Every gig I ever went to

Gig 073 Wilko Johnson’s Solid Senders Oxford Polytechnic 12 October 1978   Wilko Johnson left Dr Feelgood at the height of their fame, which at the time seemed like a perverse decision. It later – actually much later, in the form of personal testimony – emerged that he didn’t get on with the rest of the group, was difficult, cantankerous, and worse than that, university-educated and teetotal. Hindsight would suggest that Dr Feelgood in their original form had already peaked. Their last album with Wilko, Sneakin’ Suspicion, was patchy, and by far the strongest song, Paradise, turned out to be the one that caused the split since Lee Brilleaux – a much more authoritative singer than Wilko – refused to sing it due to what he felt were overly personal lyrics detailing the guitarist’s complicated  vie affective . Given that Wilko was the only songwriter and himself not particularly prolific, that was that; irreconcilable differences, your honour.   So Dr Feelgood recruited a ne...

Gig 072:  Buzzcocks / Subway Sect Oxford New Theatre 1 October 1978   I might have said in an earlier post that The Jam were my favourite group, and perhaps that particular week it was true, but the punk group whose records I adored to the point of distraction were Buzzcocks (as Pete Shelley insisted, not  the  Buzzcocks). I was still blown away by their debut Spiral Scratch 4-track ep, which even now sounds like nothing else on earth and was streets ahead of the competition in almost every respect, taking guitar/bass/drums/vocals somewhere very strange yet strangely accessible, erudite Beckett-referencing lyrics tumbling over themselves like an overloaded fruit machine disgorging its loot. Following the departure of Howard Devoto it might have been reasonable to assume that the game was up; subsequent singles and the first album suggested something quite otherwise. Where Devoto sang about sex in an oddly dispassionate and sexless manner (and would continue to do so,...

Gig 070 Tom Robinson Band / Stiff Little Fingers Oxford New Theatre 23 September 1978 Gig 071 Carnival Against the Nazis 2 Brockwell Park, Brixton 24 September 1978   When an act graduated from college gigs to the New Theatre they’d pretty much made it, inasmuch as they had reached a mass audience; from here they might go on to even greater things – or conversely they might have already peaked. Sadly for the Tom Robinson Band, who now had a chart album and a high profile in the media but would never have another hit, the latter fate awaited. As mentioned in Gigs 41 and 55, Tom was impressive in so many ways: brave, principled, radical, an advocate for gay rights who refused to comply with the prevalent stereotypes: Tom absolutely didn’t do camp. Problem is, if we’re being honest, camp was part of rock’n’roll from before the start, and lyrical allusiveness, sartorial flash and physical sensuality was integral to the experience. In this sense Little Richard wasn’t a world away from L...

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, ...

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 an...

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. Alrea...