There’s a genuinely transgressive thrill in liking Canadian prog trio Rush. Although critically damned early on due to drummer/lyricist Neil Peart’s appreciation of right-wing allegorist Ayn Rand, their Zep/Yes-inspired techno-rock nevertheless attracted huge audiences of marginalised ’70s teens.

By 1980 their music had evolved into a unique hybrid of Philip Glass synth fanfares, chiming McGuinn riffs and, er, white reggae, with a more mature Peart revealing himself to be an incisive lyricist with an acute and compassionate understanding of his band’s fan base (“Subdivisions”) and a wry attitude towards showbusiness (“Limelight”). All of this would count for nothing if Rush didn’t rock; but check the insane “2112 Overture”, the jazz-pop-reggae fusion of “The Spirit Of Radio” and the oozing Moogspace of “Tom Sawyer” for emphatic proof they do. Embarrassingly great.

SPARKS IN A DARK ROOM

LTM

More post-punk electro pioneers crawl out of obscurity in the form of these Dutch one-time Factory artists. Actually, to term the Minny Pops ‘pioneers’ is to overstate the case, but the cold DAF-like electronic menace of 1982 debut album Sparks In A Dark Room sounds remarkably fresh over 20 years on, bearing favourable comparison with contemporaries such as Simple Minds and Tubeway Army as well as the current crop of analogue pretenders.

Wally van Middendorp’s lugubrious baritone is an acquired taste but works well on the foreboding, battleship-grey funk of “Crack” and “Vital”.

The tracks gathered together on accompanying rarities compilation Secret Stories are less electronic and less essential, indicating a band struggling to escape the influence of Joy Division. Go straight for Sparks In A Dark Room instead.

After a freak MTV hit with “Popular” from their 1996 debut, Elektra refused to release Nada Surf’s second album on the grounds that it failed to include a follow-up single. Belatedly made available on Heavenly, which last year released the band’s third album, Let Go, the stupidity of that decision is now revealed. An album of genre-hopping alt.rock full of firecracker melodies and heart-stopping hooks, it’s not quite a lost classic, but it presses most of the right buttons and demands to be heard.

And to think Elektra was once the most respected, artist-friendly label in the world.

Released to chime with the inauguration of The Clash into the Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame in the USA, The Essential Clash is not a quick cash-in designed to milk the inevitable sentiment caused by the death of Joe Strummer. Cynics, though, might point out that it’s not the first such collection?ever since the Story Of… volumes, Clash compilations have been readily available. Still, in dedicating this two-CD, 41-strong bunch of essential songs to the memory of their erstwhile leader, Messrs Simonon, Headon and Jones will tap into more than American nostalgia.

Strummer’s own visions for the group, honed in his own prototype punk-era 101’ers and cured in the fertile breeding ground of the so-called pub rock movement, predated The Sex Pistols and ensured that The Clash were far more than the spit-and-polish DIY outfit Mick and Paul had in mind. The far-sighted clarion calls of “White Riot”, “1977”, “London’s Burning” and “Career Opportunities” were wrapped in socialist principles and hit the rhythmic vein of the era while continuing to sound inspirational, and even acidly amusing in the case of “Julie’s Been Working For The Drug Squad”.

The more measured punk metal of the badly received Give ‘Em Enough Rope suggested that Strummer’s rages and moods were about to be cauterised, whereas The Clash were always likely to experiment with levels of sophistication, largely due to their love for, and knowledge of, reggae styles (“Hate And War”, and their canny version of Junior Murvin’s “Police & Thieves”), Stateside garage grooves (“I Fought The Law”) and a far more worldly view which took them from Broadway to Casbah without losing sight of Britain’s strange mix of supermarket torpor and multicultural high energy.

Funkier than their compadres, The Clash bore the brunt of the punk backlash but will have some sort of last laugh here. The Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame may be a hoary concept but they deserve to be there, scowling in the doorway before blowing the place up.

Thirty years after its original release, the carrot being dangled before the faithful to celebrate yet another anniversary of this icon of the rock era is a version in a format called 5.1, although it’s hard to imagine how another sonic clean-up will help the toked-up trudge of Nick Mason’s drumming. But it’s worth raising a cheer, for while it probably wasn’t their finest hour artistically, this latest reissue does offer the chance to challenge the idea that Dark Side Of The Moon is a monument to turgidity and misguided ambition.

Dark Side Of The Moon was the first rock record to assume an extra-musical life of its own, acquired by millions almost as a lifestyle choice. Even the States fell at the band’s feet?never entirely at home with UK prog, the comparative simplicity of this music made art-rock for the mass market a reality.

