Loudhailer Songs by A Witness (Ron Johnson Records)

ENERGISED by my time in the cultural hothouse that was Darlington in 1984/85, I returned to Scunthorpe determined to give the town’s music scene the kick up the arse it so richly deserved.

I signed on the dole immediately.

Overpowered by Róisín Murphy (EMI)

MY WORK is done. Ever since I was introduced to Moloko’s debut album by a girlfriend in Leeds in the mid 90s, I’ve been diligent in returning the favour to womankind by turning a succession of lucky, lucky ladies onto the unparalleled genius of Róisín Murphy.

No, not at all, you are very welcome.

Despite her undoubted star quality, and since this is all about me, I think this perhaps has more to do with Róisín being the vocal-led stuff that I play at home the most that isn’t offensive, abrasive or otherwise objectionable. These perhaps-not-quite-so-lucky ladies were essentially clutching at musical straws.

I’m joking. Who wouldn’t like Róisín’s stuff, once you’ve actually heard it?

Reach for Me by Funky Green Dogs from Outer Space (Murk Records)

THREE or four years after hearing Brandon’s seminal acid house tape, music was coming at me from all directions.

The shock waves from the initial slo-mo house detonation continued to roll around the world – bouncing between Chicago, Detroit and New York, reverberating across the Atlantic to London and Milan before booming back to New York and then back again to Ghent and Antwerp and Frankfurt via Sheffield and Manchester and beyond.

And all of these shockwaves seemed to collide in Leeds in 1992.

Bummed by Happy Mondays (Factory Records)

IT’S 9am on an autumnal Saturday morning and my world-leading not-so-full English breakfast is missing one vital ingredient.

I get a packet of Cauldron’s world-class Lincolnshire sausages from the Tesco Metro in Stretford Arndale and then head upstairs to check out the new record shop Suzie has been talking about.

Reel Around the Fountain’s doors are open but there’s nobody about as I quickly scan the sleeves poking out of the tops of a couple of dozen racks dividing up a pretty generous amount of retail space. There’s even a settee.

“Morning,” I say to the guy who emerges from the back.

“Is it?” he says, rubbing his head.

After a long day at work yesterday, Nigel got home to find DIY awaiting him, one glass of wine turned into another and, long story short, he’s now in work at 9am on a Saturday morning, hungover as fuck.

He was in the market downstairs for a couple of years but he’s only been in here for three weeks, and you need to put the hours in. The shop opens every day of the week, apart from Sunday.

Am I looking for anything in particular? Mate, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

Man Ah Warrior by Tapper Zukie (Mer)

I’M VERY comfortable in record shops. Too comfortable, some might say.

Either way, I’ve spent too much time and money on both sides of the counter in new and secondhand record shops to worry about what some spod in a Radiohead tee thinks of my taste in music.

Not, I hasten to add, that the knowledgeable, dedicated and more often than not friendly and approachable musical-curation professionals in the shops I frequent are spods. And they’d also be unlikely to wear Radiohead T-shirts, probably. I hope.

Yes, they might be a bit eccentric at times but remember that they have to work with the public, week in, week out. They are a very agreeable bunch of people by and large, considering.

Take a bow, all you ruthless rinsers of my wallet at King Bee, Vinyl Exchange, Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Revival, Eastern Bloc, Jumbo, Relics, Phonica, Sister Ray and Reckless – and any number of breadhead charity shop wankers the length and breadth of Britain.

You are more persuasive, convincing and clinically efficient than any dirty drug dealer I’ve ever met. No doubt I’ll be seeing you again soon.

Uncarved Block by Flux (One Little Indian)

THE STRANGEST thing about Uncarved Block is just how much everyone seems to hate it.

Flux of Pink Indians’ first album – the snappily-named Strive to Survive Causing the Least Suffering Possible – was a very likeable kind of angry, knockabout Crass punk with tunes and feedback.

By contrast, their second, The Fucking Cunts Treat Us Like Pricks, was a very unlikeable maelstrom of feedback, shouting and no tunes whatsoever. And that was kind of the whole point.

Even so, the greying, befuddled online remnants of the anarcho-punk community seem to prefer The Fucking Cunts to Uncarved Block, the band’s third album, an ultra-accessible collection of loose-limbed dub funk with lyrics inspired by Taoism.

“Uncarved Block was the most unexpected of the band’s three studio albums, delivering more polemic allied to dance and funk rhythms that left their previous audience totally nonplussed,” says some guy off the internet. “It was a dreadful effort.”

