... but Happy Man by Chic, an album track from C'est Chic is as good as any of their singles.

It's bonkers but utterly wonderful. Thanks for that. Most of the tracks I would champion are not even on YouTube but I will keep looking and post when I find them.

...that 'Mississippi Shieks' by Rory Gallagher isn't much better known/appreciated (even within his diehards fanbase). It's atypical of his heads down hi tempo boogie stuff, perhaps, but its held together with a great, Beatle-esque riff, has a powerful concept (a dream about a famous photograph of 1930s blues street performer 'The Mississippi Sheiks') and, particularly, the studio version is the best produced, most powerful/dynamic recording he ever made. (The live clip doesn't get this across, of course. He only seems to have performed it live during 1979.) In production values it far outstrips its era (1978/9 from memory) - if it came on the radio, you'd assume it was recorded last week.

The most recent Rory best-of was a 2CD set. This wasn't even on it, let alone being the opening cut. astonishing.

... this is an underappreciated work of genius, the best thing he's ever done: a stunningly beautiful 3 minute single the first half of which is a mournful viola-led cadenza, leading to an A-B-A verse structured song with no discernable chorus and the impression that it ends on the 'wrong' note. We need more of this kind of thing.

Dead

Available on "Flood" but semmingly nowhere else

Except Suspended in Gaffa is one of my favourite of Kate's too. And a glance at my iPod shows it is one of my most-played.

Small Faces do Tim Hardin. I only discovered this recently, despite having it on 'The Autumn Stone' for ages. Overlooked classic!

...I've never heard that before. Sounds like Tim was trying to (re)write 'If I Was A Carpenter', mind - or maybe all his songs were cut from that particular piece of cloth? Still, the SF get a nice texture and sound going with it don't they?