On 26 September 1966, The Twilights set-off from Australia to Britain. The journey, on the liner the Castel Felice, took six weeks. A day after boarding they learned their sixth single, “Needle in a Haystack,” was an Australian number one. There was nothing they could do to promote the hit, so after disembarking at Southampton they looked for work.

Being unknowable has been almost as much of a preoccupation for the erstwhile Robert Zimmerman as writing songs. Previously on film he has played the role of Alias in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, having first presented himself to the world under the alias of “Bob Dylan”.

Czech theatre theorist Ivo Osolsobě’s tick-list for what constitutes an "authentic" musical is quoted in this release’s booklet. Namely that the songs should advance the narrative and express characters’ feelings, that singing, dancing and acting are integral elements, and that the story is rooted in real life.

The descending refrain opening the song isn’t unusual but attention is instantly attracted as it’s played on a harpsichord. Equally instantly, an elegiac atmosphere is set. The voice, coming in just-short of the 10-second mark, is similarly yearning in tone. The song’s opening lyrics convey dislocation: “You and I travel to the beat of a different drum.”

RaMell Ross’s feature debut follows his poetic documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018) in again observing black Southern teenage boys, this time in Sixties juvenile prison the Nickel Academy, where beatings and unmarked graves await the unluckiest. It faithfully adapts Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Nickel Boys (2019), whose writing’s loving warmth made its horrors bearable, his hope for his characters outlasting their fates.

A reissue can be an aide-mémoire, a reminder that a record which has been off the radar for a while needs revisiting, that it deserves fresh attention.

Vanilla Fudge could provoke a strong reaction. Writing about them in 1982, Tom Hibbert – then best-known for his contributions to Smash Hits – said of their February 1968 second album, The Beat Goes On, that “on one side of the bombastic concept LP, Vanilla Fudge summed up the history of music from Mozart, through Cole Porter and Elvis, to The Beatles concluding that it was all worthless.”

For John Leyton, it was third time lucky as far as his singles were concerned. The actor’s manager Robert Stigwood teamed him with producer Joe Meek, but Leyton's first two 45s – August 1960’s “Tell Laura I Love Her” and October 1960's “The Girl on the Floor Above” – didn’t made waves. The next one – July 1961’s “Johnny Remember Me” – was it, the hit, the chart topper.

Last month a portrait of Alan Turing by AI robot AI-Da sold at Sotheby’s for $1.08 million – proof that, in some people’s eyes, artificial intelligence can produce paintings worth as much as those made by human hands.

For most of Canada’s listening public, their country-man Stefan Gnyś – pronounced G'neesh – wasn’t a concern. The 300 copies of his 1969 single didn’t make it to shops. There was little promotion and limited radio play. Gnyś had paid RCA Limited Recording Services to press the seven-incher. Beyond this transaction, there was no record company involvement.