If this blog had a theme song it would probably be “Teenage Winter” by the wonderful Saint Etienne. They’ve always been good at mining the emotional punch of supposedly trivial pop moments and artifacts (“five to three, playing a tape you made me” is my favourite couplet of theirs) and this conjures up a whole vanishing world in such simple things as the stock in a charity shop and a pub jukebox. The last verse in particular is as evocative as a Phillip Larkin poem like “Going, Going.”

Mums with pushchairs outside Sainsbury’s,
tears in their eyes.
They’ll never buy a Gibb brothers record again.
Their old 45s gathering dust
with the birthday cards they couldn’t face throwing away.

Download: Teenage Winter – Saint Etienne (mp3)
Buy: “Tales From Turnpike House” (album)

If Nick Hornby is right and the defining characteristic of the music geek – apart from sneering contempt for other people’s musical tastes – is the obsessive making of lists, then I became one at the tender age of 14. For it was then that I first put pen to paper and breathlessly compiled a list of my 10 All Time Favourite Records. I actually don’t remember what nine of the songs on that list were but the coveted Number 1 slot was given to “Tightrope” by the Electric Light Orchestra.

ELO were the first band I was really nuts about. I bought all their albums and singles, read everything I could about them, memorized all the lyrics, wore the underpants, and they were the first band I saw live. For a long time that was the sort of thing you were supposed to be mildly ashamed of, but they seemed to have attained a little hipster cachet recently what with “Mr. Blue Sky” (I’d kill to still have my blue vinyl 45 of that) being used in trendy movies, and bands like The Flaming Lips and The Delgados clearly owing them a sonic debt. So I was 30 years ahead of the curve there.

But I digress. “Tightrope” is the opening track of their 1976 album “A New World Record” which is probably their shining hour, and at the time this seemed to me to be as perfect as music could get. It’s a pretty simple tune but Jeff Lynne’s production treats it like it was the Sistine Chapel and achieves the rare feat of merging Pomp Rock with Blue Eyed Soul. It starts off with a huge symphonic fanfare of strings and choir so over the top it would make Cecil B. DeMille blush, then segues into a jaunty and insanely catchy pop tune with some female backing singers that give it a touch of soulful sass. I always wondered who those girls were, ELO never credited them on the album.

A year or so after this came out I had my head completely turned by punk (I was a little late to the party) and it suddenly seemed a bit naff – it just couldn’t compete with “All Mod Cons” — so I filed ELO away with my Marvel comics and flares as artifacts of a previous life. But like a lot of things from the past it’s gone through the window marked “naff” and come back in again sounding not all that bad, quite good in fact. Probably wouldn’t make my Top 50 today (no, I don’t have a Top 50 written down) but that’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Download: Tightrope – Electric Light Orchestra (mp3)