‘Breaking Down The Walls Of Heartache’ was the Dexys Midnight Runners hit that never was. Spotlighted as a potential A-side by their label Parlophone, their sped-up cover of 1964’s only hit for Johnny Johnson-led New Yorkers the Bandwagon, pushed their swirling Hammond organs right to the fore, Dexy’s treating it with respect if not reverence as they doubled down on the organic sound that infused their debut album. Super speedy, restlessly urgent, Dexy’s living up to their chemical name, they would win the phoney war with their paymasters, with ‘Breaking…’ becoming the B-side to their northern soul homage to ‘Geno’ Washington. Based around a true story – Rowland saw Washington at Harrow’s Railway Hotel when he was just 15 – the latter came loaded with meta detail. Beyond sampled crowd noises from a Van Morrison live LP and a sax riff half-inched from 1966 Washington B-side ‘(I Gotta) Hold On To My Love’ (plus a lyrical nod to its A-side ‘Michael’), there was the grubbed-down dockworker image, lifted wholesale from Scorsese’s Mean Streets. As the old cliché goes, talent borrows, genius steals…