Every gig I ever went to

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Gig 068- 069 John Otway / Reading Festival

July 26, 2022

Gig 068 John Otway Aylesbury Market Square 13 August 1978 Gig 069 Reading Festival 25 August 1978 ‘Get ready for the festival, for the festival is only once a year.’ Josephine, by John Otway Oh ok, if we must. I’d spent August bank holiday weekend at Reading Festival the previous two years and been variously blind drunk, soaked, muddy, threatened with violence, cold, sick, bored, and almost brained by flying cans full of dubious liquid content. Half the acts I didn’t much care for, and back then there was nothing else to do except maybe buy a hot dog or some cider. There had been some good moments – I’m thinking Eddie & the Hot Rods, I-Roy, Van der Graaf Generator, Thin Lizzy and a few others – but there was a fair amount of tedious noodling, phallocentric guitar pleasuring, boorish misogyny and general dullness. The Carnival Against the Nazis in May had been a magical transgressive moment but in general by the late 70s the counterculture had become very conservative, all capil

Gig 067 The Jam

July 10, 2022

Gig 067 The Jam Swindon Brunel Rooms 4 August 1978 Around this time The Jam had appeared to be struggling a little. They had released two albums, the first of which was well received but the second had received a lukewarm response in the sneary, fickle music press. I thought it was dead good, Paul Weller’s developing songwriting was more expansive than most of his contemporaries, referencing for instance Liverpool poet Adrian Henri along with the obvious Who, Beatles and soul influences. Even Bruce Foxton’s two rather clunky contributions had a certain charm. But that was almost a year ago and since then Weller seemed to have experienced writer’s block; the single News of the World was another Foxton composition and frankly not all that (although it enjoys a second life as the theme tune for Mock the Week) and the follow-up was a cover of the Kinks’ David Watts, though the b-side A-Bomb in Wardour Street was encouragingly snotty and in-your-face. Difficult third album syndrome and al

Gig 065/066 Dire Straits / The Motors

June 24, 2022

Dire Straits Oxford Polytechnic 2 July 1978 The Motors Oxford College of Further Education 7 July 1978 The Clash and Bowie was quite enough excitement for one week but a gig’s a gig so Saturday night I went to the Poly to see those no-hopers Dire Straits, for whom excitement wasn’t really a selling point. Not that I didn’t like them, I’d seem them earlier in the year (Gig 048) and thought they were pretty good in an undemonstrative way, perfectly enjoyable, obviously never going to make it big. They just didn’t fit anywhere in 1978; for a start the guitarist/singer was an old balding bloke who looked like a teacher (I checked, he was 28 and yes he was – or had been – a teacher) and didn’t seem remotely charismatic nor particularly cross about anything. But boy could he play guitar, eloquent cascades of melody defining the songs, in which the vocal line was semi-spoken rather than sung. He evoked JJ Cale, Clapton, Ry Cooder, maybe the more lyrical blues guys such as BB King. Already I

Gig 064 David Bowie

January 26, 2022

David Bowie London Earls Court 1 July 1978 Blimey, Tuesday was The Clash, Friday was David Bowie, I was on a roll here. I’d last seen Bowie almost exactly five years earlier, since which time he’d released six albums, at least three of which were mind-blowingly innovative, and collaborated on the two albums which launched and defined Iggy Pop’s solo career. Fey and otherworldly as he may have been, he knew how to put in a shift. If anything the punk revolution enhanced his standing, even if the Gumby tendency probably considered him a bit of a poof. He moved in different air, did his own thing and the rest of us could only gawp; notwithstanding the likes of Ultravox, Magazine or Siouxsie and the Banshees, his influence would remain largely unacknowledged for another couple of years, after which those excitable new romantics just couldn’t contain themselves any longer. Talking of whom, I imagine most if not all of those who were to become the Blitz kids attended Bowie’s London shows

Gig 063 The Clash / The Specials

December 14, 2021

The Clash/The Specials Aylesbury Friars 28 June 1978 Everyone raved about The Clash. The press adulation was off the scale, they had amphetamine intensity and political militancy, no question they were the big punk act once the Sex Pistols had imploded; personally I just didn’t think they were all that. Their one album at this time had its moments, notably those where they sounded a bit like Dr Feelgood e.g. Janie Jones, and their take on Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves was charming if a little ham-fisted, but I found much of it rather plodding, back-of-a-fag-packet lyrical agitprop welded to predictable chords. Perhaps they weren’t taking enough speed. That said, the subsequent single Complete Control (produced by Lee Perry, not that you’d know) was a cracking record, as was Clash City Rockers, and White Man in Hammersmith Palais, released a couple of weeks before this gig, was something else again. Lyrically it was streets ahead of their contemporaries, a rumination on betrayal

Gig 062 The Flamin’ Groovies / Radio Birdman

November 23, 2021

The Flamin’ Groovies/Radio Birdman Oxford College of Further Education 10 June 1978 For a couple of years I’d been a big fan of the Flamin’ Groovies, notably their early 70s punk-anticipating garage rock albums Flamingo and Teenage Head. More recently they had undergone something of a makeover, re-emerging in 1976 with new anglophile singer Chris Wilson, the outstanding single Shake Some Action and an album of the same title, which referenced more classic sources such the Beatles, the Stones, the Byrds, the Pretty Things, and hummed with a deliciously warm, valve-y jangle. It’s hard to imagine now but, the recent past being so much more old-fashioned than the distant past, the Beatles and Stones were largely considered hopelessly démodé at the time, disdained by punks and prog-heads, ignored by almost everyone else. Glen Matlock was allegedly thrown out of the Sex Pistols for liking the Beatles; clearly the likes of Paul Weller, Squeeze and Generation X were huge Beatles fans, but the

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