Every gig I ever went to

Gig 052 John Otway Oxford Polytechnic 27 February 1978 Gig 053 Motörhead / Radiators from Space Aylesbury Friars 11 March 1978 Gig 054 Eddie & the Hot Rods / Radio Stars / Squeeze Oxford Polytechnic 13 March 1978 Gig 055 Tom Robinson Band Swindon Brunel Rooms 17 March 1978 A series of gigs by acts I’d already seen at least once, in which the support acts sometimes turned out to be more interesting than the headliner. The lesson here is never ignore the support, regrettably it’s one which I’ve tended to ignore in more recent years. Having scroted around the toilet venues for a few years, John Otway was now a real pop star. For his headline gig at the Poly he had a real group with a drummer and everything, and to be honest I’m not sure it added much to his schtick. Part of Otway’s appeal was his fairly loose relationship with the notion of regular tempo, which went out of the window once there was a real rhythm section in place. Thankfully he still played regular small gigs with Wild...

Gig 050 Steeleye Span Oxford New Theatre 12 February 1978 Gig 051 Ian Dury & The Blockheads / Whirlwind Oxford New Theatre 25 February 1978 Steeleye Span at the New Theatre was something of an antidote to the punk chaos of the previous night. I think I only went to this one because a friend’s brother had a spare ticket, but without being a big fan I’d always enjoyed the Span’s tunes when I heard them on the radio (usually John Peel) and their hit single All Around My Hat was agreeably jaunty. Not punk though is it? Unless the travails of a 19 th century crofter facing starvation due to the enclosure acts are punk, which come to think of it maybe they are. Whatever, there wasn’t too much pogoing and gobbing, and the audience stayed in their seats which allowed Maddy Prior to cavort in the aisles during the encore. A pretty good gig. Since I had last seen him playing drums with Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury (& the Blockheads) had released a hugely successful album called New Boots an...

Gig 049 The Damned / Japan Oxford College of Further Education 11 February 1978 For about a fortnight in 1977 The Damned were the main event, great reviews, TV appearances, famous fans. Things moved quickly and by early 1978 they were looking down-at-heel; their Nick Mason-produced second album (they had wanted Syd Barrett, which would have been interesting) was a bit rubbish, they were out of favour with the press and seemed to have forgotten how to write songs. In what looked like an act of desperation they had recruited another guitarist, Lou Edmonds, who while perfectly capable as a musician had upset that appealing 4-character cartoon dynamic – it was like a fifth Beatle or a fifth Monkee, just wrong. Still there was an audience for them, several of whom were starting to identify as hardcore punks, and they were out for this gig. Punk was by this time both diversifying and becoming codified, a particular reading of the ethos insisting that anything beyond a musically, visually and...