When Robin Scott reached Number 2 in April 1979 as M with “Pop Muzik”, that out-of-nowhere novelty flash glimpse of the synth-pop barrage to come in the early ’80s, he actually had a 10-year recording career behind him. On Life Class, which comes in a horrid computer-generated fold-out sleeve produced by fine artist Scott himself, you get a whole CD of M’s proto-robopop (“Moonlight And Muzak”, “Official Secrets”, “Moderne Man”). On the second CD are a further 20 tracks from his odd pre-chartlife, when this pop Zelig peddled everything from Dylanesque rambles (“The Sailor”) to skits (“Shithouse Johnny”) to glam (“Mister Pop Star”) and even reggae (“Cowboys And Indians”), marking him out as a superior Jonathan King or inferior 10cc-style pasticheur.

Donald Fagenson (Don Was) and David Weiss (David Was), two nice Jewish boys from the Detroit suburb of Oak Park, were the Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of the early ’80s, making acerbic commentaries on Reagan-era geopolitics over superbly produced and polished, futuristic punk-funk.

Detroit being the Motor City and the home of Motown and the MC5, Was (Not Was) incorporated equal parts R&B and rock, with soul vocals from Sweet Pea Atkinson and angular guitar courtesy of Wayne Kramer of the ‘5. “Wheel Me Out”, all seven minutes and three seconds of it, is the neutron blast of samples and savagery that single-handedly made Ze, now reactivated, the world’s hippest label in the summer of 1981, when every white guitar band worth loving wanted to be Chic or George Clinton.

“Fuck Art Let’s Dance” was Ze’s manifesto, but from the nuclear orange sky of the sleeve to the zany experiments of the original alchemical brothers on “Oh, Mr Friction!”, “It’s An Attack!” and “The Sky’s Ablaze”, Out Come The Freaks is blazingly intelligent nightclub music?not a contradiction in terms.

Wholesome, Dylan-loving folkies reassessed over four CDs Every bit as manufactured as any modern pop band, Peter, Paul & Mary were svengali manager Albert Grossman’s attempt to capitalise on the success of The Kingston Trio, late-’50s progenitors of neatly-pressed folk music, whose 1958 chart-topper “Tom Dooley” kickstarted the folk revival.

Cannily realising the potential of an equivalent folk trio featuring a sexy blonde, Grossman assembled solo folkie Peter Yarrow, stand-up comic Paul Stookey and off-Broadway actress Mary Travers, and was rewarded with instant success. Less threatening than pinko Pete Seeger and better-turned-out than most of their troubadour contemporaries, they became the definitive face of folk music, with early PP&M staples like “Lemon Tree”, “500 Miles”, and “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” becoming the standard repertoire of the ’60s folk boom. Their major breakthrough came with children’s song “Puff The Magic Dragon”?lent added cachet through spurious rumours (probably started by Grossman) that it was a drug song?and Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind”, both of which reached No 2 in the US singles chart.

They continued to cover songs by Dylan?whom Grossman quickly added to his artist roster?but were rapidly deposed by him as reigning folk monarch, and struggled to keep pace with his mercurial talent as he welded folk to rock. They tried to modernise and keep pace with the rapidly-changing scene, but songs such as “I Dig Rock’n’Roll Music” with its impressions of The Beatles and The Mamas & The Papas, and lyrics like “The message may not move me/Or mean a great deal to me/But, hey, it feels so groovy to say/I dig rock’n’roll music”, seemed crass and insincere, alienating old folkie diehards and failing to persuade the young rock vanguard of their hipness. Thereafter, they always seemed old and staid, an impression confirmed when they had their only No 1 hit in 1969 with John Denver’s “Leaving On A Jet Plane”. This four-CD set charts their rise, fall, dissolution and several subsequent reunions in rather over-enthusiastic detail.

The graveyard…, dating from 1979, consists partly of four-track recordings made at the Graveyard Studio, partly of live material from an Electric Ballroom gig. Hence the title?although it also hints at ACR’s mix of gothic Mancunian with the rhythms of the dancefloor.

“Du The Du”, the opener, encapsulates ACR’s inversion of dance’s mores?it’s a take on The Ohio Players’ “Doing The Do”, with Martin Moscrop’s choppy funk guitars sounding like some gruelling industrial threshing process, Simon Topping’s Gregorian vocal style providing a grim counterpoint to Donald Johnson’s exuberant funky drumming, and Jeremy Kerr’s twangy, outsized bass. Tracks like this and “All Night Party”, their debut single, set a course for post-punk which would be followed by New Order and Talking Heads.

