In 1984 Duran Duran were at the height of their fame. Seven and the Ragged Tiger, the band’s third studio album, became their first (and only) number one soon after its release in November the previous year, and announced a sharper, more dance-friendly, synth-driven sound. The world tour (apparently the band wanted to spend a year abroad to avoid tax), began in Australia, but was mostly spent in Canada and the US. It was the band’s first as major headliners.

With just over two weeks to Christmas, thoughts might be turning to which of the deluge of 2014’s reissues might be suitable as a gift, worth putting on your own wish-list for Santa or even merit buying for yourself. So if help is needed, theartsdesk is happy to provide a one-stop guide to the essential reissues covered so far this year.

Jon Hassell / Brian Eno: Fourth World Vol. 1 - Possible Musics

This will have brought a nostalgic tear to the eye of fans of The Sweeney (the TV show, not the Ray Winstone movie) or GF Newman's still-shocking 1978 series Law and Order. The producers had rounded up seven retired policepersons and got them to spill some of the beans about what policing was like in the Sixties and Seventies.

In the time that Culture Club have been planning reunions, bands, movements, whole musical eras have come and gone. And still, once every couple of years, a rumour circulates, and a demo is aired. Generally, nothing comes of it, and those memories of dancing drunkenly to “Karma Chameleon” grow a little fainter. Now, with last night’s taster gig at Heaven (where the band gave their first big London performance in 1982), we can definitively say, they are back.

You expect the tears, anger and pride, as NUM veterans relive Britain’s defining industrial dispute, 30 years later. The bafflement of a South Welsh ex-miner is more telling; the way his voice slows in disbelief at the level of violence the British state unleashed in the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85, and incomprehension as he still struggles to grasp how and why what he saw could have happened. Two miners died during the strike, as did a cabbie taking one to cross a picket line, and three children sifting the coalfields for scraps to survive on.

Game Theory: Blaze of Glory

Lukas Moodysson caught the miseries and splendours of kids on the cusp of teendom in an early gem, Together (Tillsammans), but there they made up only one strand in the general trajectory of trouble to triumph. That difficult theme of very early adolescence, so easy to parody, so hard to keep truly affectionate, is the entire domain of We Are the Best!

Daniel loves Reg; so does John. Guy loves John; John doesn’t love Guy. Bernie loves Benny, and drives him mad. And as for Eric, he once thought he could fall for Reg – but they only shared one night together, and he never even knew Reg’s name. And anyway, as he points out, unlike the middle-aged others, he’s young – “I’ve got plenty of time.”

Divine is a lot more than dog poop. The minute you mention Divine – born Glenn Milstead in Baltimore, star of John Waters’ cult classics such as Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos or Female Trouble – mention of the famous scene in Pink Flamingos where the performer actually does consume canine faeces is almost obliterated.