Ugly’s (that gratuitous apostrophe never corrected) in 1963, they started writing topical R&B-inflected protest songs when they signed to Pye, epitomised by 1965’s debut ‘Wake Up My Mind’. Its failure to chart, along with its follow-up, meant Pye were already restless when the following year’s ‘A Good Idea’ proved to be anything but, with all concerned ignoring the nondescript single’s sabre-toothed B-side. Gibbons’ warnings of revolt sound vaguely Doorsy on ‘Quiet Explosion’, an impression underlined by Jimmy O’Neil’s swirling organ, John Hustwayte’s spaced-out bass and Jim Holden’s great off-the-wall percussion. A flip that was lauded at length in Jon Savage’s book 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded, it prompted ex-members to wonder aloud what might have been had they prioritised it instead. A similar argument could be made for ‘A Friend’ [ ‘It’s Alright’, 1965], an unsettling tale of loneliness elevated by Alan Freeman’s slashing production.

Kitchens Of Distinction hid their difference in plain sight. The Tooting trio were fronted by singing bassist Patrick Fitzgerald (not the punk poet), a trained medic and proud gay man who not only spoke about his sexuality in interviews, but sang about it with rare candour, shocking the indie scene’s more conservative elements. One of three tracks backing Julian Swales’ swirling guitar soundscapes on ‘The 3rd Time We Opened The Capsule’ was this bruising self-analysis. In ‘Four Men’ Fitzgerald breaks down his conflicting hopes and fears on a night of unexpected romantic triumph, before its short-term joy is trumped by self-loathing and shame. That Fitzgerald held nothing back on perhaps their most outwardly poppy moment made it feel even more incisive (he would do it again on ‘Margarets’ Injection’ [‘Elephantine EP’, 1989], portraying himself as a willing doctor of death). As vital as anything on that year’s excellent debut Love Is Hell, and in total accord with its title, KOD seemed to belatedly grasp the potential of ‘Four Men’, re-recording it for 1992’s The Death Of Cool but over-producing it, blunting its sharp edges and coiled tension.

With a post-punk sound before punk even happened, Pere Ubu were crazily ahead of the game. The absurdist Ohio band led by ex-Rocket from the Tombs singer David Thomas drew inspiration and borrowed stage theatrics from local legends Electric Eels, but it was Thomas’s taut, expressive warble that stood them apart. The mysterious B-side to the avant-garage band’s third single is an angsty slice of small town frustration, built around simple guitar chords, preening bass and an unearthly distorted bass drum. Pianos tinkle in the gaps before its neurotic mantra (“I don’t get around/I don’t fall in love much”) sees literary professor’s son Thomas lamenting both a lack of wheels and a partner (the two seemingly being mutually exclusive), using brutal economy and repetition to make his point. ‘My Dark Ages’ reinforced the otherworldliness of preceding Ubu singles ‘30 Seconds Over Tokyo’ (a retelling 1942’s Doolittle Raid on Tokyo) and ‘Final Solution’ (an extreme riposte to teenage acne and outsized trousers). Like many I first came to Ubu via Twin/Tone’s 1985 compilation Terminal Tower, a cool entry point for a prolific band that have reinvented themselves in ever more confounding ways since.

East Londoner Matt Johnson finally nailed The The’s studio identity with this single. An initially fluid affair, that morphed from duo to quartet, Johnson boiled The The down to a singular entity, using a rotating cast of musicians to realise his vision. If the A-side found the former DeWolfe studio tea boy adding a toy xylimba to the tinny affirmations of previous single ‘Cold Spell Ahead’, boosted by Soft Cell producer Mike Hedges’ big sheen production, it would prove an itch he couldn’t quite scratch, revisiting it a third time for 1983’s Soul Mining (with that Jools Holland piano solo). B-side ‘Three Orange Kisses From Kazan’ seemed to fall between stools, bridging the post-punk psychedelia of 1981’s Burning Blue Soul (issued as Matt Johnson) with the newfound confidence of his emerging pseudonym. As Middle Eastern-styled melodica motifs played out over hardscrabble percussion, prodding free jazz sax and Johnson’s long echoing guitar lines, he seemed to find his voice, swarming over the surface like an anguished bee. Angsty personal musings, generational numbness and testy teenage truths continued to dominate Johnson’s early work, before it took an outward, openly political turn on 1985’s Infected.

