Bill Nelson knew February 1978’s Drastic Plastic was the last Be-Bop Deluxe album. In his essay for the book coming with the new “deluxe expanded” box-set reissue, he writes “that, as far as I was concerned, was that, the final Be-Bop Deluxe studio album, an era ended and a new one was about to begin. As the songs developed, I felt that the album might provide a kind of bridge to what might happen further along the road. It was definitely a half-way house between Be-Bop Deluxe and Red Noise.”

There was always something a little diffident about teenage Marion Elliott-Said, who created her on-stage persona Poly Styrene after putting together her band X-Ray Spex from a small ad in the back pages of the NME in 1977.

A decade ago, Alice Cooper reconnected with his roots. He created a sequel to his 1975 album Welcome to my Nightmare with Bob Ezrin, the producer whose vision crystallized Alice Cooper, the band, and shot them to stardom in the early-Seventies. The survivors of that original outfit also played on the album, their first recordings with the singer in 38 years.

“Witless punk” was the weekly music paper Sounds assessment of Disco Zombies’s first single “Drums Over London”. NME’s Paul Morley was more measured, declaring it “ill-disciplined slackly structured new pop but the chorus alone makes up for it.” That was March 1979. Heard now, “Drums Over London” comes across as energised pop-punk with a sing-along chorus and a wacky bent.

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto) is Italian filmmaker Elio Petri’s dark 1970s satire on state corruption.

“Dorian Benediction” begins with a muted organ and spectral chorale. Minimal drums, an electric piano, vibes, melancholy saxophone and a jazzy solo guitar fill out the picture. Over its four-and-a-half minutes, the atmosphere is haunted and haunting. This is music which appears to have seeped from the walls of a baroque church. It’s the final track of The Free Design’s third album, 1969’s Heaven / Earth.

"Three plus versions of the same album. It’s ridiculous, but I’m glad.” The first paragraph of Richard Hell’s text in the booklet accompanying Destiny Street Complete lays it out. There are, indeed, three versions of his and his band The Voidoids’s July 1982 album Destiny Street on this double-CD set. It seems excessive.

The First Generation 1965–1974 is a 35-CD box set dedicated to the blues maven and propagator John Mayall. As well as the discs, there are three books: one a hardback, another reproducing fan club material, and the third a facsimile of the press pack for his first album. Also included are two posters and a signed photograph of Mayall. Five thousand copies have been made. As it sells for £275, the 3.8 kilogram The First Generation will not be a casual purchase.

Two of the four CDs in this set are of a live performance taped on 16 April 1964. The other pair of discs were recorded on 9 July 1975. Each show issued on Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 was captured by the north German regional broadcaster Radio Bremen.

“They’re only rich assholes.They don’t merit your concern,” serial killer and psychopath Charles Sobhraj (Tahar Rahim, A Prophet, Heal the Living), aka rich French gem-dealer Alain Gautier, tells his girlfriend Marie-Andrée in The Serpent as he steals passports and money from a couple of unconscious tourists he’s just drugged on a beach in Thailand in the mid-Seventies.