Talking Heads –  A very influential American band, formed in ’76.  I only have 3 CDs, but have liked everything I have heard and really must look out for some more.  1978’s, and the bands second album, was More Songs About Buildings and Food – a very individual sound; the lyrics are superb and yet at time very ordinary, but the band really know how to play.  Best songs are ‘Thankyou For Sending Me An Angel’, ‘The Big Country’ and ‘Take me To The River’.  I also have a great live album ‘Stop Making Sense’ – I saw the band at Hammersmith Appollo on this tour and it was a great concert, famous for lead singer Davis Byrne wearing a huge suit about twice as big as he was.  Hard to pick out best tracks – but ‘Psycho Killer’, ‘Heaven’ and ‘Slippery People’ stand out.  But this was a very long album – and the band tend to be sounding very samey towards the end.  I also have a Greatest Hits –  pretty good, though as usual I tend to like the songs I really like.  Best are ‘Once In A lifetime’, ‘Road  To Nowhere’ and ‘And She Was’.  I must keep my eye out for any bargains, especially of their later stuff.

Tangerine Dream – a German band from the Seventies.  The Germans seem to have been heavily into electronic music long before synthesisers and drum machines and all things digital.  In fact, this whole genre became known as Krautrock after a while.  I am not sure if Tangerine Dream were the first, but they were maybe the best known.  I saw them, or rather banks of huge electric organs and tape machines and speakers which mostly hid the band from view in the mid-Seventies.  I have 3 albums on CD but a couple more somewhere on cassette.  Phaedra was 1974’s effort.  A very relaxing, almost soporific record.  Not something to really listen to, but as it plays in the background it is gentle and pretty harmonic.  I can’t really determine one track from another, but it still brings back post-hippy memories where we explored and enjoyed many different forms of music.  Rubycon followed a year later and is much the same, if slightly slowly.  Again a lovely listen, even if at times a bit repetitive.  I also have Greatest Hits.  This must have been about mid-eighties and includes some film music; best is ‘Tyger Tyger’.  More vocals and variation now. But still really only for enthusiasts