40 years on and still angry!

I'm still not well enough to go out, which is a shame as I missed a great night out watching my favourite Punk band, 'No Lip', last night.

It's been a very strange day for me because 40 years ago (22nd October 1976) the first Punk single came out - 'New Rose' by 'The Damned'. I wasn't the greatest 'Damned' fan in the world and it was just by luck that they got a single out first, really.

But hey!, it still sounds good all these years later, see for yourself here;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTfyUqVqX-0

I spent some time watching clips and reading stuff about 1976, full of memories. I remember the summer of 1976, on holiday in Devon and hanging around a music venue as the band (it could  have been anything, I wasn't going to hear them) was setting up. I was actually killing time watching the roadies and noticed one wearing a razor blade necklace and thinking to myself:

"What is that - I have to check that out".

Actually, I lived about as far away from anywhere where anything was happening as you could and didn't have the money to get there anyway.

So another memory is looking at The Damned's new single at 'Our Price Records' in Slough, not having the money to buy it and not having a record player to play it on anyway.

The radio wasn't helping either - this was before John Peel discovered Punk.

So it's fair to say it took a while before I could do anything much about the new music that was making such a noise.

The next memory is watching Janet Street-Porter interviewing 'The Sex Pistols' on LWT - before (I think) the more infamous Bill Grundy interview, which I also watched in December that year.

By which time, 'Anarchy in the UK' had been released.

Life was never going to be the same again!

40 years on and everything turned out much worse than we ever imagined it would - the bad guys won and got rich at our expense.

We really were right to be angry at what was happening to us and I for one still am.

All these years later there are fewer and fewer people still alive who remember that things can and should be different.  

But they can be - it's up to us.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com