ACR themselves undertook a journey which would lead them unabashedly to jazz-funk, but this is the band at their rawest, offering early drafts of “Flight” as well as rockier, pugnacious tracks like “Faceless” and “Crippled Child” which remind of Joy Division but also Pere Ubu in their use of abstract analogue synth. “The Thin Boys”, meanwhile, caustically invokes a zombie-like army of pale young men in overcoats advancing uncertainly into the ’80s.

The live material exposes the frailties of Topping’s vocals too often for comfort, but when he and Moscrop unleash the horns, funk’s signifier for phat joy, they make them sound as ominous as the Last Trump, the disco whistles like those of guards organising a round-up. This reissue is another reminder of one of the most mordant, and vital, groups of the last 25 years.

As electronica reaches a point of super-saturation, there’s an increasingly widespread mood of nostalgia for the na

Daft, from 1987, combines the band’s ’83 debut EP, Into Battle With The Art Of Noise, and their 1984 debut album, (Who’s Afraid Of?) The Art Of Noise. Making it the ultimate anthology of wanton jazz and cut’n’ pastiche pop, church organs and car engines, hits masquerading as neo-Situationist musique concr

A curio indeed. The sleevenotes alone could be fleshed out into a screenplay?there’s a great cast of ’70s oddballs and dilettantes (Lewis Furey! Brian “Pinball” Protheroe!) who flit through the script. Aided by Mike D’Abo’s empathetic production and the late Duncan Browne’s nimble guitar, Twinkle’s poor-little-posh-girl tones are suited to the more sensitive songs and carry particular resonance on the title track and the moving “Soldier”. On the downside, tracks like “Bowden House” and “Ladyfriend” fall somewhere between the twee musings of Lynsey De Paul and the breathy vamp-pop of Noosha Fox. Overall, though, this is well worth resurrecting.

It’s a myth, perpetuated in the accompanying press release here, that Tommy was the first rock opera. That honour, doubtful or otherwise, probably belongs to The Pretty Things’ 1968 album SF Sorrow, while The Kinks’ Ray Davies wrote and released Arthur, originally intended as a soundtrack for an abandoned BBC TV special. In the era of Hair and Lloyd-Webber, meanwhile, which had used rock to apply a transfusion to stage musicals, the idea seemed even less far-fetched. Tommy it was, however, which not only transformed the fortunes of The Who on its 1969 release but also helped transform rock’s sense of its own scope.

Townshend was chafing at the limitations of the four-minute song format as early as 1966, as the extended “A Quick One, While He’s Away”, on A Quick One, indicated. The Who Sell Out from 1967 concluded with “Rael”, a lengthy piece that prefigured Tommy’s themes. By this time, Townshend was bitter with the music industry, following the failure of “I Can See For Miles” to chart. He declared himself “anti-pop” and threw himself into the demos for Tommy, a last throw of the dice for a band who were mired in debt and in dire need of reinventing themselves. For The Who, Tommy represented a necessary graduation.

Over two discs, Tommy told the story of a young boy whose father returns from the war unexpectedly and shoots his wife’s lover. The infant Tommy witnesses this and is so traumatised, he’s struck deaf, dumb and blind. As his parents seek out a cure for the boy, he’s left to the mercies of Uncle Ernie, a paedophile, and the bullying of his cousin Kevin. Tommy becomes an unlikely hero when he shows he can play a mean pinball and then, just as his parents are considering having him institutionalised, he undergoes a miracle cure, then goes on to become a cult figure until his followers become disgruntled with him. He finally achieves reconciliation with himself and his family.

Tommy’s rise and fall from hero status perhaps speaks more about Townshend’s disgruntlement at The Who’s commercial decline than the phenomenon of celebrity itself. What it does convey in broad strokes, however, is a glumly anti-nostalgic sense of the furtive mundanity of British life in the mid-20th century?holiday camps, terrible secrets in the top drawer of the dresser, clandestine sadism. Set against that is an almost mystical yearning for truth, connection and beauty which is most resoundingly contained in the lingering refrain, delivered with cracked passion by Roger Daltrey, “See me, feel me, touch me, heal me”.

Tommy is also intriguing musically. Townshend’s ability to craft ringing, bending, lingering power chords is immediately evident in the opening, “Overture”. Keith Moon’s rumbling percussive style, as if his kit’s in perpetual danger of collapsing atop the band, keeps the pulse racing, and the hits, like “Pinball Wizard”, hit hard. Here’s where Townshend scores over the likes of Lloyd-Webber who, for worse and for worse, has dominated the popera scene before and since Tommy. Townshend, by contrast, retained a facility to set off sound grenades in the imagination. Only occasionally, as on “Sally Simpson”, do you sense that The Who are struggling to match long-winded narrative imperatives with short-winded rock thrills.

