Bashung ‘Play Blessures’ (Philips, 1982)

The artists that live on the fringes, the forward (or sideways) thinkers, have always drawn me in. This fascination really kicked in at university when, in the early 2000s, I presented a radio show with Erotic Volvo of Birmingham wrong-pop band Misty’s Big Adventure. As a kind of musicologist of the weird, his selections were never predictable and often a revelation.

An album can be revelatory in any number of ways. Perhaps it arrives at the right time in your life to be particularly resonant, or it might reveal a whole area of music you didn’t realise existed.

Back in the olden days, many music journalists had a nice sideline penning biogs, frothy one-pagers extolling the virtues of a major label’s next big thing. The money was more than you’d earn writing a cover feature, so understandably competition was fierce.

"I was at the centre of the greatest story ever told and I’d never felt more alive."