In 2022 David Hepworth’s Deep 70’s box set was released and not for the first time I found it staggering how his taste differed so greatly from my own. Now, I have nothing against Hepworth, far from it in fact. His books are well written, easy readers thankfully free of the academic bullshit writers of his stature love to shroud themselves in. My only problem with him is that his seventies wasn’t my seventies, which admittedly is something I am eternally grateful for. Otherwise I would surely have drowned in a sea of Delaney & Bonnie, Gregg Allman, Canned Heat, Linda Rondstadt and the bland, easy listening rock and shuffling blues he’s a fan of.
To redress the balance a little, I’ve compiled my own Deep Cuts From The 70s. Not that I’m in the least bit nostalgic for the era itself. When I think about the seventies, I know for sure that compared to everyday life in the twenty twenties, everything about it was crap. Anyone who actually lived through the decade as opposed to the unrecognisable versions wheeled out as period backcloths on film and TV, knows that from the dreadful food to the three TV channels and the permanent threat of violence, not to mention the regressive attitude towards racism, sexism, classism, ageism, homophobism and any other ism you care to mention, the seventies really were as grim as fuck. In a decade regularly referred to as ‘our unfinest hour’, music was often the only ray of light in an otherwise gloomy existence.
The songs I’ve assembled here are a document of those seventies, which began with me as a fresh faced first year at a new grammar school, ended with a job as a junior traffic engineer, and took in periods on the dole, as an industrial oven cleaner, a mail boy and an invoice clerk. They represent the records I discovered in the dusty racks of old fashioned shops like Hickies and Rumbelows, Quicksilver, Small Wonder and Rough Trade and include cheap albums purchased second hand at Sirrell’s and Cob Records infamous mail order or those borrowed from friends, girlfriends and acquaintances. Every record I heard educated me in some way and the same was true of the weekly editions of the NME, Sounds and Melody Maker. Incredibly influential, they taught me everything about music, causes and cultures from a wider world I knew literally nothing about.
This may not be the first time I’ve tried to capture the music of my seventies in all its glory, but it is the first time I’ve steered clear of the obvious hits and celebrated album tracks memorialised to within an inch of their life. Taken together I like to think that the songs I’ve featured provide some kind of counter argument to those who despite evidence to the contrary, continue to believe that the seventies were just about the standard clichés of flares, long hair, fantastical concept albums, guitar solos, pogoing and safety pins.
The truth is they were about much, much more than that!
Chris Green
October 2023
01. THE EQUALS ‘Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys’ (Single A Side November 1970)
A deep cut in music is generally defined as a song known only to the most dedicated fan and one that is rarely, if ever, heard on the radio. If that is the case, then Eddy Grant’s driving, uncompromising take on race and Vietnam for The Equals, a three black, two white member group from a Hornsey council estate, fits that definition like a glove. A regular in the UK chart over the winter of 1970/71, today it is all but forgotten.
02. ATOMIC ROOSTER ‘The Devil’s Answer’ (Single A Side May 1971)
The early seventies was a strange time to be getting into music. The songs I liked as an eleven year old boy were those I heard on Radio One and Top Of The Pops which stylistically ranged wildly from Gilbert O’Sullivan’s ‘Nothing Rhymed’ to The Supremes ‘Stoned Love’, and from Dave and Ansell Collins ‘Double Barrel’ to Atomic Rooster’s prog pop masterpiece ‘The Devil’s Answer’.
03. JOHN KONGOS ‘Tokolshe Man’ (Single A Side November 1971)
Everyone should know John Kongos first hit ‘He’s Gonna Step On You Again’ but what about ‘Tokolshe Man’? Sharing the same tribal beat and otherness of its predecessor, interestingly, it was this sonic strangeness that inspired producer Mike Leander to forge the original ‘Rock’n’Roll’ glam stomp for Gary Glitter.
04. THE KINKS ‘20th Century Man’ (Muswell Hillbillies LP November 1971)
Older brothers and sisters played a massive part in the musical education of my generation. I didn’t have any older siblings of my own so I had to rely on those of my friends, one of who’s older brothers was a massive Kinks fan. While I was aware of The Kinks 1970 singles ‘Lola’ and ‘Apeman’, my liking for ‘20th Century Man’ can only have come from hearing his copy of their 1971 flop Muswell Hillbillies.
05. THE MOVE ‘Do Ya’ (Single B Side April 1972)
The Move’s last single, Roy Woods ‘California Man’, was a clever pastiche of fifties rock’n’roll, but it was the b side that really grabbed my attention. Written by Jeff Lynne, ‘Do Ya’ was a cowbell infused, slice of proto glam that Lynne himself would transform four and a half years later on the Electric Light Orchestra’s gargantuan A New World Record album.
