The stylus descends on the first LP by a new band. “You’ve never heard anything like this,” says a friend one day in 1972 — half a century ago, good Lord.

Track one, side one: Glasses clink, conversation, a cocktail party. A piano starts up: insistent, repetitive, fast. Drums pound, guitars surge, a singer begins, his voice distinctive, mannered.

A chorus joins in, an enigmatic, vaguely retro chant — “CPL593H.” Later, the command, “Show me.” A sax wails and shrieks, the volume heads towards eleven, and the pace accelerates. Something electronic is going on in the background, and the singer returns to his earlier lament…