Loaded Knife - "Berwick Street" ... the video!

This has to be the best hastily-assembled montage of photos of London's vinyl mecca on the internet. And definitely the best soundtrack

Bedazzled - Peter Cook

Groovy 60s paean to nihilism, contrasting exhortations of backing singers with Peter Cook's deadpan protestations: "You fill me with inertia" etc. Sung by Cook in character ("Drimble Wedge & The Vegetations") on the title track of the film. "Of its time" is a kind way of assessing the movie's merits.

This was genuinely an inspiration to punk. When Cook hosted the brilliant TV show Revolver in the late 1970s, he said (according to blogcaa): "I liked the Pistols above all the other stuff. I remember accusing Johnny Rotten, who he then was, of nicking a lot of his vocal style from Buddy Holly ... John Lydon said one of their songs was based almost entirely on that song from Bedazzled where I’m singing ‘I don’t care’ and ‘I’m so plastic’. I don’t know which one, I was too pissed to remember."

New Order - Turn The Heater On

A very strange track, that shouldn’t work at all. New Order do reggae! And, unlikely as it may seem, it does sound like reggae, and also like New Order.

Turn The Heater On was recorded for a John Peel session in 1982. The band never recorded another version, or performed the song live.

According to NewOrderOnline.com, Turn The Heater On is a cover of a track from Keith Hudson’s 1975 album Torch of Freedom. It was recorded as a tribute to Ian Curtis, as it was one of his favourite songs - and also a favourite of John Peel's.

The New Order version isn’t available on YouTube. But you can hear it at Warped Reality, and here’s Keith Hudson’s original.

D.A.F. - Der Mussolini

Scary but witty German track that ticks the following boxes:

1. It's got a brilliant title. Scary, but the presence of the definite article provides comforting distance from fascism.

2. It's got brilliant lyrics: "Get up. shake your hips! / Clap your hands and dance the Mussolini! / Dance the Adolf Hitler! / Move your ass and dance the Jesus Christ!" Meaningless (or is it about the tyranny of the dancefloor?) but, again, pretty scary. But no one could possibly take offence ... could they?

3. You can dance to it - indeed you should dance to it. It predicts the future, 80s techno. But its lyrics make it subversive. Dictators (and Jesus) are equated to dance moves.

4. It's post-punk (recommended by the excellent Simon Reynolds). Retains the shock, disposability and instant gratification of punk, but is experimental in instrumentation and genre. Post-Krautrock might be a better description, in that DAF were from Kraftwerk's hometown Dusseldorf.

5. D.A.F. also had one of the best names ever. Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft means German-American friendship. According to Wikipedia its"a satirical reference to the DSF, the East German Deutsch-Sowjetische Freundschaft (German-Soviet Friendship Organisation)".

Five Stairsteps - O-o-h Child

"The first family of soul" comprised of five of the six children of Betty and Clarence Burke. In the wake of the Jackson Five's success they were signed to Curtis Mayfield's Buddah label. O-o-h Child, from 1970, was their biggest hit. The B-side, a version of the Beatles' Dear Prudence, is also excellent (and brought them to the attention of the Fabs - George Harrison later signed them to his Dark Horse label).

O-o-h Child is a transcendent three minutes of Chicago soul that has some of the uplifting gospel flavour and optimism of the international hit Oh Happy Day by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, but without mentioning God. In fact Edwin Hawkins Singers covered O-o-h Child on a later single. Other notable versions were recorded by Nina Simone and the Posies. But none can touch the Stairsteps'.

This is unquestionably one of my favourite tracks ever. My pal Daz gave me the 7-inch single about 18 years ago. Then I was burgled, and the bastards stole my (cheap, worthless) turntable ... with the single on it! I searched high and low but for several years I couldn't replace it. I had to wait until eBay was invented. In fact I think it was the first thing I ever bought on eBay.

Guided By Voices - Teenage FBI

Indie anthems aren't really my bag, but I find this brilliant song hard to resist.

Apart from having one of the all-time great song titles, this track is ever more compelling with each listen.

I love the studio version, which has some interesting sounds on it, but in the live version here, GBV reveal themselves as a terrific outfit.

Thanks to Nick Holland and Michael Hann for playing me this.

Gabor Szabo - Stormy

Hungarian guitarist makes smooth, summery version of Classics IV's - er - classic. Perfect for sunny London spring day. The whole album, 1969, is great, by the way.

The Marathons - Peanut Butter

Crazy instrumental - and very cheaply made, by the sounds of it.

Blab Happy - Never No More

Yet more Blab Happy action on YouTube. Bit of a curate's egg, this song, though it does have some nice harmonies and chiming 12-string in the outro

The Seeds - Pushing Too Hard

Sky Saxon and The Seeds get intense on a show called The Mothers In Law. The last word in mid-60s garage rock. One of the commenters says they'd go back to 1966 at the drop of a hat. I know what they mean.

Jacques Dutronc - Les Cactus

Another great freak-out (thanks again Phil). Who says the French can't do rock/pop?

The Mops

Find out about them via WFMU's Beware of the Blog. They were part of the Japanese answer to western beat groups - "group sounds". I love the lyrics of I'm A Mops: "I don't care about that / Cos I'm just a Mops!"

In this clip from the later 60s they rock out in an agreeable MC5-ish way.

Blab Happy - Inside Out

Someone unknown to me or drummer Jez has put this on YouTube, and said nice things about us ...

Bo Diddley RIP

Reflecting on Bo Diddley after reading various obits and appreciations today, it’s clear that his contributions to rock’n’roll were mighty and many.

He pioneered the use of electric guitar effects: “reverb! Tremelo! Distortion!” marvels the Washintgon Post today.

