At one point In Dead Man Singing, main character Dave Masters is forced him to choose just 100 albums from his vast record collection to take with him to his new life. I didn’t include the full list in the book, because the reader doesn’t need that level of detail, but for me as a writer it was important to know precisely which music he couldn't bare to be without. In fact, there are only 90 genuine albums, because in true egotistical rock-star fashion the first ten places went to Dave’s own complete back catalogue. Some classics went straight in – Who’s Next, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Rubber Soul, to name but three – but there were other less obvious choices which I felt Dave would want to keep close to him. Some of those were albums I already knew, while others were among the treasures I discovered during the process of world-building for the book.

This new series of posts will focus on some of the less well-known albums from Dave’s list, although I reserve the right to also throw in some albums that either didn’t make the cut or which didn’t yet exist when Dave was making his choices in 1990. It’s my blog, so I can change the rules as and when I like!

The first hidden gem is one of the later selections from Dave’s list, the eponymous solo debut of singer-songwriter Peter Case. This album was how he first came to my attention after an under-the-radar career in cult bands The Nerves and subsequently The Plimsouls. The Nerves’ main footnote in the history of pop, incidentally, is that their song Hanging on the Telephone was covered by Blondie, becoming a huge international hit single, although I should point out that it was written by band-mate Jack Lee rather than by Case. It was only a few years ago that I even discovered the song wasn't a Blondie original.

Produced by T-Bone Burnett and Mitchell Froom, and featuring musical contributions from the likes of Roger McGuinn, Jim Keltner and Van Dyke Parks, Peter Case (1986) was one of those albums that garnered critical acclaim without really making a dent on the wider musical landscape. It made numerous end-of-year best-of lists, with Bruce Springsteen among the great and the good heaping praise on it. Despite this, commercial success remained elusive. Listening to it now, there’s a very 80s texture in places – songs like Echo Wars and Satellite Beach have all the trappings of classic Mitchell Froom late 80s production, while by contrast the likes of Ice Water and I Shook His Hand could have come from Dave Masters’ heyday or anytime since. It was one of the first albums where I can remember being drawn to a sense of raw, rootsy urgency, and in retrospect I can see that it was a doorway album, leading my teenaged self into a lot of new musical discoveries in the years that followed. One of the things I loved about it – and this would have been part of the appeal for Dave too – was that there was a real connection in the lyrics, a sense of the artist trying to communicate with an audience, not just to toss out bland confections.

The song Steel Strings was another favourite, and it gets mentioned in Dead Man Singing. I had planned for it to have a more central role, putting it front and centre at the gig in chapter one of the book. It lost that place when I realised that Stagefright by The Band covered similar thematic territory, as well as being much more well known. Steel Strings highlights the difference between the idealised pedastal we give our musical heroes and their real-life inadequacies that remain hidden despite the spotlights. Some of them hide when the doorbell rings; they’re only made of steel when they’re on steel strings, indeed. It was a perfect fit for Dave, who covered it as the title track of his own 1988 album, the last one he released before the events of Dead Man Singing. You can find the track on the Dead Man Singing soundtrack playlist on Spotify.

Case’s follow up album, the gloriously named The Man with the Blue Post-Modern Fragmented Neo-Traditionalist Guitar (1989), was another favourite of mine in student days and is also worth a listen, with a wider range of contributors including Dead Man Singing favourites like Ry Cooder and David Lindley, along with members of Los Lobos and Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers. Someone who knew me at the time and heard it playing in my room in Halls once observed that I must really like Peter Case’s harmonica playing, pointing out how much my playing style resembled his. I had been completely unaware of that, but she was absolutely right. All I can say is that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Despite some health issues a few years back, Case is still writing and performing. I haven’t managed to see him live since his appearance at the 1987 Greenbelt Festival, and was frustrated beyond words not to be able to get to any of his rare UK appearances with the also brilliant Sid Griffin last year. In another world, commercial success would have come knocking and Peter Case would by now be a household name, making frequent visits to these shores and appearing in the legends slot at Glastonbury. Whether he’d prefer that alternative version to the individual furrow that he’s ploughed is a matter of debate. He’s an artist and an original, and I suspect he’s happier that way than being a star.