This week's CD

Is not going well with the fuzzy headache I have as the latest strain of the flu struggles to overcome my immune system. New York in the late 1970's - mid 1980's was a real melting pot of musical styles and fashions. I'm sure all of us know the clumsy cross pollination between early rap, disco and punk/new wave in the ever blissful 'Rapture' by Blondie, whilst Talking Heads were again melding soul, jazz and funk with rock guitars.

Anyway, I digress, as these bands are merely the tip of the iceberg (and, of course, the most commercially successful). This compilation brings together some of the more underground sounds of NY in this period. Proto-electronica, jazz, dub, cavernous hiphop, very unusual lo-fi production techniques, mergers of music with performance art, and just about everything in between appear here. Arthur Russell, a classically-trained cellist, created expansive, almost ambient dance-inflected soundscapes, Sonic Youth went on to become one of the defining bands of the late 1980's, and Glenn Branca wrote symphonies for the electric guitar. Of course, alongside these more avant garde musicians, there are of course some delightful 3 minute punk-pop tracks - The Ramones, were, of course CBGBs stalwarts.

This is the third in the series (part one is excellent, part two still has to be delivered), and has once again deepened my knowledge of this period in NY's musical development, the repercussions of which can still be heard not only in the recent slew of pop-punk bands, but also in the electroclash fashion of a couple of years ago, and in some of the more expansive dance music and hiphop. And it has the second best version of 'Jailhouse Rock'. Ever.