Theatricals - David Bowie

David Bowie's appearance in the title role of Bertolt Brecht's play Baal, broadcast on BBC television in 1982, wasn't one of his greatest acing performances. It's not much of a play either, to be honest, but then it was Brecht's first and he was only twenty when he wrote it. Quite why the BBC thought it was a good idea to revive such a minor piece remains a mystery, though you can see why they cast Bowie.

To accompany the production, Bowie recorded a five-track EP of songs from the show, his final release for RCA Records and Cassettes. And last up in the running order was this very short but very good track, 'The Dirty Song'.

Theatricals - David Courtney

David Courtney is probably best known for discovering Leo Sayer and producing the first two albums (the good ones). I've written about this connection elsewhere. Courtney also co-wrote and co-produced Roger Daltrey's first album.

This song, though, comes from his own debut album, First Day (1975). According to the original sleeve-notes, written by Anne Nightingale, 'David Courtney's music is self-evident'. I'm not sure about that. This song in particular sounds to me like it belongs on a film soundtrack, a kind of easy-listening prog, as though the Walker Brothers were covering Pink Floyd. This impression is helped along, no doubt, by the fact that Barry Morgan (drums) and Alan Parker (acoustic guitar) both played on the Walkers' comeback album, No Regrets, the same year, while the lead guitar is by Dave Gilmour.

Who this was supposed to appeal to, I have no idea. But I like it. So this is the closing track from the album, 'When Your Life Is Your Own'.

Theatricals - Alan Price

The 1970s were an odd time for Alan Price. The previous decade he'd formed the Animals, who were terrific but (I always felt) a little tame on record, thanks to Mickie Most's production, as compared to their live act. And then he'd led the Alan Price Set who recorded a few good tracks and a whole lot more that were harmless.

So having done the pop star thing, Price began to branch out in the 1970s, and got into movies. Most famously he and his band appeared on screen repeatedly in Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man (1973), providing a musical counterpoint to the story. Less famously, and certainly less advisedly, he took on the role of Alfie Elkins in Alfie Darling (1976); his performance didn't exactly eclipse Michael Caine's interpretation of the character. By the end of the decade he was writing a musical based on Andy Capp.

His finest moment, though, was on the 1974 album Between Today and Yesterday, half of which was a stunning evocation of his childhood in the north east, accompanied by the superb arrangements of Derek Wadsworth. Contained here was the basis for a genuinely great musical, had he wished to pursue it.

This is 'Between Today and Yesterday' itself, in a version released on the 1976 live album Performing Price. If I'd been making the TV series Our Friends in the North (1996), this is the song I would have ended with, rather than Oasis's 'Don't Look Back in Anger'.

Theatricals - Peter Straker

According to Wikipedia, Peter Straker is 'best known for appearances in Doctor Who and the 1985 ITV series Connie.' Is he? Round my way he's best known for being in the 1968 original London cast of the musical Hair, for his collaborations with Freddie Mercury, and for his fabulous androgynous role in the 1971 film Girl Stroke Boy (he's involved in 'a relationship that is as godless as it is fashionable').

Where we're all agreed, then, is that he's not best known for his 1972 debut album Private Parts. But he probably should be, because it's a fine album.

It was written and produced by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, who had earlier brought us Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich and the Herd. Now, despite having made their name with the simplistic stomp of 'Have I the Right' for the Honeycombs, Howard and Blaikley had pretensions and aspirations. Which is why some of their others hits referenced subjects such as Milton ('Paradise Lost'), Coleridge ('The Legend of Xanadu') and Orpheus ('From the Underworld').

And on Private Parts, they decided to go for arrangements that would match their imagination. The songs are surprisingly non-immediate, but they grow on you, they grow. And the main selling-point is Straker's fantastic voice.

This is 'When Love Was Hard to Come By'. Somewhere there's a West End musical missing its big show-stopping ballad.

Theatricals - Anthony Newley

Anthony Newley's extraordinary and wondrous life is too big a story to be told here. But the idea that a cockney kid from the East End could take on the musical, the most American of art forms, and make it his own, without compromising his origins; that he could turn himself into a major international star, commanding the respect of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr et al - this is truly inspiring. His achievement in conquering Broadway with Stop the World - I Want to Get Off (1961) is in some ways more impressive even than the British Invasion of the Beatles and the Stones.

This song, though, is from a much later date. By the mid-1970s, Newley's career was drifting, and he seemed an increasingly isolated figure, a leftover from an earlier era of entertainment. In particular, the musical was seemingly moribund, with his own latest attempt - the 1975 film Mister Quilp - failing to revive the genre. And there had been no new records since 1972's Ain't It Funny.

It'd be nice to say that his 1977 album The Singer and His Songs reversed that trend and re-established him as one of the key players on the world stage. But it didn't. It largely went unnoticed, so much so that, as far as I know, it's not been released on CD. It was, however, perhaps the finest collection of songs he ever recorded. And this - 'The Man Who Makes You Laugh' - is the last track on the album.

This live performance was recorded in cabaret at Monte Carlo, and it's fabulous. Newley's sense of the theatrical requires no make-up or costumes; he just lets the character take over his body.