Investigation

If ever there was a band that arrived on the scene fully formed, it was Roxy Music. Before they were even signed to a label, they had a startling, glitter-flecked, faintly androgynous image, and a unique hybrid sound. This blended stomping glam pop with jazz-inflected avant-prog and experimental electronica, drawing influences from show tunes to war movies and torch songs while adding dashes of sensuality, camp and black humour. And it helped, of course, that they threw some highly memorable tunes in there.

Apiece of art that can today be found in 45m homes around the world was kick-started by a simple, none-too-detailed instruction to 'do something clean, elegant and graphic'. The instruction came from Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright, and was given to Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, the founders of Hipgnosis, a London-based art and design group whose first sleeve design had been for the Floyd's 1968 album A Saucerful Of Secrets.

There are enough books about rock and pop music to capsize a cruise liner. So for this third part in my series on good books that connect music to hi-fi I have picked a few of the lesser-known reads. Arguably the best starting point for pop industry insight is George Martin's 1979 biography, All You Need Is Ears in which Martin shares his jaundiced views on the Apple organisation (unrelated to Apple computers, of course), which The Beatles set up in the mid '60s.

Many moons ago, raking around in a secondhand book emporium, I came across a dog-eared but irresistible tome called Inspirations. Written by Michael Randolfi, Mike Read and David Stark, it offered up the inspirations behind popular songs, including the taxi cab accident which inspired Leo Sayer to write his 1974 hit 'One Man Band' and the phone call behind The Cure's 1997 single 'Wrong Number'. As someone who loves to know what songs are about, I plunged in with delight but, fascinating though it undeniably was, very few of the inspirations really surprised me.

Like asking to choose your favourite food or movie, narrowing down 15,000 CDs and SACDs to a mere 20 is torture. The brief was to cite those I use regularly for reviewing purposes and which can reveal the qualities of a component or system. That said, this is also the stack of CDs which never gets filed with the rest, sitting there ready for action.

Polymath Humphrey Lyttelton not only played as he pleased, he wrote as he pleased in many excellent books on music, once appealingly disparaging sound engineers he suffered on tour as 'Marconis'. The reason? They couldn't stop fiddling with the controls, so destroying the natural balance of his live band and adding electronic distortion.

Launched in America in 2008 as a way of encouraging collectors to frequent their local independent record shops and keep vinyl alive, Record Store Day is now an annual event offering rare, limited edition releases which will not only tickle the fancy of uber-fans but, like other works of art, accrue value as investments.