It’s been just over four months since I last went to this series. No reason as to why. These things happen.
I’d forgotten just how many 45s had been looked at under the heading, with the first being as far back as August 2017
01: Lloyd Cole and The Commotions
02: PJ Harvey
03: Sex Pistols
04: The Cure
05: The Sundays
06: Roxy Music
07: Orange Juice
08: Teenage Fanclub
09: Talking Heads
10: New Order
11: The Specials
12: Fun Boy Three
13: Magazine
14: James
15: Pavement
16: The Libertines
17: Aztec Camera
18: Curve
19: The Police
20: The Damned
21: The Monkees
22: The Skids
23: A Certain Ratio
24: The Strokes
25: The Waltones
26: Violent Femmes
27: The Who
28: Nirvana
29: Eels
30: U2
31: Subway Sect
32: Buzzcocks
33: Suede
34: Dead Kennedys
35: Kate Bush
36: The Teardrop Explodes
37: The Normal
38: Bjork
39: The Raveonettes
40: This Mortal Coil
41: The Wedding Present
42: Wire
43: Siouxsie and The Banshees
44: R.E.M
45: The Streets
46: Ramones
47: Duran Duran
48: ABC
49: Franz Ferdinand
50: Bow Wow Woe
51: The Jam
52: Penetration
53: Pulp
54: Oasis
55: The White Stripes
56: Paris Angels
57: Ian Dury
58: Haircut 100
59: Depeche Mode
60: Lightning Seeds
61: Fine Young Cannibals
62: Propaganda
Loads more still to come, and given that two out of the three Scottish bands on Postcard have featured, it seems sensible to re-ignite the series with the third of them….and besides, it allows me to be lazy as the song has featured before, but not in this particular series, (even then very best columnists and writers pull this stunt on their readers!)
Josef K were named after the protagonist of Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial. They formed in 1979 originally as TV Art by Paul Haig (vocals, guitar) and Ronnie Torrance (drums), later joined by Malcolm Ross (guitar, keyboards), with Gary McCormack on bass guitar, but who quickly left to be replaced by David Weddell.
A ten-track demo brought them to the attention of a few labels, but it was on Absolute Records, founded by Orange Juice drummer Steven Daly, on which the debut 45 was released:-
mp3: Josef K – Chance Meeting
mp3: Josef K – Romance
Anyone lucky enough to still have a copy of this 7″ could realistically expect to get in the region of £500 from would-be buyers.
The release of Chance Meeting/Romance led to Josef K receiving and accepting an offer from Alan Horne at Postcard for whom there would be three singles and an album. One of the singles was a totally different (and better) version of the debut:-
mp3: Josef K – Chance Meeting (Postcard 81-5)
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
Wow, what a lovely surprise to start the day, in the region of £500…… I thought I had a rough idea of the value of most of my vinyl, but had no idea this single was so collectable. Not sure I would agree with you on the Postcard version being the better of the two. Although the vocal is stronger on Postcard, musically I prefer the slower keyboard led approach on the Absolute version. Having said that I have really enjoyed listening to both versions for the first time in well over 30 years.