When DJ Sean Rowley was looking for a way of breaking up the "cutting-edge music" format of his Radio London show, the Joy of Music, he began throwing in records from his childhood. Not the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, but long-forgotten 1970s relics such as Captain and Tennille or Sherbert's Howzat, which addresses infidelity using cricket metaphors, and the Starland Vocal Band's softly rocking Afternoon Delight, which innocently eulogises intercourse with the words "Sky rockets in flight".
Rowley expected complaints, not because of the unusual metaphors but because these are not the sort of records you would ever find on 100 greatest - or even 1,000 greatest - singles lists. Nor are they ever played on the radio or reissued on CD. But instead, people called the show in droves. And when Rowley asked listeners to suggest similar records that they liked "in spite of themselves", he got the biggest response in the station's history.
Rowley has now compiled an album, Guilty Pleasures, featuring these lost gems. His definition of a Guilty Pleasure goes like this: "You've gone round to someone's house, and you're flicking through their record collection. There are all the usual suspects: the Clash, Marvin Gaye, Revolver, Astral Weeks ...
"And then you see a Barbra Streisand album. And you go, 'Hang on, what are you doing with this?' At which point the owner of the record places it on the deck and says, 'Have you listened to this recently?' And you're dumbfounded as to how great that record is."
And this is the point. Guilty Pleasures are not bad records. Some are amazing records. But they are uncool records, made by people with moustaches, demi-waves, terrifying trousers and - in some cases - kipper ties. These are pop's lepers, rarely meriting a mention in rock histories. It's no coincidence that almost all of Rowley's choices date from 1975-77. These are the tunes that punk effectively swept away.
When punk hit, people suddenly stopped buying the stirring, romantic melodies of people like Lancastrian Peter Skellern, who recorded with the Grimethorpe colliery band and had hair like Arthur Scargill. Or Pilot, who were very big in 1974-76 but disappeared soon afterwards.
"We wrote nice, charming songs," sniggers Pilot's David Paton, from his Spanish hideaway. "And then along came God Save the Queen." Of course, people such as Queen and the Rolling Stones, who were "drinking champagne with royalty", were punk's real enemies. Nevertheless, 1977 put anyone resembling the old guard into the firing line.
High-voiced brotherly duo Alessi were flying high in the charts with the jazzy Oh Lori when they encountered the Sex Pistols at Capital Radio. "God Save the Queen was number two and we were three," remembers Bobby Alessi, his 1970s-style locks defiantly glistening. "We were wearing little white cap-sleeved T-shirts. They looked like they'd just been to battle. We went up to say, 'Guys, we'd like to congratulate you on your success.' Sid Vicious took one look and said, 'Fuck off!'"
In some cases, the vitriol was deserved. Actor Brian Protheroe, a one-hit wonder with Pinball, remembers appearing on one mid-70s Top of the Pops amid some "terrible, abject stuff". Stuff like Love Me, Love My Dog, by Peter Shelley, who "bounced around the studio to a film of a golden retriever".
Overnight, careers were ruined. Andrew Gold had two massive, brooding hits and was set to be the Chris Martin of his day. A few months after reading an interview in which one of the Clash said, "I really want to punch Andrew Gold in the face," he was being asked whether he was still in the music business. When Alessi toured the UK in 1979, fans congratulated them for "surviving".
Punk didn't topple the Stones, but in its attempt to create a Year Zero, as Rowley explains, "punk destroyed the innocence. Mostly, these were very, very innocent records; you were gonna have a problem if you were wearing these records as your badges."
Some of the banished artists went on to further success, but were forced to take their songwriting talents and moustaches behind the scenes to work with the likes of Paul McCartney and Elton John. Alessi do advertisements, and are even thinking of a new album. But what's more curious is that punks such as the Damned's Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible now confess to rather liking these records.
"I've always loved Gallagher and Lyle," chuckles Mark Perry, founder of punk Bible Sniffin' Glue, "and that Ace song, How Long. I'd never have said that at the time!"
When Rowley began exhuming Guilty Pleasures, he was surprised at how many other "cool" pop people hid Guilty pasts. Terry Hall, who arrived at Radio London with bags full of the blighters, confessed to having spent his Specials' career amassing pre-punk singles from motorway service stations and battling with Jerry Dammers to play them on the tour bus (the band split in 1981 citing "extreme musical differences"). When Rowley played the Guilty Pleasures promo backstage at Glastonbury, Norman Cook leaped in the air.
"He could not believe that he was hearing these records," says the DJ, "and, like everyone else, he knew every single word."
For anyone over 30, these songs are like hidden time bombs, drilled into the consciousness in the days when a single's shelf life wasn't weeks but months. Rowley admits to nostalgia: "When I hear Starland Vocal Band I'm back on a beach with my mum and dad. The sun is shining, the Radio 1 Roadshow is playing in the background."
And yet these records have enduring appeal. Apart from echoes from groups such as the Scissor Sisters, Perry laments the loss of "a naive but crafted pop sensibility that actually wasn't that different from punk". Rowley misses the doe-eyed charm of things like Ace's How Long, which isn't about an affair but a rival band's attempts to steal their bassist. "If you look at the clip from Top of the Pops, you can actually see the singer eyeballing the bass player, mouthing, 'How long has this been going on?'" he chortles.
Most of these records have a storytelling aspect that only the Streets and Eminem successfully tackle today. Carole Bayer Seger's 1977 You're Moving Out (which Perry admits to picking up in Oxfam years later for 10p) relates chucking out a lover with his "rubber ducks and dirty looks". Weirdest of all is Helen Reddy's Angie Baby, a tale of a murderous woman who keeps a dead "lover" in her flat. It is just as disturbing as Eminem's Stan.
Which brings up the question of whether there are uncool records today that in years to come will be unearthed as Guilty Pleasures. Rowley thinks there are. "I bought a copy of Ronan Keating's Rollercoaster recently, and I swear it was like buying porn," he says. "I sandwiched it between Big Star's Greatest Hits and the latest Joyzipper album."
Today's kids don't have it as hard as those who queued up to buy records by 40-year-olds in tank tops. Bands are styled - taught names to drop and things to say. However, no number of makeovers can disguise the fundamental awkwardness of Starsailor, or the fact that the over-13s must play those Rachel Stevens singles behind closed doors.
So really, lifestyle decisions haven't changed from the days when a 12-year-old Rowley stood with his pocket money in Woolworths considering "Bowie, Roxy, the Faces ... all these amazing, credible bands."
Instead, he bought Could It Be Forever by David Cassidy.
· Guilty Pleasures is released by Sony on August 23.