Many of the tracks were recorded on the streets where Moondog made his living in the 1940s and 1950s. Even the names of the instruments he played - the Oo ("a triangular, stringed instrument struck with a clava"); the Trimba ("a triangular-shaped drum") - took on magical significance. Having no idea of Moondog's whereabouts, I was astonished when, in 1969, Columbia Records issued an album of Moondog performing his works with a 40-piece symphony orchestra. A long way from playing his drums to his dog in a shop doorway Then I lost track of him altogether. In 1991, the New York recordings I'd bought on LP reappeared on CD, and I assumed that was it.

The music still sounded vibrantly fresh, but Moondog was now digital history. Perhaps he was even dead: life on the street in New York can't be easy.But not only is Moondog not dead, he is still, at 79, composing and performing, and he is in London for a single concert. This was both a chance to interview him and, more importantly, the opportunity to get his signature on that old LP sleeve.The important business over, Moondog tells me about his life. He was born Louis Thomas Hardin in Kansas in 1916, where his father was a travelling minister. His father's calling gave him his first musical memory, albeit an unexpected one: "When I was about six years old, my father took me to a convention on the Arapaho Indian reservation. I sat on Chief Yellow Calf's lap and he let me play the tom-tom while they were dancing. The Arapaho had the two beats: the running beat..." (he taps out a rhythm on the table) "...and the walking beat.

Those two beats have stayed with me ever since, are still in my music today."Moondog lost his eyesight at the age of 16, when a dynamite cap exploded in his face "You lose one sense, the others become stronger as a result. At the Iowa School for the Blind, I heard my first Beethoven and Wagner, and it made a great impression. At the school they taught me harmony, but they didn't teach counterpoint. I read a book that said, 'You'll never be a composer unless you master counterpoint', so I studied by myself."His ambitions awakened, Moondog determined to make his own music, but in Iowa his ideas fell on stony ground In 1943 he went to New York "Why? Because it was there. I knew I had to make it there if I was going to make it at all, and New York gave me opportunities I would never have had anywhere else.