Every gig I ever went to

Talking Heads / Dire Straits Swindon Oasis Leisure Centre 4 February 1978 In early January 1978 I passed my driving test, at the second attempt – it seemed important to get that out of the way before I hit 18. I still had the moped and there was no question of buying a car, but my parents didn’t go out much so I sometimes borrowed theirs, a yellow Ford Escort. (I was well pleased when they bought it, replacing the previous pale blue model – why don’t cars come in yellow any longer?) My friend Richard had also passed his test, and for a while having a car seemed to open up all kinds of new possibilities, though for the most part we just drove around town, the passengers mooning and shouting ‘baldy!’ at bald blokes. Didn’t everyone do that? Some people would say this was puerile behaviour, and I would too. On one occasion I remember doing three circuits of the Abingdon one-way system, my friends mooning as we overtook a cycling nun on each lap. If you’re reading this, my apologies sister...

John Otway & Wild Willy Barret Oxford Oranges & Lemons 1 December 1977 During the autumn of 1977 I’d made a few friends in Oxford, some of whom frequented the Oranges & Lemons in St Clements. So it was that on a drizzly Thursday night I wandered over Magdalen bridge to the part of town which Inspector Morse never visited, to see almost-local semi-legends John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett play one of their regular nights in said boozer. At this time I was a bit nervous about entering an unfamiliar pub, not because I was underage – in those days no one worried about that so long as you behaved yourself – but because it seemed to take very little to provoke hostility, particularly if you looked vaguely punk-ish. Sleepy Abingdon was frequently like the Wild West at chucking out time, and I was well used to getting, and avoiding, the hairy eyeball in Oxford city centre. With the O&L however I needn’t have worried, despite its reputation for being ‘a bit rough’. It was certai...

Thin Lizzy Oxford New Theatre 19 November 1977 Thin Lizzy had been around for a few years, finally breaking big by soundtracking the scorching summer of 1976 with The Boys are Back in Town. I’d seen them at Reading Festival a few weeks previously and thought they were pretty great, even if on that occasion my enjoyment of their set had been inhibited by having to prioritise avoiding a couple of blokes who wanted to give me a pasting because I looked a bit punk. While I wasn’t massive fan everyone said they were a great live act, my friends were going and so I rolled up at the gig without a ticket, eventually blagging one from a tout at face value by waiting until just before the show was about to start. I was getting better at this sort of thing. Thin Lizzy certainly weren’t punk but in general the punks liked them, their short, melodic tunes, a rock’n’roll heart worn ostentatiously on their sleeve, and the rebel swagger of Phil Lynott. No one did rebel swagger like Phil. With a lot of...