At odds with their manager Jerry Heller over alleged fiscal improprieties, Ice Cube bailed from N.W.A following a riotous show in Detroit. Before the dust even had time to settle the west coast gangsta rap pioneer was back with his solo debut AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. His decision to work with New York’s premium sound collagists the Bomb Squad (after Eazy-E vetoed Dr Dre providing beats), came with a much deeper political edge, epitomised by A-side ‘Endangered Species’. A super-punchy, prophetic tale of Los Angeles street strife, with a typically fierce Chuck D cameo, an air of resignation hung heavily over Cube’s words as he observed: “It’s a shame that niggas die young/But to the light side it don’t matter none.” Among his most quietly powerful solo moments, non-album B-side ‘Dead Homiez’ dug deeper still, describing the very real downside of those ongoing tensions via its sombre depiction of a funeral. A moving lament for his friend T-Bone, assembled over the hook from Dr John’s ‘Right Place, Wrong Time’, Cube told west coast rap authority Brian Coleman it “was easy to write just because it was so personal.” Fittingly, it’s the small observations that that cut deep – Cube pondering “How strong can you be when you see your pops crying?” – over wonderfully poised production (presumably by Sir Jinx, but uncredited) that elegantly interpolates Smokey Robinson’s ‘Do Like I Do’. Cube would reprise its intimate, conversational feel for 1993 crossover hit ‘It Was A Good Day’.

Lee Dorsey’s fortunes altered dramatically when he ran into Allen Toussaint at a New Orleans party. The failed ex-boxer and lifelong car fanatic supplemented his body-and-fender auto-repair business by singing in nightclubs, cutting the odd single along the way. Yet it seemed he’d joined the one-hit-wonder club when attempts to follow 1961’s novelty hit ‘Ya Ya’ all floundered. Toussaint had other ideas though, the producer/arranger reviving the humble singer’s fortunes with the high rolling groove and upfront funk of 1965’s ‘Ride Your Pony’. For all the good humour Dorsey brought to Naomi Neville’s A-side ‘Work, Work, Work’, its unemployment blues failed to connect with his more party-oriented demographic, obscuring one of Dorsey’s greatest studio showings on its B-side. Riding a simple three note electric guitar lick, backing vocal “Heys” and deep, deep horns, ‘Can You Hear Me’ caught Dorsey at his relaxed best – thinking about a good time, not the daily grime, sentiments that would see this flipside adopted by the London mod brigade. Within 12 months the unassuming Dorsey secured his position as a soul great with the early morning strife of ‘Working In A Cole Mine’, living up to Toussaint’s billing: “If a smile had a sound, it would be Lee Dorsey’s voice.”

‘I Can Detect You… ’ was my first dip into the local record shop’s occasional 5p box. A single reviewed in the first issue of Sounds I bought – I instantly recognised the Barney Bubbles sleeve, with its neat chemical formula/fraction – Arthurs name rang a bell from his production work with Tonight (if not for his previous work in glammy 70s satirists A Raincoat). A power-poppy guitar thrust carried through the A-side’s nifty chorus, although it was the stalker-ish tension of the verses that connected first. But if its cascading synths, electronic beats and talk of blown fuses, overloaded circuits and transmitters already seemed to have one foot in the future, its B-side really raised the stakes. Introduced with just one heavily processed word – “Engines!” – Arthurs does his best talking robot impression (“Ain’t got no emotion”) over a jerky, off-centre bassline and some impressionistic guitar figures. The vocal layering is inspired, as Arthurs’ machine teeters on the brink of breakdown, malfunction and madness, producer Martin Rushent’s careful coaxing of electronic textures a trial run for his work with Pete Shelley and the Human League. Arthurs also moved into production, racking up credits for 999, Soft Boys and Celia & the Mutations (a barely incognito Stranglers).

Although Jacobites wore their influences on their crushed velvet sleeves, they still sounded unique. The scarf-wearing partnership of ex-Swell Maps main man Nikki Sudden and Brummie maverick Dave Kusworth (with previous alongside Stephen Duffy in the Subterranean Hawks) specialised in a ragged, instantly identifiable acoustic-led jangle that affectionately tipped the wink to Dylan, Bolan, the Faces and the Stones. After a tentative start and some elegantly wasted, ramshackle shows they transformed into dandy songsmiths, with lost love, dashed hope and endless yearning their favoured crutch (hitting its apex on the previous year’s Robespierre’s Velvet Basement, whose muffled production failed to dull its clutch of pearls). With its bluesy harmonica and driving three-chord riff, Sudden’s ‘When The Rain Comes’ made for an obvious A-side, about as straight-ahead as they got. One of five extra tracks on the 12-inch, Kusworth’s ‘Country Girl’ was a gorgeous counterpoint. Over a hearty strum of acoustics and painterly drums (an overactive bass is buried, happily, low in the mix), Kusworth sketches an idyllic pastoral scene, his foreign quarry cutting corn in a field, hair blowing in the wind. As his affections mount the song shifts keys, building and building to a climax as its author romanticises about “taking the world together”, forgoing city life once and for all. Packed with tenderness, hearts quivering, it’s the distilled essence of their wonderful union.

