Sitting out on the terrace with the sun shining and the iPod playing, I wondered how many people are music obsessed and, as the man sang: “Does music touch your mortal soul?”

I am not as into music as I used to be but playing the iPod after we had enjoyed our barbecue, I realised that it can still take me places.

I listened while the random playlist unfolded and it struck me how much my choices and preferences have been down to equally random moments, snippets and fleeting impressions, on which I subsequently built a record, tape and cd collection.

A track for Del Amitri took me back. I have several of the albums by this Scottish alternative rock band but the sudden rush to collect their output was sparked by a visit to a Rickmansworth High Street all-purpose chemist. I cannot remember what I was looking for but I heard this track playing over the shop’s loudspeakers and stopped in an attempt to hear just what group or individual was singing. It was “The Last to Know”, which is not among my favourites but that afternoon I heard the deejay reveal the song was by Del Amitri. The next time I was in Past and Present Records in St Albans Road, now long gone, I sampled an album or two by the group and bought them both. Ellie had never heard of them but subsequently rated the records highly, although is not quite as enamoured as I am by the track “Driving with the brakes on” which remains a favourite.

My point is that it was all triggered by a succession of chords, a guitar hook or even a voice, which flittered briefly across my horizon. So I was seduced by the music but I may never have owned a single item by Del Amitri had I not been short of shaving gel.

Back in the summer of 1957, pedalling up Watford High Street from Woolworth’s, back in the days when it was next to Montague Burton’s on the corner of King Street, I was captivated by the sound of a saxophone playing perhaps nine notes. I pulled up by the curb, dismounted and made my way back to Boyd’s, the music shop, which was positioned opposite the old Watford Observer offices, just by the cut going through to the Old Free School.

I did no more than ask the name of the track and it was informed it was “Diana” by Paul Anka. I returned later that week with my pocket money and bought the song. Again it was just an instant thing. OK, so it is still in the world’s top 20 all-time biggest selling singles and according to my last copy of the Guinness Book of Records, was still in the top ten, which means a lot of people bought that record, but how many did so on the strength of a 15-second sample?

Almost a year later, with the school holidays beckoning, I sat on my dormitory bed, looking out on a park in Rochester, Kent, when I heard the sound of a record being played by a couple of prefects. The sound had come out of their open window and wafted up to me. It was neither clear nor precise but I knew I would be asking about the record the next morning. It transpired it was called "All I have to do is dream” by the Everly Brothers. That excerpt of a song set me on a path that prompted me to buy all their records, dissect their harmonies and that fact stood me in good stead years later when I met Ellie, who rated them as her number one.

Many years later, Ellie had been recommended a modern group to listen to and noted they were on a tv programme one night. She turned it on while I was working in the kitchen, typing some article. The program was perhaps an hour long and I heard the music in the background. Then, without warning, my focus on work was arrested. I heard some guitar notes and within 30 seconds I was asking Ellie the name of the group and the name of the track. It was “Tunnel of Love” by Dire Straits and it was the guitar sequence that had me hooked. I still buy the occasional Mark Knopfler album to this day.

I have every single Dion record that I know of. I bought his records when he was the lead singer with The Belmonts. I enjoyed “Teenager in Love” but it was the pained voice asking “why must I be a teenager in love” with which I identified. It sounded as if it was really hell. And of course, it was. As his career moved to rand b, singer-songwriter and then revered rock survivor, I found myself following happily.

I heard Mary Chapin Carpenter on Jules Holland, years ago, singing “I am a town”. I had never heard of her, for I do not listen to music programmes as I did in my teens and twenties, but I have bought her records ever since.

I suppose it is a case of knowing what I like and going for it, but it is the random nature of the discoveries that I find harder to understand.

I was in Newport for a Watford game back in the 1980s and as I sat down for a pre-match curry, I heard a chorus of a song. I asked a friend, Terry, to listen out for any clue as to who was singing. The deejay came in and announced it was something along the lines of “The Cars” by The Drive. Upon my next visit to Past and Present, my misinformation was corrected and I walked out with a Cars’ album including the track “Drive”.

On another occasion I was sitting with some friends on a beach in Spain, enjoying a few more cuba libres than was wise when one of them said: “Where are you? You are far away.”

I apologised. I had heard a snippet of a song and it had resonated.

After the holiday, I visited Past and Present and asked John if he knew anything about a song called Memphis. I was directed to an album by Marc Cohn, which contained the track “Walking in Memphis”.

About six months later, some music-mad friends, asked me if I had heard of Marc Cohn? Yes I had and possessed two of his records.

“You kept that dark,” they said, clearly miffed because our tastes often overlapped and I had not tipped them off.

I apologised but reminded them when we sat drinking on the beach and they complained I was away with the fairies. “I had just heard Marc Cohn,” I explained. “Clearly it did not register with you, but it did with me.”

Again, just a snippet had affected the course of my music tastes.

Oliver Phillips will resume these columns on July 31 after a summer break.