“Come on, look lively! The Scorpions are coming.” A Spring Saturday morning in deepest Surrey, and recording studio owner Andy Fernbach is in a state of high anxiety. While normally as equable and phlegmatic as…

This is a winning fruit-machine set. Three cherries every time Puerto Rican band leader Carlos Alomar counts them in: ‘Golden Years’, ‘Fashion’, ‘Let’s Dance’, ‘Life On Mars’ and ‘Sorrow’. And that’s just the first half-an-hour.…

The stage here is very high indeed - anyone planning a fan invasion will need rope and crampons. It sits imperiously above the stalls like an Aztec temple. Appropriately enough, as three and a half thousand Scots scream their approbation, ready to sacrifice themselves to the metal gods.…

This line-up’s spiritual home is Club Left, an evening of “cool bop and swing” that runs at the Whisky-a-Go-Go in London’s Soho. I’ve read about Club Left in the NME. It appears to revolve around wearing dickie bows and listening to old Bobby Darin records.…

The Dutch appear to have a similar relationship with mayonnaise to that which we Sheffield folk have with Henderson’s Relish - slathering it indiscriminately and unsparingly on all types of food.…

However, with The Human League having played two nights in the ramshackle room last November, ABC eyeing a City Hall date later in the year, Def Leppard in the studio recording a new album and Living In A Box yet to be invented, it falls to Cabaret Voltaire to get the party started, again.…