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...

Gig 056 Generation X Oxford Botley Elms Court 21 March 1978 Although founder members Billy Idol and Tony James had been around since the start, Generation X arrived a bit late on the punk scene, only releasing their first single towards the end of 1977 by which time the whole schtick had become a bit formalised. From this distance it’s clear that the group, and Billy in particular, were comparable to the pre-Beatles UK acts managed by the likes of Larry Parnes, from Billy’s classic dreamboat looks (quite rare in punk, give or take a Paul Simonon and Jean-Jacques Burnel) to his name which fits right in with Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Duffy Power etc. For all their pretensions to Wild Youth, and Billy’s curled lip, they were manufactured pop to fit a growing market and about as dangerous as a glass of strawberry Nesquik. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, they wrote punchy, tuneful songs and their pop-cultural references – the Who, Cathy McGowan, Mondrian – were exemplary. Rather a...

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...