Uncarved Block is, it seems, “largely uninteresting”, “self-indulgent rubbish” and, according to Flux guitarist Kev Hunter in The Day the Country Died, “nothing to do with punk in the slightest, a completely neutered record with no balls at all. Trumpets and bongos on a punk album? Arty-farty shite, I’m afraid.”

You have to peer into some very dark and dusty corners of the internet to find another view.

Flowers of Romance by Public Image Ltd (Virgin)

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD’S early stuff wasn’t all about the bassline. It wasn’t 100% about Wobble’s bossy, insistent, unstoppable low-end throb. No. I believe the band had a singer, a guitarist and an occasional drummer too.

Let’s have it right though: from the outset, from the very first moment of their very first single, it was Wobble’s bass that defined, bullied, pushed and pulled PiL’s sound forward.

Don’t get me wrong. Lydon’s whiney and increasingly obtuse voice style and Levene’s insane guitar had their moments, obviously. Anyone who had a hand in First Issue or Metal Box deserves our gratitude and admiration. And, while PiL had some absolutely fantastic drummers, either Lydon or Levene, individually, would have totally dominated the sound in any other band.

But how can you compete with Wobble?

Jah Shaka Presents Dub Masters Volume 1 by Various Artists (Island Records)

EVERYONE seems to regard the Eighties as a very fragmented decade, where the nation’s youth were divided up into a series of distinct tribes – football fans, indie kids, skins, punks, skaters, whatever – with, the odd bit of casual ultra-violence aside, very little interaction between each. That wasn’t really the case.

We were coming to the end of the time when you had to be ‘something’. Or maybe it was just me feeling like that, having finally reached some kind of level of maturity.

I don’t think I ever self identified as ‘a raver’, in the same way I never really thought of myself as ‘a punk’, as such. I just used to like wearing stupid clothes, having a bad haircut and listening to poorly produced music on a cheap record player. And, at least as far as the people I hung about with were concerned, everyone seemed to be into everything.

Either way, whatever the fuck you call the kind of people who listened to the Fall, the Buttholes, Sonic Youth and Big Black in 1989, I was one of them. Ditto Public Enemy, KRS-1, the Cabs, Renegade Soundwave and the Shamen. And the Stone Roses and the Mondays. And Ofra Haza. And On-U Sound – Tackhead, Dub Syndicate – and lots more dub.

Meanwhile, the musical landscape of Britain was shifting and, just like everyone else, I was getting more and more into house music.

I was all about the music. You may have noticed.

Flex Your Head by Various Artists (Dischord)

SOMETIMES this shit seems so important that it eclipses everything, and then when you finally get it together after years of trying and failing, it turns out it means absolutely nothing at all.

There’s a picture of me, Paul, John and Doug from about five years ago, at a house party in leafy Headingley. We’re all beaming. I’m well and truly trollied, having a right laugh with some of my dearest friends, as happy as Larry.

After a tough couple of years, things were happening. I was secure in an exciting new job, confident, cohabiting, committed, and happy with my lot. Full of optimism for the future, I was ready for anything and everything life could throw at me.

At least some of my exuberance on that particular night stemmed from Paul’s admission that he’d found the copy of the seminal Washington DC hardcore compilation, Flex Your Head, that he’d somehow appropriated from me back in the day. Like 30 years ago back in the day.

“I ended up with the record because you gave it me during one of your youthful ‘I’ve had it with that shit, I’m moving on’ moments,” says Paul. “You gave me Let Them Eat Jellybeans too”.

It does sound like something I’d do.

Getting Flex Your Head back seemed like a really big deal. I was proper excited to hear it again – even though, we should remember, I cared so little for this very expensive import that I gave it away within a year or so of buying it.

I was eager to revisit that bit of my ever-more-distant youth, and to recall old times and people and places, and probably make some hokey, convoluted point that while the good old days were pretty great at the time they were actually pretty shitty when you look back on them, yeah? Or maybe it would have been the other way around.

Death Church by Rudimentary Peni (Corpus Christi)

ULTIMATELY, I don’t actually give a shit whether you like Rudimentary Peni or not – come to think of it, I’d probably prefer it if you didn’t – but if you’re coming to this cold, you can find out everything you need to know about them here.

Essentially, in the words of a very wise man, Peni “took the basic thrash blueprint, wiped their arses with it and screwed it up into a tight little ball before exploding all over you like a bad medieval disease.”

If you’re already a fan, and you’re looking for catalogue numbers and release dates, you’d be better off elsewhere.