Every gig I ever went to

Gig 068 John Otway Aylesbury Market Square 13 August 1978 Gig 069 Reading Festival 25 August 1978   ‘Get ready for the festival, for the festival is only once a year.’ Josephine, by John Otway   Oh ok, if we must. I’d spent August bank holiday weekend at Reading Festival the previous two years and been variously blind drunk, soaked, muddy, threatened with violence, cold, sick, bored, and almost brained by flying cans full of dubious liquid content. Half the acts I didn’t much care for, and back then there was nothing else to do except maybe buy a hot dog or some cider. There had been some good moments – I’m thinking Eddie & the Hot Rods, I-Roy, Van der Graaf Generator, Thin Lizzy and a few others – but there was a fair amount of tedious noodling, phallocentric guitar pleasuring, boorish misogyny and general dullness. The Carnival Against the Nazis in May had been a magical transgressive moment but in general by the late 70s the counterculture had become very conservative, ...

Gig 067 The Jam Swindon Brunel Rooms 4 August 1978   Around this time The Jam had appeared to be struggling a little. They had released two albums, the first of which was well received but the second had received a lukewarm response in the sneary, fickle music press. I thought it was dead good, Paul Weller’s developing songwriting was more expansive than most of his contemporaries, referencing for instance Liverpool poet Adrian Henri along with the obvious Who, Beatles and soul influences. Even Bruce Foxton’s two rather clunky contributions had a certain charm. But that was almost a year ago and since then Weller seemed to have experienced writer’s block; the single News of the World was another Foxton composition and frankly not all that (although it enjoys a second life as the theme tune for Mock the Week) and the follow-up was a cover of the Kinks’ David Watts, though the b-side A-Bomb in Wardour Street was encouragingly snotty and in-your-face. Difficult third album syndrome an...