August and September 1964 were golden months for Pye Records. The Kinks hit number one on the British charts in September with “You Really Got Me”, their third single for the label and the group’s first success following two flop 45s.

Any knowledge of the Hank Williams narrative heavily influences how he is perceived. He died at age 29 on New Year’s Day 1953, in the back of a car while travelling to a show in Ohio. His schedule was punishing. A day earlier he had played in West Virginia but a storm meant he could not fly from one show to the next.

When it was issued in May 1968, “Fading Yellow” attracted no attention. It couldn’t have as it was the B-side of “Mr. Poem”, Mike Batt’s poor-selling debut single. The top side was good, very 1968 and along the lines of whimsical 45s like Donovan’s “Jenifer Juniper” or Marty Wilde’s “Abergavenny” but wasn’t a hit. Relegated to the flip, “Fading Yellow” was obviously considered the least commercial of the two songs.

Since this column last caught up with the totemic California art-popsters Game Theory, band mainstay Gil Ray passed away. He died in January 2017. He had joined Game Theory as their drummer and backing vocalist in 1985. The new collection Across The Barrier Of Sound: Postscript tracks the Game Theory of 1990 and 1991: a period when Ray was playing guitar and keyboards in the band.

Commercially, The Beloved’s peak years kicked off in autumn 1989 when their electro house-pop began its chart run. The band called it a day in 1996 after the X album and its attendant singles. Throughout the period, they dealt in a form of house music – indeed, their final hit single “Ease the Pressure” was built around an acid house pulse and the sort of gospel-inclined chorus that was de rigueur for white, British dance-inclined outfits to show they had soul.

In July 1961, the first issue of the Liverpool music paper Mersey Beat put three items on its front page. One was a surreal article by John Lennon titled Being a Short Diversion on the Dubious Origins of The Beatles.

As one decade gives way to the next, the beginning or end of the ten-year cycle rarely yields anything cut and dried. With pop music, a host of decade-related platitudes have no respect for the decade-to-decade switch. Depending on points of view, the Sixties didn’t begin until 1962, 1963 or 1964. With the Seventies, the kick-off could have been 1971 or 1972. Or maybe 1976 or 1977.

Earlier this year, the Peter Laughner box set was more than an archive release. Its diligence and scale forced a wholesale reinterpretation of the evolution of America’s punk-era underground scene. What it collected – aurally and in its book – demonstrated Laughner was more of a pivotal figure than he had so far seemed, and that his actions and vision resonate more than four decades on from his death.

In June 1978, the still-extant independent label Cherry Red issued its first record. The seven-inch featured three slices of terse, Buzzcocks-ish art-punk by The Tights. The band were from Great Malvern, Worcestershire – as was the label. They only made one more 45 but Cherry Red – named after a Groundhogs song; the label was founded by local concert promoters – was built to last. Later, Great Malvern spawned Stephen Duffy’s Lilac Time and Blessed Ethel. Jenny Lind and Edward Elgar were local, but this seemed to be it as far as it went for entries on the rock ’n’ roll map.

Hugh Hefner established Playboy Records in 1972 as an arm of his male-targeted business empire. Amongst the singles issued in its first year were seven-inchers by jazzer Bobby Scott, proto-yacht rockers The Hudson Brothers, singer-songwriter Tim Rose, Björn & Benny (with Svenska Flicka), who were ABBA before they had a name, and Michael Jarrett, who’d written “I'm Leavin'” for Elvis Presley. In 1974, Playboy Playmate Barbi Benton came on board.