87: BLONDIE
I'm Always Touched By Your Presence Dear/
Poets Problem/Detroit 442
(Chrysalis, 1978)

FOR all of my left-leaning obscurantist tendencies, there's still a large part of me that just loves big, bold, bashy pop music.

It was ever thus as well. I can remember quite clearly what my listening habits were like as a 17-year-old in 1978 - lots of Pere Ubu, Wire and This Heat (whose John Peel session version of Rimp Ramp Romp remains an all-time favourite), leavened with early Miles Davis, The Dudley Moore Trio, Can, the Velvets and Piper At The Gates.

But then there was the pop music. 1978 was a terrific year for singles, even within the mainstream chart structure, and for a while it was a thrill to feel a sense of belonging while buying sharp and shiny new wave fare from the likes of XTC, Jilted John, The Buzzcocks, Elvis Costello & The Attractions and, of course, Blondie.

It was to all intents and purposes impossible not to fall for them at the time. Debbie Harry was of course gorgeous by any criteria, her iconic looks enhanced beyond measure by a cool intelligence and the implication of an edgy undertow courtesy of her NY boho past.

"The boys in the band" scrubbed up reasonably well also, in their tiny mod suits and skinny ties. Keith Moon-obsessed drummer Clem Burke was in fact so flashy that he was capable of momentarily wresting attention away from the magnetic Debbie Harry, twirling his sticks and bouncing them off of the ceilings in the sweaty clubs that constituted the band's early circuit.

A huge swathe of nostalgia factors into all of this for me: I was asked to fill in on bass with an ad hoc school band at the time, thereby getting to play the buoyant basslines of Presence Dear and Picture This to the entire assembly, which naturally included teachers I wanted to impress and/or depress, and girls whom I hopelessly fancied.

Songs that make you feel young again whenever you hear them are valuable beyond measure, and so it proves with Presence Dear. It takes me straight back to a time of coloured vinyl, pic sleeves, lapel badges and an unquenchable, limitless pre-responsibilities excitement at what each day might potentially bring.

It's the elixir of my youth, no less; and I can't ever stop myself going back for another fortifying cupful.