Cat's Eyes: Face in the Crowd: 2011:  From Horrors singer and his girlfriend.

Kasabian: Last Trip (In Flight):  2006. 

Yard Act: New Beginnings:  2026. 

Yard Act: The Overload: 2021.  

Fat White Family: Whitest Boy On The Beach:  2016.

Post-punk, yes, perfect. But what about 'pre-punk'? Here it is: Bowie, 1972. The shot with Mick on the left is probably one of the most iconic images in all of rock history.

Joy Division: Transmission: 1980-ish.  

The Damned: Smash it Up: 1979. 

Michael Barragan: Born Free 4:  Plexi/Broken guitarist Michael Barragan talks about what else he does.

Simple Minds: The American: I saw them in '81 or '82 at their San Francisco gig. Every bit as unbelievable now as it was back then. The bassist, alone, is creating a whole new sound, going from straight-up James Brown funk to playing 16th-note synth bass, played live on an ordinary P-bass, and in the context of a band which was rewriting music production values in real time. The studio version, also mind-blowing. 

Lili Drop: Sur ma mob.  1980. French new wave, of the musical kind. Also from that era, Taxi Girl, Musee Tong. If this sounds like The Stranglers backing them up, it's because it is The Stranglers backing them up. 

Nouvelle Vague: Only You: 2024. Incidentally, they happen to cover Lili Drop's "Sur ma mob." The video is lame, but the track is pretty good.

Gwen Mars: Cosmic Dick: 1995.  Now, barely a speck of dust on the continuum of world history, in the mid-nineties, this band was hugely influential in L.A. As an art-rock three-piece, they delivered the goods onstage, and they preceded bands such as Plexi, BRMC, my own bands, and, now that I think of it, probably Helen Stellar. In the Hollywood clubs of the mid/late 90s, band leader Mike thrasher was just another guy you could hang out with in the middle of the week. Such things now seem lost.

Green Jelly [featuring CJ Buscaglia]: Jump. 1994.  I always hated Green Jelly, and CJ and I never once talked about his experience in that band. The band was a joke, and as Phil told me, they ripped of CJ in cold blood. But for a moment, CJ was up front, playing for real, and in this, you could see how his raw talent and vision [as guitarist, songwriter, lyricist, producer] might have influenced bands from Smashing Pumpkins to Queens of the Stone Age to Foo Fighters.

Minibar: Bittersweet.  2021 / 2001.  A demo from their "Road Movies" era.  Problem: there's no pedal steel on this track. Irony: one of the world's finest pedal steel players, Tim Walker, is in this band. WTF?

Blondie: Under The Gun.  1999.  One of Blondie's greatest tracks.

Suede: For the Strangers.  2013.  So good.

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: Bellbottoms:  It's 1994, and it's Nirvana versus this: you choose.