We were thinking about how summer records work, how they seem to hit us amidships when the decent weather works on our defences, how each one reflects a particular moment in time and also captures a feeling that we associate with summer. I've written about ten of them in the new issue but you could add hundreds, maybe thousands more, from your own experience. Here's a few notes that didn't make it into the original feature.

4th of July Asbury Park - Bruce Springsteen

We always romanticise beach holidays. If we really thought about the sunburn and the tedium and the sand everywhere, we'd probably never go back. When people sing songs about holiday resorts it's always understood that they're never quite as grand as they once were. If Springsteen had come from Cromer or Redondo Beach or Southport then those would be the beaches of our dreams. As it is it's Asbury Park which lucked into the accolade of this song. We wouldn't have it any other way. You can find some terrific old pictures of Asbury Park in its golden age at this photo archive.

LDN - Lily Allen

There are two videos for this song. One's a straightforward travelogue clip. Then there's rather more acid version shot when it was clear that the song was going to be a hit. It begins, curiously enough, with a celebration of that venerable London tradition, taking the rise out of the beardie-weardies behind the counter of your local head store. Doesn't matter which version, the camera loves her.

School's Out - Alice Cooper

When this came out there were still people who would argue that songs like this presented an insurrectionary threat to the status quo. Others said that capitalism's great strength was it turned all threats into entertainment. Fast forward 40 years to the grand finale of American Idol, the favourite viewing of middle America.

Little Fluffy Clouds - The Orb

Rickie Lee Jones, whose conversational musings provide the nearest thing to a vocal on this record, came from pre-hippy stock. Her grandparents were vaudeville performers and her father lived as a drifter. When he split from Rickie's mother he took her to Arizona to grow up in big sky country. It had a profound effect on her and, by extension, all sorts of zoned-out clubbers in the chill-out room.

Rockaway Beach - The Ramones

This is what an interesting little film about what the real Rockaway Beach is actually like.

When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease - Roy Harper

There are a few versions of Roy doing this in recent years but it's best to hear it with the brass band on it. The good people from Test Match Special have noted the fact that this is the classic cricketing song but yet this album remains unavailable and nobody at EMI seems to have realised that they should have a download available the next time a major cricketing figure retires or passes on. No names, no pack drill.

Come On Eileen - Dexys Midnight Runners

Our first child was born at the end of the summer of 1982 when Come On Eileen was inescapable. She was born prematurely and to illustrate her size I took her picture next to the issue of Smash Hits with Kevin Rowland on the cover. She's just moved into her own flat and recently attended the wedding of a contemporary. Did they dance to Come On Eileen I'm sure they did.

Nightswimming - REM

There's a great American photographer called O. Winston Link who specialised in dramatic pictures of steam trains tearing past domestic scenes. One of his finest was shot at Hawksvill Creek Swimming Hole, Luray, Virginia. That's the picture in my head every time I hear REM do this song.

Summer In The City - Lovin' Spoonful

Here's John Sebastian and the group having difficulty plausibly miming to the song in 1966. There's something about the car horns and the sound of road drills that makes me think of that peculiar headachy sunshine you get in Manhattan during the summer months. It's a time when most people who can afford it go to the shore, leaving only the poor or the mischievous in the city. It's provided the plot for more than one film.

007 (Shanty Town) - Desmond Dekker

In the summer of love this song about guns, gangs and slums in Kingston, Jamaica was a big hit in Britain. Over forty years later it could be used to describe the crisis in the shanty towns of Kingston, except You Tube gets there first these days. This was the local news only the other week.