Within 12 months of the Notorious B.I.G. taking him on the road, Smoothe Da Hustler had the hip-hop world at his feet. All due to this B-side. Fresh from crafting the grimy boom-bap behind M.O.P.’s debut To The Death, producer DR Period showed another string to his bow on ‘Broken Language’, flipping the bassline from Brass Construction’s ‘The Message (Inspiration)’ with a simple piano vamp and super hard snares. Above it real life blood brothers Smoothe Da Hustler and Trigger Tha Gambler traded tart verses, mangling words as they passed the mic between them like a live grenade. Far from a playground tussle to see who could come up with the craziest shit, their staccato lists and rhythmic phrases were riven with linguistic smarts and stark hyperreal imagery (random sample: “The white girl gang banger/The Virgin Mary fucker/The Jesus hanger…”), reflecting Smoothe’s aspiration to win at this new game after a recent prison bid. A swaggering flip that shook fans of all persuasions, it overshadowed the much funkier A-side ‘Hustlin’’, despite Smoothe serving up a clear raspy hook. Still, it was easy to understand why Profile put it on the B-side: how do you sell a dense, wordy 10-verse song with no discernible chorus? Little else on his rugged first LP Once Upon a Time in America was quite so elevated and Smoothe slipped behind the scenes (notably writing rhymes for a young Foxy Brown), his infamy assured.

Long before he secured his pension with 1977’s clowning disco biscuit ‘Ain’t Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman)’, Joe Tex was a prolific singles artist whose shaky hit rate belied his true talents. The Texas-born singer-songwriter moved to New York in the 50s to make his fortune, regularly slaying the Apollo Theater’s talent contests with his distinctly southern take on R&B. A fierce rival of James Brown, their mutual antipathy extended to Tex writing 1962’s dis ‘You Keep Her’ after Mr Dynamite moved in on ex-wife Bea Ford. Tex’s tenure at producer Buddy Killen’s Dial imprint caught him in his prime, epitomised by the smooth slow dance A-Side here, later used in the closing-credits of Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof (the filmmaker first declared his Tex fandom on Reservoir Dogs’ soundtrack). ‘If Sugar Was As Sweet As You’ is its better half though, a fat-free slab of taut rustic soul with Tex warbling its pay-off (“You make sugar taste just like salt”) over a stomping beat, swinging horns and great twangy electric guitar. Later covered by Rockpile, it’s right up there with raspy spoken-word efforts ‘Buying A Book’, ‘Hold What You’ve Got’ and ‘Skinny Legs And All’. While the latter was namechecked on MF DOOM’s ‘Accordion’, Tex also called his style of talking over verses ‘rapping’, cementing his influence on hip-hop. Tex’s B-side form continued when ‘I Gotcha’ [‘A Mother’s Prayer’, DIAL 1972] was flipped and soared to number two.

There’s no messing with ‘Jellyfish’. A jagged, creepy, scream-laden tribute to the titular ‘deep sea skiver’ and ‘seabed lurker’, it doubled down on Punishment Of Luxury’s incipient air of menace, a theatricality dating back to their roots in left-wing fringe theatre. Whether sporting stage make-up or scary balaclava knits, the Newcastle band’s futuristic collision of punk, psych and prog stood them further apart from their peers. Easily their most infectious effort, Brian Bond’s animated vocal delivery was a match to the shredded rubber gloves he sported performing ‘Jellyfish’ live, his squeamish lyrics flirting with homoeroticism (“I’d like to eat you and your helmet whole”) and barely disguised filth (“Your mother sucks cockle shells”), all topped with burbling water noises and a snippet of John Noakes. Tagged as ‘Seaside’ on the sleeve, ‘Jellyfish’ was supposed to be their first major label single (which explains its sleeve’s Man of War stylings), but was vetoed at the eleventh hour. Belatedly flipped when ‘Engine Of Excess’ stalled, bum-faced Oi! aggravator Gary Bushell didn’t help its cause, damning it “a pathetic attempt to capture early 70s quirkiness” in Sounds. Punilux nonetheless impacted hard on more impressionable minds. I vividly recall seeing them play 1978’s first single ‘Puppet Life’ on Tyne Tees one-off youth programme Alright Now – a performance whose sinister impact has yet to dim.

