84: THE SHADOWS
Foot Tapper/The Breeze And I (Columbia, 1963)

SOME of the more torrid among you may think I've taken leave of the remains of my senses for choosing something so... polite.

That's a massive part of the charm here, though. I spend quite enough time listening to subversive, anti-social psychedelic bleeps and impenetrable jazz-rock scribbles, and every now and again my ears need a clean.

The Shadows, who were kings of the hill in the UK until The Beatles crashed the party, now seem about as relevant to modern society as the Spinning Jenny or the horse-drawn velocipede. They played light, frivolous instrumentals, they wore matching smart suits, they smiled constantly like lobotomised showroom dummies and they executed neat synchronised dance steps - but without their influence, it is debatable whether the likes of Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Brian May would ever have picked up a guitar in anger.

Hank Marvin, it is alleged, owned the first Fender Stratocaster to be imported into Britain, a fire engine red example which rapidly became a fetish object in a novelty-starved UK still adjusting to being released from long years of National Service and rationing.

Perhaps more importantly, the Buddy Holly-fixated Marvin sported the kind of glasses that you normally found on the school swot or the class doofus, so for a couple of good years the specky of this parish stopped getting battered and started being regarded as almost cool by default.

I love The Shadows for all of these reasons and more. In Hank Marvin's instantly recognisable pure-toned lines, dusted with Echoplex and a shimmer of subtly-deployed tremelo arm, you get a little glimpse of the technology-embracing "brave new world" excitement felt by so many at the time - those who weren't convinced that they were about to be vaporised by The Bomb.

I could easily have opted for the giddily romantic Wonderful Land, the crepuscular Man Of Mystery or the cautiously groovy Rise And Fall Of Flingel Bunt, but in the end I've gone for Foot Tapper because it's so irresistibly daft and infernally catchy.

Also, it should be noted that not until Led Zep's When The Levee Breaks would a drum kit be so punchily recorded again - hosannas to Brian Bennett behind the kit and Norrie Paramor at the faders.