It’s perhaps the enigmatic nature of the beast that is its enduring marvel; that one can listen to it and not have the faintest idea why it leaves you uplifted, a particularly incongruous reaction given its dyspeptic content. “How did they do that?” you ask and, of course, there’s no answer. There are no grand gestures, no coups de th

LATE FOR THE SKY

RUNNING ON EMPTY

HOLD OUT

ALL ASYLUM

LA singer-songwriter Jackson Browne has made 11 albums in his 37-year career, starting with Saturate Before Using, a late debut cut in 1972. His style typifies the south California ethic?wholesome, country-tinged, reflective, and haunted by melancholy. This set of reissues comes from the beginning of his discography, omitting second and fourth LPs For Everyman and The Pretender. The discs are remastered but nothing has been added to the packaging and there are no song credits, let alone sleevenotes.

Al Green

UNIVERSAL

LOVE: THE ESSENTIAL AL GREEN

HI/DEMON

White’s elaborate productions, with their captivating bass and pseudo-sophisticated strings, still await their critical due. Love Songs differs from previous White compilations in that we get full-length album versions of symphonic soul epics like “Never Gonna Give You Up”, reminding us of their debt to ’60s psychedelia (those harpsichords and atonal string intros), while 1991’s “Dark And Lovely” proves his creativity never dried up.

Al Green’s art, in contrast, was minimalist. Memphis-based producer Willie Mitchell cut out all echo, and Green’s voice is far more vulnerable (“Livin’ For You”). Most of this two-CD set’s 35 tracks sound self-enclosed, yet their subtle force remains evident, particularly on “Simply Beautiful”, where his intimate vocals seem to?as his ’74 album had it?explore your mind.

For all that they were the Ultimate Behemoth of ’70s Rock, I always think that if you don’t get Led Zeppelin it’s because you ain’t got no soul.

The thing that separated these Men from all the cock-rockin’ Boys was that they played with feel, with funk. They were The Greatest Hard Rock Band Ever not because they were telly-trashing, snapper-inserting Crowley fiends but because, dammit, they could play.

Over the lean, sinewy bass lines of JP Jones and the always deceptively straight stomping of John Bonham?a sociopathic Keith Moon, anyone??you had the full-throttle-but-weirdly-girly yelp of Robert Plant and crunching, multi-textured guitarshapes of Jimmy Page. Arguably the most successful chemistry experiment rock’s ever conducted.

Highlights on this newly conjoined Early Days And Latter Days set? What isn’t a highlight? From the word go?the double stab of the opening “Good Times, Bad Times”, as on the band’s debut?every note and beat just careers out of the speakers. Of all the limp nu metalheadz in today’s biz, only those Stone Age Queen fellas come remotely close to the loose/tight visceral grooves patented by Page/Plant/Jones/Bonham. I even love all the cod-folk acoustica?the Love-ish opening of “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”, the Sandy Denny-graced “Battle Of Evermore”?but they’re filigree next to the primordial blues-funk bonequake of “Whole Lotta Love” and “When The Levee Breaks”.

And what of the Latter Days? Well, no one could pretend Houses Of The Holy or Presence are patches on albums one through four, but from Physical Graffiti comes the quite mind-blowing “Kashmir”, which repurposed the giant Bonzo thwack of “Levee” and brilliantly layered weird phased guitars and Asiatic strings over them.

“No Quarter” from Houses Of The Holy sounds pretty hot after 30 years, but Presence’s “Achilles’ Last Stand” is too fussily proggy by half. And what’s that wimped-out synth doing on “All My Love”, f’chrissakes? Ah well, back to Vol One…

The song remains the same. The power remains undiminished. Let it trample you underfoot.

In early 1970, Fleetwood Mac recorded three concerts in Boston with the notion of releasing a live album. Within weeks Peter Green had gone AWOL, throwing the band into disarray. The album was shelved. Some of the material later crept out on vinyl in the 1980s. Now comes the first in a planned three-CD series from those performances. “Black Magic Woman” and “Green Manilishi” bookend this first set, and in between there’s much mundane blues jamming, including an unforgivable 25-minute version of “Rattlesnake Shake”, making it for collectors only.

When Ziggy broke up the band in ’73, the Spiders’ Hull-born axe hero went it alone. Luckily his former employer was still on hand to offer a sprinkling of Stardust: David wrote the delicate, Hunky Dory-ish “Growing Up And I’m Fine”, the lyrics to “Music Is Lethal” (revisiting the glam histrionics of Aladdin Sane’s “Time”) and co-wrote “Hey Ma Get Papa” with Ronson (who, consciously or otherwise, sings after a Ziggy fashion). Fans of Bowie’s ’71-’74 glam period should still find this a beguiling and worthwhile footnote.