How did Pete Shelley’s ‘Homosapien’ fail to be the defining hit of 1981? A great synthetic paean to otherness, laid down in a day as a would-be Buzzcocks demo, it was denied crucial daytime airplay by prickly BBC bosses who objected to its punning wordplay (“Homo superior/In my interior”) and missed the charts completely. It became an even bitterer pill to swallow when Dare!, recorded around the same time with the same producer (Martin Rushent), made stars of the Human League. Even further back, long before Buzzcocks spurt into punky life, the computer-literate Shelley built an oscillator to record 1974’s Sky Zen, an exploratory drone suite recorded on a two-track in his living room. Much later, 1983’s second solo album XL included a ZX Spectrum computer programme with accompanying visuals and lyrics. Given his slew of imperious B-sides for Buzzcocks (‘Why Can’t I Touch It’ is explored in B-Side), Shelley’s solo flips were never going to miss the mark. The parameters they worked were different though, from the fresh-as-daisies robotic pop thrust of ‘Witness The Change’ [‘I Don’t Know What It Is’, 1981] to the bass-slapping electro-acoustic persecutions of ‘Many A Time’ [‘Telephone Operator’, 1983], the latter even refitted with a 12-inch Dance Mix. Just shy of eight minutes, ‘Please Forgive Me…’ was more than a ponderous indulgence, as heavy drum beats cascaded around a subdued mechanistic pulse. As Shelley’s almost percussive keys tapped out a simple but effective motif, the waves of repetition betrayed subtle tonalities that only a serious fan of Can or Faust’s early kosmische could muster.

Not to be confused with confessional poet Anne Sexton, South Carolina soul singer Sexton knew all about baring her soul, specialising in woe-begone smoky ballads charting her romantic disappointments. Initially a backing singer for Elijah and the Ebonies, she first made her name in the mid-60s, when she eloped with saxophonist husband Melvin Burton to lead the Masters of Soul. Infinitely more spiky and no-nonsense than Paul Kelly’s gospel-driven A-side – her only top 50 Billboard R&B hit – ‘You’re Losing Me’ is a stupidly tight, funky floor-filler that turns the tables on a good-for-nothing ex, Sexton’s emotional vow “I’m gonna play your game and show you how to win” rattling with conviction. Written alongside Burton and doubtless drawn directly from their duels, it’s so-be-it sentiments mirror Gloria Gaynor’s greatest moment ‘I Will Survive’, another cautionary tale of B-side defiance. Like many great songs from the time it enjoyed a second life on the UK northern soul scene (along with first single ‘You’ve Been Gone Too Long’), although not enough to stop Sexton drifting away from music in the 80s and retraining in academia. Resurrected in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s enigmatic 2004 Memphis melodrama 21 Grams, the film gave Sexton a lifeline back into the music biz, one she grabbed with both hands.

“Loving hard and getting high/Hell’s the place I’m gonna die,” growled Cronos on the punk-paced flip of Venom’s first single. From their self-produced artwork to their shock value lyrics, Venom (formed from the ruins of Newcastle metallers Guillotine, Oberon and Dwarfstar) upped the ante on the supposed Satanism of previous British heavy metal. They even included some bare-faced backwards masking beneath the A-side’s low tribal stomp and corrupting wordplay. Issued in the midst of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) explosion by Wallsend indie Neat (first home to Tygers of Pang Tang, Fist and Raven), those lyrical extremes may have been tempered on this old school sounding B-side, but were more than compensated by its visceral buzzsaw guitars and gargling broken glass vocal delivery. A noisy rampage, it was given the faintest dust and polish for their debut LP Welcome To Hell – a ragbag of demos, albeit super heavy and filthily unrefined ones – that impacted on all future forms of extreme metal. While Venom summarised their contributions on the back cover thus: “Cronos – bulldozer bass and vocals, Mantas – chainsaw guitar dives, Abaddon – drums and nuclear warheads”, such silly assertions now seem relatively mild given the depth of their influence, more than compensating for the artfully crafted two-word rejection letter EMI sent just a year earlier.

A product of north London’s Hornsey Rise council estate, the Equals unapologetic approach to race in name and make-up (three black members, two white), stood them apart. It shone through their sound too, a meaty, beaty, bouncy amalgam of pop, R&B, rock and ska that helped them onto bills with visiting US greats such as Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke and Bo Diddley. Despite landing a deal with Edward Kassner’s President Records, a clutch of mid-60s singles that showed the depth of Eddy Grant’s songwriting chops failed to significantly dent the UK charts. While the same fate seemed to await the imploring, persuasive ‘Hold Me Closer’, the Equals career spun on a flip of the disk by European radio DJs, who bought into the taut chorus and simple but brutally infectious guitar riff of the subtly Caribbean-tinged ‘Baby, Come Back’. Reissued as a British A-side in 1968, it knocked the Rolling Stones’ ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ off top spot and racked up over a million sales. The Equals were far from done, slaying a fervent German fan base with ‘Viva Bobby Joe’ and ‘Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys’. Their career skidded off the rails after a devastating 1969 autobahn accident, with 23-year-old Grant faring the worst, suffering a heart attack and a collapsed lung. Grant would return with plenty of fire in his belly in the late 70s (returning to the chart pinnacle with 1982’s ‘I Don’t Want To Dance’) while this B-side became a UK number one twice, courtesy of Pato Banton’s dozy 1984 reggae cover.

