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.

First released in 1974, when Neuwirth was the latest addition to David Geffen’s burgeoning Asylum stable. Fittingly for the man who’d been Bob Dylan’s hip young lieutenant and tour manager, Janis Joplin’s Chelsea Hotel neighbour and Patti Smith’s mentor, the connections are impeccable: Cass Elliot, Chris Hillman, Booker T Jones, Clydie King, Kris Kristofferson, Don Everly and Dusty Springfield is just the top half of Neuwirth’s guest list.

Predictably?although the musicianship is faultless throughout?their combined musical might tends to overpower Neuwirth’s knotty Willie Nelsonisms, so he’s forever battling with the tide. Nevertheless, it’s no dud, merely another soft-country curio from California’s pot ‘n’ patchouli heyday.

Kid in a big world was released to considerable CBS fanfare in February 1975. It received favourable reviews and sold 15,000 copies to lovelorn students in bedsitland. And then, nothing, although ever since that sole album from Howard has acquired a certain cachet on the record collector circuit. The awesomely effete creature in the pinstripe suit with the sunken eyes, ashen skin and bri-nylon hair, caught in a derelict building leaning against a dilapidated window box on the LP sleeve, like a closeted gay bank clerk from some early ’60s grim northern film scenario, is the ultimate cult curio.

And yet he could have been a contender. Kid In A Big World is a magnificent collection of rococo balladry and florid vignettes from a singer-songwriter who might have rivalled Elton or Bowie had his record company managed to market him right during that strange nether-period between glam and punk. Trained in classical piano at the age of five, Howard’s interest in pop was piqued by “Strawberry Fields Forever”, so he sent a tape of demos to Apple. He was invited to join an early version of?get this?Iron Maiden before making the transition from denim-clad hippie to Biba’d fop. The garishly decadent press photo on the left was taken in Park Lane by Dezo Hoffman (he shot everyone back then, darling). After providing music for the 1974 Peter Fonda film Open Season, CBS’ brightest hope was unveiled at an industry festival in Cannes.

That, however, was that. Kid In A Big World, recorded at Abbey Road with The Shadows’ Tony Meehan, is bathed in the wan light of romantic failure. Even Nyro-esque show tunes like “Deadly Nightshade” and “Spellbound” have a sepia-tinted poignancy. But it’s the lightly orchestrated ballads that devastate. “Goodbye Suzie” is a darkly ravishing tale of a girl’s suicide. “Gone Away”, featuring the actual Mellotron used by Lennon on the aforementioned “Strawberry Fields Forever”, is absolutely heartrending. For “Missing Key”, Howard’s voice is multi-tracked for harmonic richness, like a one-man Bee Gees circa Mr Natural. On “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner”, he’s more arch, the missing link between Noel Coward and “tender pervert” Momus. Sessions included here for a projected second LP, Technicolour Biography, indicate no decline in quality. “Small Town, Big Adventures”, in particular, is amazing, like a gossamer MOR “Seven & Seven Is” by Love. “There’s a real soft sound from the other side of town”, Howard warns against gently thunderous rhythms, “it controls your soul”. If there’s a more surreally evocative line in mid-’70s pop, Uncut has yet to hear it. What a discovery!

Stevens launched Deram, Decca’s off-shoot progressive label, in 1966 with “I Love My Dog”, followed by further hits “Matthew & Son” and “I’m Gonna Get Me A Gun”?ingenious, idiosyncratic, albeit lightweight pop. Like label-mate Bowie, Stevens was clearly an unorthodox talent. Typically, the singles and B-sides then bolstered Stevens’ debut album, an impressive, diverse collection despite Mike Hurst’s archaic production and fussy arrangements. By New Masters, Hurst was deploying an even heavier trowel. The songs also fell short, as if written for a prospective musical without theme or substance. The one redeeming song, future Rod Stewart hit “The First Cut Is The Deepest”, was surprisingly given to PP Arnold as a single. Strange, given that Stevens’ run of hits had long dried up. Following an enforced convalescence after tuberculosis, he re-emerged on the burgeoning Island Records in 1970 with a sparse acoustic sound and songs tailor-made for bedsit romantics everywhere.

Robert Margouleff, later of Tonto’s Expanding Headband, produced the first of these two albums in 1968, and the best of its Moog and Theremin embellishments sound like the blueprints for Tonto’s groundbreaking Zero Time album. Elsewhere, alas, despite occasional nods to early Captain Beefheart, things never get quite as weird as you’d really like them to. The lyrics lapse a little too often into fortune cookie koans of the “today is only yesterday’s tomorrow” variety, and at times the irritation factor couldn’t be any higher if They Might Be Giants were jamming with Devo. John Emelin’s off-the-wall vocal style lends proceedings a certain angularity, and the seven-minute title track of 1969’s Space Hymn is absolutely ripe for sampling, but too often the synth bubbles and squeaks just aren’t enough to disguise some stunningly average country-tinged pop.

The career of John Simon Ritchie (he died as Simon John Beverley, but was known to the world as Sid Vicious) mirrors a cultural change that saw the hippies swept aside by the street rats. Vicious usurped the popularity of Johnny Rotten’s Sex Pistols when his posthumously released single, “Something Else”, outsold the punk heroes’ own “God Save The Queen”. This 25-years-on set is short, brutal and nasty, but it contains a few live items, Squid’s post-Pistols versions of “Belsen” and “I Wanna Be Your Dog”, plus an unreleased demo of “My Way”. The Vicious cult has abated in recent years, but a new book and various documentaries will awaken interest in this diabolical performer.

Way too trim for its own good?less than 20 minutes and no extras?this 1963 masterclass in straight-backed country picking was the Rosetta Stone for a whole slew of West Coast wannabes (Gram Parsons once said he would give his right knee to be in the Barkers). Including 17-year-old mandolinist Chris Hillman and fellow future Burrito Kenny Wertz on banjo, this stunning acoustic fling was the torch-passing of Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs to a hip new generation with no regard for traditional country/rock boundaries.

For all the prom-queen sheen and chunky-ribbed homeliness, Thompson had already weathered three marriages, domestic abuse and a Hollywood TV show by the time she scored big with “Norman” in 1961.

Hitching the diminutive sass of Brenda Lee to the popstomp of Jackie Wilson (and notwithstanding friend Roy Orbison’s “Suzie”, written especially for her), her best moments here are sub-Supremes hip-wiggler “Sweet Hunk Of Misery” and brassy belter “Walkin’ My Baby”.