Every gig I ever went to

George Hatcher Band / Wreckless Eric 23 September 1977 Oxford Polytechnic The Stranglers 26 September 1977 Oxford Polytechnic Barclay James Harvest 16 October 1977 Oxford New Theatre Dr Feelgood / Mink de Ville 20 October 1977 Oxford New Theatre Chris Spedding / New Hearts 27 October 1977 Oxford Polytechnic Another bunch of gigs best described as variable. The George Hatcher Band were headlining the Polytechnic’s Freshers’ Night. That southern fried downhome boogie thang had enjoyed success with a certain UK crowd a year or two earlier, as evidenced by the popularity of Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers, and the ubiquity of cowboy boots and hats during the summer of 1976 (not guilty m’lud). Maybe the election as US president of Georgia boy and Marshall Tucker fan Jimmy Carter also had some bearing on it, I dunno. By Autumn of 1977 the whole thing was starting to look a bit tired, I’d seen the GHB a couple of times already and it was never really my thing in the first place, bu...

Gig 035 Reading Festival 26-27-28 August 1977 I was sceptical about going to this. The previous year’s event had been a bit rubbish but enjoyable just because it was the first time away with my friends. A year later I wasn’t so sure, festivals weren’t very punk, and Generation X were playing Swindon on the Friday night. Unlike the unbroken sunshine of the previous year, summer 1977 had been wet and in the weeks preceding the festival it had been raining like a bastard. On the other hand I didn’t go on any other holidays that year, didn’t want to accompany my parents on their annual holiday visiting family in the far north, and did want to hang out with my friends in a field listening to music, so it was an easy decision. We were a bit better organised this year, in that we had somehow got hold of a big tent, a camping stove, and a few other bits and pieces. This was in danger of becoming civilised. It was good to have some time off work, which was ok but did my head in much of the time...

The Cortinas / Chelsea / The Pop Group 12 August 1977 Swindon Brunel Rooms I went to this one on my own, partly because I lived closer to Swindon than my friends and had a moped, mainly because The Cortinas and Chelsea were second-division punk acts and none of my friends wanted to go. I wasn’t exactly desperate to see them myself but I was up for anything vaguely punk at this point. Having arrived early I was surprised to see a bunch of nondescript spotty youths appear onstage. The singer was impossibly tall and gawky, the guitarist was a scrawny little bloke, all five of them completely lacking any punk styling yet somehow managing to resemble the Bash Street Kids, they seemed to have just stumbled out of a provincial youth club. The first tune was a standard punk thrash which I think was called Hypnotism by Radio; then it got more interesting. They couldn’t really play very well and the tall guy couldn’t sing to save his or anyone else’s life but they made a decent stab at Jonathan ...

Motörhead / The Count Bishops 6 August 1977 Aylesbury Friars While Oxford was a musical desert, at least if you were into punk, everyone who was anyone played Friars in the small and sleepy Buckinghamshire town of Aylesbury. It was on the circuit, all the punk acts, played there, Iggy Pop had made his comeback there earlier in 1977 with David Bowie on keyboards, and Bowie himself had debuted Ziggy Stardust there in January 1972. To this day the only existing officially commissioned sculpture of Bowie stands in the archway leading to where the Civic Hall, which hosted Friars, used to be. As statues go it’s a bit rubbish, but you can’t have everything. I went to this gig on the Honda along with Phil, who rode a Puch Maxi if I remember rightly, and we had arranged to meet some of our bus-bound friends there. This involved a round trip of more than 60 miles, and it felt like a voyage to the other side of the world. About 20 miles in we stopped in the genteel town of Thame to compare notes,...

Boomtown Rats / John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett 9 July 1977 Oxford Polytechnic It’s a beautiful, warm Saturday late afternoon and I’m on my moped, on the way to town to meet my friends and go to a gig. Couldn’t be much better really, except I have another appointment before the gig, at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. I have to go and see my dad, who is in hospital following a diagnosis of bowel cancer. Worried about him as I am, my main concern is to get through this without blubbing and causing upset and embarrassment, which we don’t like to do in our family. The operation had taken place a couple of weeks earlier, as soon as possible after admission, and I’d visited a few times with mum, on one of the first occasions looking on as dad hawked bright green bile into a small papier maché tray. Churning emotions were kept just about under control. During the last couple of visits he was taking food and looking brighter, but it was early days and there was still a sense of dread as...