The “first punk record”¹ (Blitzkrieg Bop by The Ramones) was released in February 1976 but I didn’t make my foray into the new world order until ’77.

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No Future

In May ’77 I bought my first punk record.  I went out from school at lunchtime to Startime Records with my mate Dave “Dartz” Bridge and bought the single, “God Save The Queen” by a new pop band called The Sex Pistols. 

Epic

An epic record and not a bad way to start your punk record collection.  Anyway, we went back to school and played it at full volume on the 6^th Form record player, much to the chagrin of the teachers and the 6^th form girls who preferred to have a quiet chinwag at lunch time.

“The first punk record I bought was Anarchy, the day it came out. I’d been reading about punk in the record papers since the middle of ’76 and so it had already caught my eye.”

Steve C

Anarchist

“My first punk record was The Dickies, Nights In White Satin and then the Aussie band, The Saints, This Perfect Day. The Dickies single was on white vinyl too.”

Steve Byrne

“My first punk record? I don’t remember.”

Roy

Welcome To The Hotel California

“My one stand out memory was buying Never Mind The Bollocks. My mother was not impressed at all! I decided to tuck it under my arm and visit a friend. Ray Pask and a couple of others were standing on a corner and they looked at me curiously and said, “Have you got that album?” “Yep,” I replied. They were still listening to Hotel California. What a Rebel!”

Robbie Tucker

It’s No Secret Now

“To my eternal shame my first ever record purchase was “No Secrets” by Carly Simon. I was probably 13, and shame, because a mate who lived around the block in Long Ley used to host Monopoly and Cluedo parties, and his mum had it – I literally fell in love with the girl on the cover but the songs were brilliant. They still are of course, and now I appreciate them for their quality rather than the pic of Simon casually flaunting herself on a London street with a T-shirt and no bra. The breast fixation has remained with me throughout my life.”

Clive

Go To Gigs

In November ’77 (the 5^th to be precise) me and my punk mate Dave Puddiford went to our first punk gig.  It was fitting that it was The Stranglers. It took place at The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, London and I couldn’t even begin to describe the thrill and the emotions of actually being there, in the middle of the whole punk wave that had swept the country, despite the Establishment desperately trying to crush it.

“The gig was like being repeatedly smashed in the face with a sledgehammer wrapped in cotton wool and dipped in adrenaline, punctuated by the grind of a chainsaw”

At a Stranglers Gig ’77

The Greatest Gig Of All Time

And it remains to this day, one of the best gigs I’ve ever attended. Possibly the best, purely due to the shock, the sonic attack, the energy, the exhilaration of being there, in a massive crowd, hemmed in on all sides by likeminded people, all there to have a good time.  Because it was like joining a club where everyone and everything reflected all the things you adored.  And you didn’t have to explain it to anyone, they all just ‘knew’, by osmosis or something.

Also, it wasn’t just me who thought it was good, most of it ended up on a ‘live’ album.

The Stranglers Setlist – Roundhouse, November 5, 1977

Afterwards when everyone left, bathed in sweat and smiling from ear to ringing ear, Dave and I decided we had to repeat this outing…and soon.

From Harlow to Hammersmith

We did.  In December we were back in London to see The Boomtown Rats at The Rainbow on Saturday 17^th (tickets were £2.50) and on Sunday 18^th we saw The Jam play their final gig of ’77, at the Hammersmith Odeon.²

Up The Spurs

Anyway, we stayed at my Nan’s in Tottenham for the weekend because it was cheaper and there were no guarantees the trains would run late enough to get us back to Harlow after the gigs had finished.

1st Punk Gig

“My first punk gig would have been The Vibrators at Tiffany’s in Harlow. That would’ve been about May 1977. I’m not sure whether Roy was there or not.”

Steve C

“I don’t remember.”

Roy

“A few weeks later we went to the Harlow version of Punk Rock. Again at Tiffany’s. I can remember Lorcan Divine (of The Rabbits) selling us tickets. We were sitting outside The Willow Beauty. He said everyone’s playing tonight. It was an early version of The Rabbits, Pete the Meat and the Boys dressed in ponchos, The Gangsters I think and The Sods/Rage was headlining.”

Steve C

Chelmsford Punk Festival

“Steve and I went to the Chelmsford Punk Festival. There were about 1500 people there. The Damned were supposed to headline but didn’t so Eddie & The Hot Rods did it instead. I remember Lew Lewis was playing and the scaffolding around the stage was being taken down (because nobody was going to get paid). Chelsea, Fruit Eating Bears played, and Aswad too.”

Roy

“The Punk explosion meant regular trips to The Triad to see such formidable outfits as Crass, Poison Girls and A Flux of Pink Indians – a lesson in “I don’t give a shit” rock ‘n’ roll to last forever.”

Robbie

Pressure Plagiarism

I continued to practice the guitar and teach myself how to write songs and then on the 22^nd of September 1978 the The Buzzcocks released their second album, called Love Bites, which I thought meant love is painful rather than a reference to the marks you might end up with on your neck if you were an over amorous teenager. 

As usual, I bought my latest punk record from Startime Records and discovered not only an incredible collection of bright, catchy, poppy punk songs but the core of the songs was fairly rudimentary (a feature of punk music) and this was a turning point for me. 

Pressure De Plata

Suddenly I didn’t have to possess the ability of Manitas De Plata or Dave Gilmour to be able to write pop songs and I discovered I could write punk songs with the few major, minor and seventh chords I already knew.

“At that time all of those prog rock bands were fantastic, classically trained musicians but it wasn’t accessible to people like us coming out of a crappy, comprehensive school and living on a Council Estate. And that above all is the amazing thing that punk provided and no other movement before or since has ever done.” 

Roy

OGWT

The Buzzcocks album was like opening up the whole world of music to me which until now had been closed to all but the most gifted musicians i.e. those who appeared on the Old Grey Whistle Test.

However, I used to love the overblown, bombastic pomposity of some of those bands. Introduced by “whispering” Bob Harris, OGWT often featured bands who were as dull as ditch water, with guitarists whose solos used all of the fretboard all of the time.  Not because it sounded good but because they could, so consequently, were (thankfully) way out of my league.

And sometimes they’d have Bowie on, or Alex Harvey, or even The New York Dolls. Something with bite. With energy.

Curtains for Bob

Then punk arrived and like an unruly, petulant child, ripped the curtain aside and we saw OGWT for what it truly was.  A bunch of ageing Hippies desperately clinging to the gravy train they’d been riding since the 60’s.  Which effectively meant keeping me and people like me, out. OGWT and Punk mixed about as well as oil and water.

But to paraphrase “Sniffin’ Glue” the punk fanzine of the time, all I had to do was learn three chords and form a band.  And sometime later, I did. Unfortunately for an unsuspecting world, it was The Pressure Stops.

NEXT – PART 4 – TURNING JAPANESE

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1. This is often debated since nobody knows when punk music actually started
2. The Jam played for about 40 minutes, which considering we’d travelled all the way from Harlow to Hammersmith, I felt we’d been short changed and I never saw them again.