He presaged gansta rap with his boastful and often lewd lyrics – his very first record was called “Bo Diddley” and his own name was a recurring theme. His only US top 40 hit, “Say Man”, was one of many duets with his female vocal foil, Norma-Jean Wofford aka The Duchess – unusually, he had women in his band. Other tracks saw him trading good-humoured insults with his sideman Jerome Green.

Plus: he looked great! That square guitar. And in his heyday, he out-wiggled Elvis, apparently. The cover of Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger (1964) is one of the all-time great LP sleeves (I recall gazing awestruck at it when Ray's Jazz had it on the wall in their old Shaftesbury Avenue home).

As if that wasn’t enough, in 1957 he played guitar on Wyatt Earp by the Marquees, a Washington vocal group featuring a young Marvin Gaye. He also played tour support for the Rolling Stones in 1964 and the Clash in 1979 – groups who covered his songs included the Yardbirds, the Who and the Pretty Things (who based their whole approach on Bo).

But above all – or more accurately beneath all, there’s the Bo Diddley beat: bomp-pa bomp-pa bomp, bomp-bomp. There can’t be many artists who’ve invented their own rhythm. And what a primal, propulsively sexy beast the Bo Diddley rhythm is. Here are some records (not necessarily endorsed by 50p Bloke) that owe their existence to Bo’s beat:
• Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away
• (Maries the Name) His Latest Flame by Elvis Presley
• Johnny Otis's Willie and the Hand Jive
• I Want Candy by The Strangeloves
• Magic Bus by The Who
• 1969 by the Stooges
• How Soon Is Now by the Smiths
• Faith by George Michael
• U2's Desire
• Bruce Springsteen's She's the One

If anyone can think of any more, please post a comment below.

Tyrone Davis - Can I Change My Mind

Can I Change My Mind was Tyrone Davis’s finest moment, a life-affirming record. Davis’s heartbreaking vocal reaches the emotional extremes but avoids histrionics – a masterclass in true soul singing. The golden rule: don’t over-emote.

Carl Davis’s warm production was responsible for some terrific Chicago soul in the late 60s, including gems by Young Holt Unlimited, Barbara Acklin but with a loping, jittering guitar line and buoyant brass courtesy of Carl Davis’s house band, Pieces of Peace.

Davis was never cool enough to hit pop paydirt; he was 30 when Can I Change My Mind was released. But he is, to my mind, the finest soul singer bar none.

I first heard Tyrone Davis via an esteemed former colleague at PA, Andy Lemon, who kindly made me a series of treasured compilation tapes (this was the era of cassettes) containing some highlights of his impeccable record collection.

Kraftwerk 1973

Me and the lovely Mrs 50p Bloke saw Kraftwerk in 2004 at the Brixton Academy. Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter were the only two from the classic 'Werk line-up. But reading I Was A Robot by Wolfgang Flür, it's clear that it was always Ralf and Florian's band. And Kraftwerk live are still simply phenomenal, and in fact seem to have spent the last 20 years simply honing and fine-tuning their gizmos to deliver the hits as technologically perfectly as possible. In that respect, it's probably a better show now that it was in their 70s-80s pomp.

But even if Kraftwerk are a two-man operation, it's Interesting to see this clip from 1973, which shows them minus Karl Bartos, who was yet to join, and also without the mid-20th century animations and graphics. The newly-joined Flür is there, though, nervously tapping his homemade electronic drum pads. He describes the excitement he felt at this performance in his book - required reading for any Kraftwerk enthusiast, despite the comments posted by YouTube viewers.

Blab Happy blogs

Box Set Go enjoys "Prospect Hill" . Is it baggy? Possibly.

Because Midway Still Aren't Coming Back salutes our 1991 Mad Surge EP (and a commenter is amazed at "Tender Hooks").

Supernature - Cerrone

There's something chilling and other-worldly about Supernature. It made a big impression on my young ears when I first started listening to pop music, on Capital Radio in August 1977 following the death of Elvis (remind me to tell you more about that some time).

Cerrone, as with Georgio Moroder, Jean-Michel Jarre and Deodato, produced European disco at its coldest and most futuristic. Like much of the rock music of the time, this was music with grandiose pretensions, but was also democratic in its popular appeal. How exhilarating when it delivered.

I never heard Supernature for years after its release, picking up a secondhand copy in the early 90s. It enjoyed a revival in the mid-90s when its genius was recognised by the likes of Daft Punk.

I think the Parisian Jean-Marc Cerrone himself put it best: "I don't produce records to press up my musical ideas to any minorities. Musical desires of that kind should be better practiced at home in the own cellar. For me it is more important to make music that appeals to broad audiences - I intentional want to work commercial. Why this is tabooed by so many people doesn't go into my head." Quite.

Pre-Beatles UK rock'n'roll

Just wrote this blog for the Guardian ...

The Rubber Room - Porter Wagoner

To paraphrase a joke from The Blues Brothers, I have trouble with both kinds of music: country and western.

I heard this fantastic track, The Rubber Room, on Stuart Maconie's BBC 6Music show The Freak Zone a couple of weeks ago. It had a brilliant dub-like delay effect on the desperate vocal to emphasise the lyric, concerning fear of insanity. Not something I'd ever heard on a country record. It was dark and gothic, like a proto-Nick Cave, or a more psychotic - and psychedelic - Johnny Cash.

I thought: this is fantastic! I must hear more! As I recall, Maconie had tantalisingly said the track was a typically strange offering from Wagoner. So a few clicks of the mouse and I'd bought a compilation of the same name, which promised a whole CD of Wagoner's "haunting and poetic songs".

I feel cheated - The Rubber Room still sounds great, but the rest of the CD is maudlin tosh. Or am I missing something?

(To make matters worse, I discovered that I already owned the track. It's on Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey's excellent mix album The Trip.)