8. Henry Cow, Slapp HappyBeautiful As The Moon – Terrible As An Army with Banners

Henry Cow were up their own arse really. I remember going to see them around this kind of time, roughly when punk rock was coming out. In the gig programme, they slagged off the Sex Pistols, saying ‘Oh, it’s just sub-Who nonsense’. And I’m going like, ‘Well, you’re just sub-Zappa nonsense’. But I still loved their music, and in fact I loved anything on the Virgin label at that time like Kevin Coyne and Ivor Cutler. And my favourite record was the Slapp Happy album Desperate Straights. So, I wanted something with Henry Cow and Slapp Happy with Dagmar Krause, who is one of my favourite singers. For whatever reason, and I can’t explain it, I’m a bit of a Deutsche-phile. There was certainly a time when my specialist subject on Mastermind would have been New German Cinema. Fassbinder in particular.