Tommy is often accused of being overblown but, if anything, it’s strangely underblown?this in an era when the likes of Hendrix and The Beatles were discovering the possibilities of the studio. It feels much of the time like an acoustic song cycle, and sounds as if it were recorded in a small, low-ceilinged room, with none of, say, “I Can See For Miles”‘ feeling of infinite space. This may have been due to a reluctance to smother the narrative in overdubs of which it could probably have done with one or two more, but it has its benefits also?intimacy, clarity and a claustrophobic sense of terrible predicament.

As well as enhanced sound, this new edition boasts numerous studio happy-snaps which speak of a more jovial atmosphere in the studio than has often been suspected. This is further borne out by the rough outtakes included on the bonus CD?sketch versions of the songs often tailing off with extended bits of banter between band members. By far the best of the extra tracks included here is the nagging, punkishly monotone “Trying To Get Through”, driven by the boyish self-pity and longing for epiphany at the heart of Tommy.

Strangely out of kilter with The Who’s musical history to either side of it. Tommy doesn’t quite realise its ambitions, though it achieves a lot on the way. Quadrophenia would be a more fleshed-out version of what is attempted here. Still, Tommy remains fascinating, not least for its exploration of the theme of child abuse, of which Townshend stated he was a victim?a preoccupation that recently came back to haunt him. Tommy’s also an undoubted milestone in rock’s growing self-confidence and maturity, the knock-on effects of which are far broader than the unfortunate Ben Elton abominations we’re now groaning under. And its best, recurring moments?the signal, hankering guitar motif borrowed from “Rael”, the thundering windmill riff of “Pinball Wizard”, the eyes-wide-open release of “I’m Free”?still blaze.

You could say it was all there in the name: Melville’s white whale meets Dionysus, with suitably catastrophic results. But Californian quintet Moby Grape, the great West Coast shoulda-beens of ’66-’69, were doomed by more than nomenclature.

Like Buffalo Springfield, the Grape came at psychedelic pop-rock from several angles: revved-up white R&B (Bob Mosley), sorrowful balladry (Peter Lewis), frantic bar-band drive (Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson) and?last but not least?the whacked-out Bay Area zaniness of Canadian singer-guitarist Alexander “Skip” Spence.

Spence had been in Jefferson Airplane, but Moby Grape was as much a southern as a northern California band: Mosley hailed from San Diego, Lewis was the son of Hollywood goddess Loretta Young. Listening to some of the Grape’s greatest moments on Crosstalk, the pervasive flavour is Sunset Strip rather than Haight-Ashbury.

The key to such vintage Grape blasts as “Fall On You” and Spence’s “Omaha” is the combo of overlapping psych-folk harmonies and crackling, combative guitars. If the Grape blew Stills, Young and co off the stage at Sausalito’s Ark club in late ’66, it scarcely altered the fact that they were a shadow Springfield?Mosley the big-voiced blond soul man

If you thought that The Guess Who’s sole claim to fame was the absurdly excellent jukebox hit “American Woman” then this Anthology will mark your card. Cruising out of Anglophile Winnipeg, Manitoba, the band covered so many bases?from British beat-a-like to sunny-soft rock and battle-of-the-bands hoedown?that they turned professional entertainment into gold. Mainman Randy Bachman was always in overdrive, but once Burton Cummings usurped him in 1970 the, er, Who broadened their rock’n’roll allegiance to encompass power pop like “Runnin’ Back To Saskatoon” and the creepy “Follow Your Daughter Home”. A cultish matter, but a fine diversion anyway.

“Getting it straight in Notting Hill Gate, we all sit around and meditate,” sang Quintessence. At the time, W11 was London’s equivalent of Haight-Ashbury, and Quintessence provided the Ladbroke Grove counterculture with its soundtrack. Glorying in names such as Raja Ram and Maha Dev (Ron and Dave to their mums), the band played flute-led improvisational raga-rock with lyrics about lost continents and Indian mysticism. At their best, they were the nearest Britain got to its own communal-style Grateful Dead jam band. At their worst, they were hopelessly sloppy and indulgent. Either way, Ocean Of Bliss will remind you what a strange joy it was in that pre-New Age dawn to be alive.