06. ROD STEWART ‘Lost Paraguayos’ (Never A Dull Moment LP July 1972)
With more than thirty studio albums to his name, most of which sound like a once great artist merely going through the motions, it’s easy to forget how influential Rod Stewart was. An ever present in my adolescence due to my best friend inheriting a box full of early Rod records from his sister, I have many happy memories of lounging around listening to An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down, Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells A Story and Never A Dull Moment.
07. T. REX ‘Baby Boomerang’ (The Slider LP July 1972)
Unlike Bowie, Marc Bolan isn’t much known for his album tracks. And yet, for a brief period from September 1971 to August 1972, Electric Warrior and The Slider matched the sales and the importance of Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. Showcasing Bolan at the peak of his powers, those albums and their associated singles (‘Get It On’, ‘Jeepster’, ‘Metal Guru’, ‘Telegram Sam’) were where my generation finally parted company with the sixties and the influence of our elders. Little did we, or much less Bolan, know that The Slider would be his last great album, precipitating a fall from grace so calamitous it was worthy of Icarus himself.
08. MOTT THE HOOPLE ‘Jerkin’ Crocus’ (All The Young Dudes LP September 1972)
Mott The Hoople were as integral to my early seventies as T. Rex, David Bowie and Roxy Music. Severely undervalued, at the time of All The Young Dudes they were wallowing in obscurity and ready to pack it all in. Famously saved by Bowie, they had the swagger, the confidence, the riffs and the glam to seriously impress my gang of twelve year old lost boys, but most of all they had Ian Hunter. A 33 year old everyman writer of some of the seventies greatest songs, his story really began here with the likes of ‘Sucker’, ‘One Of The Boys’, the poignant ‘Sea Diver’ and the rockin’ ‘Jerkin’ Crocus’.
09. DAVID BOWIE ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’ (Aladdin Sane LP April 1973)
Is any Bowie song of the seventies truly a deep cut? That is the question I wrestled with while compiling this playlist despite knowing full well that he had to feature somewhere because without him my seventies and my life in general would have taken a different, far less exciting path. In the end I boiled it down to Aladdin Sane’s glammed up, sexually supercharged take on ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’. It’s crazy to think that in April 1973 I had yet to hear the Stones 1967 original.
10. JOBRIATH ‘Space Clown’ (Jobriath LP June 1973)
Bruce Wayne Campbell’s attempt to become the real life Ziggy Stardust was admirable yet doomed to fail. Not that the renamed Jobriath’s quirky mix of sophisticated glam, cabaret and funk had anything to do with it. If anything it was the mammoth and extremely costly promotional campaign that ultimately undermined his talent, the music industry apparently offended by its own hype. Only now are his two albums of complex, sensitive and confessional material considered praiseworthy. Sadly, the man himself didn’t live to hear it, dying alone in the Chelsea Hotel at the height of the AID’s epidemic in 1983 at just 36 years old.
11. LOU REED ‘How Do You Think It Feels?’ (Berlin LP October 1973)
If Jobriath was considered something of a fraud, Lou Reed was anything but. Following the Bowie/Mick Ronson produced. glam masterpiece Transformer was never going to be easy, but the songs on Berlin sounded almost deliberately difficult and dark, charting a couple’s doomed relationship from drug addiction to domestic violence and suicide. Not exactly cheery stuff, especially if you were in your early teens and didn’t understand a word of it.
12. SUZI QUATRO ‘Primitive Love’ (Suzi Quatro LP October 1973)
There weren’t many girl pop stars around in the early seventies, leather clad, poster queen Suzi Quatro being the first to feed into every teenage boys bedroom fantasy while girls just wanted to be her. As for the music, apart from the immaculate Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman penned chart singles, it consisted of the standard rock’n’roll re-treads or parodies thereof, although Suzi Quatro did have ‘Primitive Love’, a relatively unknown Chinnichap gem.
13. DAVID ESSEX ‘Streetfight’ (Rock On LP November 1973)
If you had David Essex tagged as an ever grinning, seventies version of Robbie Williams you may be shocked to learn that with the help of visionary producer Jeff Wayne he was anything but. Starting with his 1973 hit ‘Rock On’ he travelled to some very peculiar places indeed, while sonically his debut album was even weirder. Packed with backward drum loops, odd vocal phrasing and dub effects, nothing was stranger that the extraordinary ‘Streetfight’.