A good cover version is all about interpretation. ‘Money’ is a case in point. Having applied a postmodern hatchet to Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summertime Blues’ on their first single, to a sea of shrugs, Flying Lizards’ minimalist, quirky take on Barrett Strong’s relatable urge for lolly felt vitally prescient amid a down-at-heel economy. A perfect symbiosis of musician/producer David Cunningham leftfield urges and Deborah Evans-Stickland’s curiously robotic vocals, the fact it was recorded in a cold meat fridge in Brixton for the princely sum of £6.50 was not lost on its creators. But if ‘Money’ was about the Lizards burrowing beneath the layers of their chosen material in order to satirise it, then they really took a hatchet to it on ‘Money B’. Although it starts with the same instantly recognisable biscuit tin drums as the A-side, it quickly modulates into something much darker and more unsettling, as echoing effects pan around a dread bass figure, achieved by Cunningham placing ashtrays, sheet music and rubber toys over a piano’s strings. It was a fittingly oddball approach on a single that seemed to attract an oddball audience, picking up steam weeks after Virgin’s promotional campaign had ceased, entering the UK top ten at roughly the same time Thatcher entered number 10, and forever conferring one-hit-wonder status on its creators. Cunningham would extend its anything-goes approach to a whole LP of bass-driven meditations, The Secret Dub Life of the Flying Lizards, belatedly issued in 1995.

Where exactly ‘Magic’s Rap’ sits in the pantheon of west coast classics is a matter of debate. The MC and DJ alter-ego of strapping US marine Benjamin Fraga, he made his name at California’s Noa Noa nightclub in the early 80s before cutting and self-pressing his only single. A-side ‘Devil Dog Rap’ is very little to write home about – a decently played, albeit sub-Sugarhill affair, that cringingly recounts “tales of the fighting force that never fail” and patriotically taking out ‘commies’, somewhat over-celebrating its creator’s job. ‘Magic’s Rap’ is the prime cut for several reasons, mostly to do with its chorus. Although sung with no great soul power, it’s “We’re doing magic, we want to party” hook and litany of local cities is practically identical to Ronnie Hudson & the Street People’s ‘West Coast Poplock’, a huge KDAY radio and club hit issued in 1982. Fraga claims Hudson ripped him off. And if his dates are true (the single’s label is undated), then Fraga missed out on not one but two highly lucrative paydays after Dr. Dre interpolated the chorus into 2Pac’s 1995 mega hit ‘California Love’ (crediting Hudson along the way). Recently reissued on seven-inch 45 with the deluxe vinyl edition of Soul Jazz’s excellent Yo! Boombox compilation, Fraga’s insistence that he sold over 350,000 copies of this private press single – a record only ever sold at US military bases – is similarly hard to authenticate.

Already the architect of one of the sauciest festive hits of all time (1968’s ‘Back Door Santa’), Clarence Carter was hitting his solo prime as the 60s ended. A singer whose work often tiptoed around the precipice of temptation, the Alabama native was a shoe-in to reinterpret Memphis songwriters Chips Moman and Dan Penn’s stab at writing “the best cheatin’ song ever”, first dashed off during a half-hour break in a hotel poker game. Originally recorded as a deep soul anthem by James Carr two years earlier, FAME studios producer Rick Hall doubled down on its acoustic blues and gospel roots during this live studio take. Moore shows a rare mastery of timing and composure as his bruised baritone lets loose a friendly lecture on the sexual proclivities of cows, horses and mosquitos in contrast to humans’ more taciturn tactics (sufficiently altered to earn Carter a co-writer credit) in-between ticklish licks from his Jazzmaster guitar. Right up there with the song’s better interpretations (Flying Burrito Brothers, Richard & Linda Thompson, Frank Black), it was an easy fit amid a unique catalogue that held infidelity up as both a deep spiritual metaphor (c.f. 1968’s comically lascivious ‘Slip Away’) and a romantic pinnacle, whose thrills could not be surpassed, even if it sent you straight to hell’s burning pits.