The alarm only went off half-an-hour ago, and yet here we are, looking back in anguish at a year that threatened so much and largely failed to deliver. When the shots are called its still stalwart time, with Bruce and U2 and Christy and Elvis on the turntable.

Actually, it was more of a singles and video year, with Culture Club dominating one end and Frankie dominating the other, with neither of their albums living up to the eastern promise.

There were, of course, the usual fashions, but more muted then in previous years – the new jazz movement revealing at least one touch of magic in Sade. The rest …not much.

The bedsit poets and synthesiser wimps plow their lonely furrows – there’s a lot of people who like the Alarm and Prefab Sprout and Axtec Camera,as well as their more aggressively progressive cousins, but that kind of English thing never turned a hair for me…

America, on the other hand, while still yielding its unremitting quota of garbage, unleashed new stars, R.E.M. and Rank and File, to stand alongside older music celebrities like John Hiatt and T-Bone Burnett who both released big, rawboned classic American songwriters albums – and Bob Dylan released his best LP this decade with ‘Infidels’. A welcome return.

But in America, the pinnacles were two extreme opposites: on one hand two bittersweet country classics, the ethereal Emmylou Harris inspired ‘Delia Bell’, by delia herself, and Rose Maddox’ ‘Queen Of The West’ originating with Ricky Scaggs’ Sugarhill Records, and on the other, the violent, angry, articulately bruised, ‘Born In The USA’ by Bruce Springsteen yet again standing tall over all the rest. One of the definitive depictions of living in that benighted transatlantic sprawl, and one of rock’n’roll’s enduring statements.

As it happens, 1984 will probably be remembered in the end for the huge spate of classic reissues of soul, R’n’B, Tex-Mex, cajun and rock’n’roll, not to mention current issues from the same bag – Don Covey, Los Lobos, The Nevilles, Huey Piano Smith, Dr. John, Johnny Copeland and The Staples Singers. Ace, Demon… Ah, the siren call of collectors’ music, to entice you away from all self-congratulatory garbage of the charts, sowing the seeds again of another tradition, of great lost hours in the backwoods of pop. More!!!