In 1989, Peter Hook formed his third band, Revenge. Although NME and Melody Maker went into raptures?this was, after all, one quarter of Joy Division and New Order?eventually his stage persona as the leather-trousered Viking bass god with the low-slung weapon of mass seduction affected the way the music was received at the height of aciiiid and baggy. The S&M-lite artwork for 1990’s debut album, One True Passion, and the pseudo-repulsive song titles?”Surf Nazi”, “Fag Hag”, “Kiss The Chrome”?merely enhanced the perception of Hook as a rock pig peddling a chauvinist ideology and macho metal bluster.

Truth is, Hook’s DNA, shared with Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert, prevents him from creating anything that’s less than gorgeously dolorous, while those bowels-of-heaven bass lines here underpin two hours’ worth of mournful melodies and Hook’s lyrical declarations of despair and self-doubt.

Best known for their late-’60s hit “Only One Woman” and its identically arranged follow-up “The Walls Fall Down”, the Marbles were driven by the sheet metal-bending larynx of Graham Bonnet and the prolific writing of the Gibb brothers, who are responsible for half of the tracks featured here. Bonnet, who a decade later would front Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, leads a convincingly impassioned charge through “I Can’t See Nobody” and “Stay With Me Baby” but fares less well with “A House Is Not A Home” and a somewhat overwrought “To Love Somebody”. Although Bonnet’s occasionally graceless histrionics get a little too much over the spread of a whole album, pastoral relief is provided by his partner Trevor Gordon, whose two self-penned contributions, “Daytime” and “Elizabeth Johnson”, provide a welcomingly delicate counterpoint.

Like all back catalogues worth their salt?or in the case of this great early-’80s Scottish pop group, sweeties?the three Altered Images albums together provide a narrative arc. Play the records back to back and you can hear a band emerge blinking from the post-punk darkness, embrace New Pop and become chart sensations, before splitting up at the peak of their powers because they wanted a happy ending.

Look at the producers of each record and you get the same story. For Happy Birthday, now with extras such as the brilliant kindergarten shadowplay of “Dead Pop Stars”, Steve Severin was brought in because the band idolised Siouxsie & The Banshees. That debut, released in September 1981, is mostly scratchy, angular Joy Division-influenced gloom-rock enlivened by the squeaky vocals and effervescent presence of Clare Grogan, a frontgirl unlike any other in the history of the form, all cute charisma and giggly hypertension.

Martin Rushent, who produced just the title track?and No 2 hit single?of the first LP, was drafted in for 1982’s follow-up, Pinky Blue. Rushent gave the second album the sort of electronic polish he brought to bear on The Human League’s Dare!, enabling the more-thana-little-strange Altered Images to become chart regulars?and a disconcerting, ubiquitous fixture on kids’TV?with “I Could Be Happy”, “See Those Eyes” and “Pinky Blue” itself.

And then, just as self-parody was about to set in with all those songs about bursting with fizzy sherbet fountainfalls of joy, they made 1983’s Bite with Mike Chapman (Blondie) and Tony Visconti (Bowie, Bolan). On the cover, Grogan had suddenly become Audrey Hepburn. The music is no less sophisticated avant-pop and post-disco with Chapman and Visconti adding a “Heart Of Glass” gloss to “Bring Me Closer” and “Don’t Talk To Me About Love”. On “Love To Stay” and “Stand So Quiet”, Clare doesn’t so much sing as exhale sugar hiccups. Best of all, the sublime “I Don’t Want To Know”, previously only available on the cassette version of the album, finally makes it to CD. Will we ever see their like again?

All-girl quintet The Ace Of Cups blew some weird R&B air through the Frisco Bay while their Quicksilver boyfriends were toning up with a more psychedelic version of West Coast acid blues. These ballroom babes swapped duties on tracks like “Pretty Boy” and “Boy, What’ll You Do Then?”, but it’s the primitive gothic architecture of “Stones” and “Glue” that separate Denise Kaufman, Mary Gannon et al from the blowsier likes of Cold Blood and the Airplane. A genuine Haight-Ashbury treasure trove with a poetic, punky DIY edge and all the garage-girl guts you can stomach. Fill yer cups, girls.

Originally released in 1998, the debut album from Manchester DJ/remix duo Mark Rae and Steve Christian was something of an anachronism?too late to ride the last wave of trip hop but unconnected to the current drum’n’bass scene. For that reason, it sounded both vitally fresh and timelessly classic, and its setting of sample-based, lushly brooding atmospherics against tough, hip hop beats endures still.

Now remastered and featuring three new tracks?of which the sweetly urgent “Premonition” is the standout?the album reveals itself as deserving a place alongside Massive Attack’s Blue Lines for all fans of flawless British nu-soul and effortlessly funky beats.