Every gig I ever went to

Graham Parker & The Rumour/Clover Oxford New Theatre 25 November 1977 The Jam/New Hearts Aylesbury Friars 26 November 1977 I’ve already written quite a bit about Graham Parker & The Rumour and this was the fourth time I’d seen them live. A good gig as always, showcasing the most recent album Stick to Me which was a bit patchy but had its moments. There was more of an overt soul influence, including an adventurous if possibly ill-judged epic called The Heat in Harlem. For what it’s worth I liked it, not many white English groups could have even contemplated that sort of thing, and even if there was an element of what might now be called cultural tourism there was nothing spurious about GP’s aspirations. Another good show, though the New Theatre is most emphatically not a rock’n’roll venue. Support were Clover, the sort of easy-rolling country-ish rootsy American group who Bob Harris would have liked, and who had recently accompanied a UK singer called Elvis Costello on his debut...

Rainbow Oxford New Theatre 16 November 1977 I don’t really like heavy metal, never did if I’m honest. When I was 15 or so I bought Black Sabbath Vol. 4, couldn’t cope with its lack of tunes and general cloddishness, and quite quickly swapped it with a friend for something less, well, cloddish. I had a taped copy of the Paranoid album which had the benefit of being funny, and I was kind of ok with Led Zeppelin for a while, since they had melodies and something of a groove, though the lyrics were twaddle. Deep Purple, nah not really having it. Motörhead were ok because they were fast and punk-ish. So why would I want to see Rainbow? Probably because my friends were going, also I thought it might be entertaining, and in this respect I called it right. Rainbow’s main man was ex-Deep Purple guitarist Richie Blackmore, who cultivated an image of dark menace in the style of Jimmy Page. He must have made a serious amount of money out of Purple and could have carried on doing so, but wanted to ...

Tom Robinson Band 29 October 1977 Oxford Polytechnic The Stranglers/The Dictators 30 October Reading Top Rank Probably the only thing that my family had in common with the politburo of the Soviet Union was its attitude to homosexuality, a phenomenon which didn’t exist at home and only occurred in other, more decadent societies. Homophobia wasn’t a thing, you can’t be phobic about something which doesn’t exist. On primetime TV gay men, and just occasionally women, were caricatural objects of mirth and pity, though they were often granted the juiciest innuendo – nothing to worry about, this is what ‘other’ people do. Ironic then that since early adolescence the music and culture which had come to shape the lives of myself and a number my friends was suffused with gay iconography – most obviously David Bowie, but an intrinsic element of the whole glam scene was gender fluidity; Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side had been a massive favourite, as had All The Young Dudes. Notwithstanding the N...