Every gig I ever went to

Carnival Against The Nazis – X-Ray Spex, The Clash, Steel Pulse, TRB Victoria Park, Hackney, London 30 April 1978 Let’s talk about racism, because you really need an old white bloke spouting off about this important issue. Actually someone should have talked to me about racism back in the 70s but no one did, not really, I had to figure it out for myself and to be honest I didn’t really know what racism was, which is strange because I was a witness to it almost every day. At the time of this event the National Front were gaining in acceptance and influence, the Black & White Minstrel Show was still on prime time tv, racist epithets were common currency: it was no big deal to hear such language, on television, at work, on the street and among some members of my family. If I had a pound for every time I heard the expression ‘Enoch was right’, well I wouldn’t be rich but could certainly have afforded a better motorbike. (I should stress that, while they were hardly campaigners against ...

Wreckless Eric / The Tourists Oxford College of Further Education 8 April 1978 Since I’d last seen him Wreckless Eric had become moderately well-known, acquired a proper group and released an album. He was still a scruffy little guy with a nasal estuarine voice, scrubbing away on the same Woolworths Top Twenty guitar I’d seen him play last time round. At one point he broke a string and swopped the the cheapo guitar for a rather beautiful red Rickenbacker, which I would have thought was perverse if there hadn’t been a whiff of contrivance about it. Opening act were The Tourists, a competent and unobjectionable power pop act, whose singer looked like a new-wave Julie Andrews. A little later she and one of the guitarists would make the smart move of ditching the group and go on to massive success as Eurhythmics, but no one could have imagined this at the time. To be honest I spent most of the evening trying to cop off with someone so I don’t remember much more than this.

Elvis Costello & the Attractions / Mickey Jupp Bracknell Leisure Centre 1 April 1978 I didn’t fall big time for Elvis Costello’s first album My Aim is True – it had its moments but the laid-back, easy-rolling Californian vibe provided by Clover wasn’t my thing at all. On the other hand I thought 1978’s This Year’s Model, recorded with the Attractions, was the absolute dog’s bollocks, possibly the best album of an exceptional year, arguably Elvis’s best ever, and still a big favourite today. Hooking up with the Attractions, Elvis had gone from being a purveyor of tastefully groovy country-rock to the frontman of the world’s most verbose garage punk combo, ? and the Mysterians if they’d swallowed a thesaurus, turned down by Nuggets for exceeding the word count. Riding the punk wave, his scattershot rattiness seemed to encompass everything from the National Front to the cosmetics industry. It’s a brilliantly cohesive album, seeming to feature very few overdubs, just an exceptional gro...