Pete Shelley

XL1
Genetic, 1983

Before Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto formed Buzzcocks, one of the first-wave British punk bands, they were members of an electronic music society together at university. So when the group broke up in 1981, it came as no surprise to Shelley's friends that he swapped his guitar for a synthesiser. For most Buzzcocks fans, though, it was quite a shock. Shelley's first single 'Homosapien' was about as punk as a gay disco. Literally. It was soon banned by the BBC for containing "explicit" references to homosexuality – which, by today's standards, were about as explosive as soft cheese – and led Shelley to talk about the "open secret" of his bisexuality previously hinted at in Buzzcocks lyrics.

After an album of the same name as the single, Shelley released his second solo record XL1 in 1983. While it was still largely electronic, a few tracks had guitars as well as drum machines and harked back to the Buzzcocks' later songs – 'Many A Time' sounded a bit like a funked-up take on the band's brilliant 'Lipstick'. Still, there's a reason why Shelley is remembered foremost for his role as lead singer of the Buzzcocks rather than for his solo work. Let me put it this way: unless you're still in the throes of puberty, you should have figured out by now whether glamtastic 80s new-wave records appeal to your taste.

The original pressing of XL1 also had a track at the end of the second side called 'ZX Spectrum Code'. If you try to play it, it sounds like a vacuum cleaner molesting a video game. It was a computer program written for the ZX Spectrum, one of the first widely-available home computers in Britain, sometimes referred to as the UK equivalent of the Commodore 64. The 'Speccy', as it was known, was a blocky keyboard that plugged into a television set and ran programs from a tape deck. To run the program on the record, listeners had to cover their ears, play the track on vinyl while recording it to a cassette, and then load it on the ZX. If you ran the program in sync with the album, it would bring up the lines to each song on the screen like a makeshift karaoke machine. Cool, huh?

The Jesus And Mary Chain

Darklands
Blanco Y Negro / WEA, 1987

Sometimes it seems like my music taste is stuck ten years behind. In the middle of the 90s, while the other malcontents were getting into Garbage's single 'Only Happy When It Rains', I was just discovering The Jesus And Mary Chain track of the same name. The two songs had little in common beyond their sentiment, and it was difficult to explain to friends why I was into these "old guys" instead of drooling over Shirley Manson's mini-dress. Never-mind that JAMC had started more riots than Manson had make-up kits – they were still past their use-by date. From an aesthetic point of view, it's a tragedy that we have such a short collective memory when it comes to pop music. But commercially, it's wonderful. I mean, who'd buy new records if they knew it had all been done before?

The fact that Darklands was, by and large, an album of understated pop songs made it even harder to explain. When Jim and William Reid – the Scottish brothers at the core of the band – started playing in the mid-80s, they stirred up controversy like born publicists. Dressed in leather jackets and dark sunglasses, they would play only three or four songs at gigs, sometimes with their backs turned to the audience, and wait for a riot to ensue. Within a few years they'd been banned from several venues, four cities and the offices of their record label. As one reporter dryly noted, their rap sheet was a list of "the essential ingredients for success". When he asked Jim why the band were so infamous, the singer replied in his thick accent: "Because we're so guud. Because we're so much better than uverybody ulse."

To go along with the band's devil-may-care image was their first album Psychocandy, one of the noisiest pop albums ever released and the subject of countless love letters from music critics. Whether they'd got it all out by the time of its follow-up, or they just wanted to piss off their fans some more, Darklands was almost the opposite. Instead of being wrapped in razor-wire, the melodies were accompanied by backing vocals and a drum machine like handclaps. It still had the Reid brothers' venom though. There's a line on 'Happy When It Rains' that sums up the pair's ethos perfectly: "Talking fast on the edge of nothing."

Supergrass

In It For The Money
Parlophone, 1997

In the middle of the 1990s, as the singles war between Blur and Oasis was heating up, Supergrass crashed the Britpop party like someone's kid brother outraged at not having been invited. Compared to the big boys, they were loud, silly and quite incredibly ugly and surprised more than a few people by wowing both NME and Melody Maker with a simple punk-pop song about being thrown into lock-up while still buzzing from a drug hit.

But how to follow such a great entrance? Dressing up as homeless people and naming their second album In It For The Money seemed to do the trick. Their first record, I Should Coco, was pretty straightforward pop, inspired by two of the more melodic first-wave punk groups, Buzzcocks and The Jam. The second time around, the three-piece got a bit more creative and messed about with horns and psychedelic pop influences.

The introduction is the three of them, on the cover, dressed in second-hand winter coats and those stupid hats with the ear flaps, playing their instruments – one of which is a trashcan – on a street corner in some town that could only be called Shitsville, chanting "we're in it for the money, we're in it for the money" on the opening track. After that the song breaks open into a sort of hallucinatory driving anthem. "I got my mind made up!/ I got my finger on the button!/ Got the sun turned down!," Gaz Coombes rants as a brass section booms and the band play like they're on the highway to drug-induced psychosis.

Most of the other tracks on the first half of the record are the normal pop song stuff – hey, let's go to a party and do fun shit! – but towards the end they get more interesting. On the final trio, the tempo slows down and the band start getting weird. Coombes opens the medley with a sad, surreal few lines about his new-found fame: "If you like me, you can buy me and take me home/ When you see me on the TV I'm alone." The closer, 'Sometimes I Make You Sad', sounds like a demented, late-night carnival rhyme.