Sugarhill Gang - 'Rappers Delight'

There's no doubt that this record is an icon, but it's also a great example of how the line between iconic and ubiquitous is perilously thin.

Of you've only ever been a consumer of music, that's to say you've never made music or played records for money regularly, it's hard to convey the idea that even greatness can pall with repetition. There's no getting away from the fact that this record is 15 minutes of history in the making. The problem is, it's also the record that, if you're a DJ, you stick on when you need to go for a piss and keep people dancing at the same time. This record is both so ace and so long that you can start it playing, go for a piss, get a beer, return to the decks and still have plenty of time for a bit of wiki-wiki before dropping the next record, which if your playing the odds will either be Deelite's 'Groove is in the Heart' or Mantronix 'King of the Beats'.

One other personal horror I attach to this track is having experienced a karaoke version of it on a mate's stag do. I'm uneasy with karaoke at the best of times, but seeing a bunch of mates hammer this out, pissed, took the shine off it in the same way that a sheet of sandpaper takes the shine off, well, almost anything. Of course, my note-perfect rendition of Johnny Cash's 'Ring of Fire' earlier on that evening merely served to underline that a karaoke version of 'Rappers Delight' is, as the French foreign secretary said when asked what he thought of Eurodisney, 'a cultural Chernobyl'.

Mixed emotions, I guess.

Buzzcocks - 'Singles: Going Steady'

Another mid-teens record I bought while living in Salisbury, with no particular memories attached to it. Hanging out with friends Steve and Katie, compiling tapes from John Peel's radio shows.

I think I bought it primarily for 'Ever Fallen in Love?', but it's a solid collection of tunes, particularly the aching, yearning emotions conveyed in 'Why Can't I Touch It?'. But this isn't a critique blog, it's reminiscence therapy, so I'll stop there.

Various - 'The Deer Hunter'

I'm pretty sure that this is one of a few records I bought in a thrift store in Brooklyn, when I lived there in the early 1990s. I was sharing an apartment in a brownstone on South Portland Avenue, and had walked to the Silver Spoon on Flatbush for breakfast and a spot of bargain hunting. The walk over took in a fair number of run-down and vacant lots,a sort of urban wasteland. It was OK in the daytime, but you wouldn't want to be there at night. The discarded crack vials made that quite clear.

It's a nice-enough record, although a bit of a mish-mash - it doesn't really make sense without knowing the film. Strings, acapella folk, acoustic guitars, then a bit of polka, then some helicopters and machine guns. It's evocative, but it's hard to say of what - a forgotten America, maybe?

The helicopters sounded great sampled and played back as part of a track when we played a Speakerfreaks gig at The Warehouse in Leeds, late 90s, probably at 'It's Obvious'. I drew the line at machine guns - the KLF had a monopoly on that.

Did I really bring a load of second-hand vinyl home on a plane from New York? Madness.

Catalogue Number: SOO-11940

Tracklist: Cavatina. Praise in the Name of the Lord. Troika. Katyusha. Struggling Ahead. Sarabande. Waiting His Turn. Memory Eternal. God Bless America. Cavatina (Reprise)