His greatest bequest to rock’n’roll bar The New York Dolls’ first album, Thunders’ 1977 post-Dolls debut L.A.M.F (that’s “Like A Mother Fucker”) is unquestionably one of THE great punk albums. However, its original mix was notoriously ropey?so bad Thunders tried to rectify it with 1984’s L.A.M.F. Revisited. Representing the album that should have been, these lost mixes therefore illuminate the savage beauty of the likes of “Born To Lose” and “Pirate Love” like never before.

Fantastic.

Poor, deluded Sid. Existing perfectly as an idea, he didn’t stand a chance when he dared to step out as a frontman in August 1978 at the Electric Ballroom, backed by Glen Matlock, Rat Scabies and Steve New. It was, apparently, an uproarious occasion, but this recording captures none of the spirit and all the grotesque inadequacy of Sid’s performance. Baying his allegiances to Iggy and Thunders, weaving a belligerently uncertain path through his own ‘hits’ and a couple of Pistols covers, he sounds even more pitiful at the two New York gigs also featured. Expect much duplication of songs, with four different versions of “My Way”.

How wonderfully odd Altered Images sound now. Like spiky grains of sugar falling on an oil slick from a great height while onlooking puffins applaud. I’m alarmed to find that, of five encyclopaedias of rock at hand, only two mention them, whereas four mention Alien Sex Fiend. Can this be right and just? It cannot. The Glaswegian gigglers accidentally mastered pop, which is the only cool way to master it.

Furthermore, they did so in two successive, entirely contrasting ways. At the start of the ’80s they emerged as indie/Peel darlings, openly imitating Siouxsie & The Banshees. The small and lovely Clare Grogan, squealing like Minnie Mouse, made Tatu look like Hinge & Bracket. Produced initially by Steve Severin, they sounded like The Banshees Junior, and sang of “Dead Pop Stars”. This track remains wickedly, spookily prescient and acidic, lampooning the proverbial 15 minutes before they were halfway through their first. Then came hits, with Martin Rushent proving he wasn’t always a grumpy git. “Happy Birthday” and “I Could Be Happy” are new wave nursery rhymes whose hooks blow your candles out every time. The Happy Birthday album was followed by Pinky Blue, more of the same only less rapturously received by fickle critics.

So A.I., with appropriate intelligence, went mainstream. Punk princess Grogan was restyled as Holly Golightly and ’83’s Bite album married slick Nile Rodgers/Bernard Edwards disco grooves with Blondie’s pop nous. A sophisticated, underappreciated masterpiece, this, produced by?does it get any better??Mike Chapman and Tony Visconti. It boasted four stone classics in “Don’t Talk To Me About Love”, “Love To Stay”, “Change Of Heart” and the foxy-as-fuck “Bring Me Closer”.

They’re all shimmering splendidly here, plus two underwhelming new songs and sleevenotes from La Grogan. Altered Images sold five million records and made the world a brighter place. Bounce Tiggerishly out of your front door right now and make it five million and one.

LET’S GET IT ON

BOTH MOTOWN

What’s Going On routinely tops critics’ polls, albeit for the wrong reasons. It is the documentation of a confused mind wishing to find its place in a hostile world. Gaye talks with his sibling in Vietnam (“What’s Happening Brother”) and seeks salvation in God (“Wholly Holy”) but his reverie is tempered by brutal reality (“Inner City Blues”). Global and personal anguish were never so exquisitely conveyed.

Gaye turned his attention to the carnal on ’73’s Let’s Get It On. His deliberations on the boundaries between love and sex are beautifully sung but undermined by conventional MOR arrangements, bar its two great set pieces: the lamentation of “Distant Lover” and the shattering “Just To Keep You Satisfied”, which could serve as a requiem for humanity.

Chick Corea, bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Roy Haynes made the classic Now He Sings, Now He Sobs in 1967. Fourteen years later, they met again to record the award-winning Trio Music, a double album consisting of one disc of free improvisations and a companion disc of seven tunes by Thelonious Monk. Mercurial and constantly inventive, the playing is top class throughout. The free stuff has something of Messiaen’s bird music about it, while the Monk set is puckishly brilliant. The original double album is here repackaged as a single disc.

Back in the heady days of the British beat boom, South African keyboard player Manfred Mann and the band that shared his name were responsible for some classic three-minute singles of enduring appeal (“Do Wha Diddy Diddy”, “5-4-3-2-1”, “Pretty Flamingo”).

Mann then became an early Dylan apostle, covering more of the great man’s catalogue than perhaps anyone with the exception of The Byrds (“If You Gotta Go, Go Now”, “The Mighty Quinn”, “Just Like A Woman”). This all makes the first disc of this double album pretty indispensable.

By disc two, both singers, Paul Jones and Mike D’Abo, have gone and the ’60s pop band has given way to the tedious ’70s prog-rock stylings of the Earth Band. Mann remained an astute judge of a cover version (the Earthband had a big hit in 1975 with Springsteen’s “Blinded By The Light”) But by then it was mostly all over.