14. COCKNEY REBEL ‘Mirror Freak’ (The Human Menagerie LP November 1973)
Steve Harley drew from the same sources as Bowie and Bryan Ferry but in many ways pushed the envelope even further, past the Berlin of Christopher Isherwood and Fritz Lang films to the grim reality of the German Reich and the dark cabaret beyond. One of the most ridiculed and misunderstood artists of the age, The Human Menagerie and songs like ‘Sebastian’, ‘Muriel The Actor’, ‘Mirror Freak’ and ‘Death Trip’ possessed a confidence, an arrogance and a doomed, decadent madness in their violin led treatises that still sounds astounding.
15. ROXY MUSIC ‘Psalm’ (Stranded LP November 1973)
Like Bowie, there are very few Roxy Music songs that could be considered deep cuts, but ‘Psalm’ is definitely one of them. The most obscure eight minutes on Stranded, if not the entire Roxy catalogue, it was one of the first songs Bryan Ferry ever wrote but was considered so unusual it was held back until the group’s third album. An odd yet compelling devotional liturgy built on an end of the pier organ, heavenly choirs and Ferry’s seemingly sincere vocals, it’s a protracted prayer to God that somehow manages to be both ironic and unironic at the same time.
16. ALICE COOPER ‘Teenage Lament ‘74’ (Single A Side January 1974)
Alice Cooper records were always on my stereo but after Killer, Schools Out and Billion Dollar Babies the songs on 1974’s Muscle Of Love proved something of a disappointment. The only exception was ‘Teenage Lament ‘74’ that somehow managed to encapsulate in a little under four minutes exactly what it felt like to be a teenager in the mid-seventies.
17. MICK RONSON ‘Music Is Lethal’ (Slaughter On 10th Avenue LP February 1974)
Bowie sidekick Mick Ronson was one of the nicest men to ever pick up a guitar and one of the best too, but it was always obvious that he wasn’t cut out to be a star in his own right. Nonetheless, he gave it his best shot and in places Slaughter On 10th Avenue really did hit the mark, none more so than on his truly epic, glammed up cover of Lucio Battisti’s ‘Lo Vorrei, Non Vorrei, Ma Se Vuoi’.
18. NEW YORK DOLLS ‘(There’s Gonna Be A) Showdown’ (Too Much Too Soon LP May 1974)
As a rougher, dirtier and sleazier version of The Stones, the New York Dolls were an essential part of every knowing seventies teens record collection. Oozing attitude and an abundance of fun, Too Much Too Soon failed to capitalise on the minor success of their debut despite being superior in every way, Archie Bell & The Drells ‘(There’s Gonna Be A) Showdown’ one of a handful of cover versions to make the originals sound lame.
19. BE BOP DELUXE ‘Night Creatures’ (Axe Victim LP June 1974)
By the time Be Bop Deluxe got around to releasing their debut album glam as a genre was on the decline, so much so that songs with titles like ‘Jet Silver And The Dolls Of Venus’, ‘Darkness (L’Immoraliste)’ and ‘Night Creatures’ sounded a little pretentious and passé and on occasion worryingly like Jobriath covering Cockney Rebel. Of course in 2023, with many of those groups and genre reference points buried in time, they sound arty, ambitious and absolutely fantastic.
20. BRYAN FERRY ‘Another Time, Another Place’ (Another Time, Another Place LP July 1974)
When the suave and sophisticated Bryan Ferry opted for a second solo album predominantly of cover versions even I winced a little. While it wasn’t all bad, much of it was, so in the end it was left to Dobie Gray’s ‘The In Crowd’, a mind bogglingly brilliant version of Jerome Kern’s ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’ and the magnificent self-penned title track to save the day.
21. DANA GILLESPIE ‘Andy Warhol’ (Single A Side August 1974)
Recorded in 1971 at the same time as Bowie was recording his own version for Hunky Dory, Dana Gillespie’s ‘Andy Warhol’ (‘as in holes’) was more than a match for the original. Produced by the man himself for his one-time girlfriend, with the added bonus of Mick Ronson on string arrangements and spectral guitar, it was yet another example of the brilliance Bowie handed out seemingly at will during his most creative years.
22. BRETT SMILEY ‘Space Ace’ (Single B Side September 1974)
An eighteen year old Jobriath copyist guided yet ultimately ruined by Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, Brett Smiley recorded an album called Breathlessly Brett, released a single ‘Va Va Voom’, made an appearance on Russell Harty’s primetime TV show and then, when Oldham refused to release the album, disappeared back to New York to live the rest of his life in obscurity, his hopes and dreams gone forever.
23. GARY SHEARSTON ‘I Get A Kick Out Of You’ (Single A Side September 1974)
First appearing in the 1934 Broadway musical Anything Goes, Cole Porter’s ‘I Get A Kick Out Of You’ seemed set for an appearance on one of Bryan Ferry’s solo albums before folk singer Gary Shearston got in first. Clearly inspired by the Roxy singer, nonetheless, the understated, lackadaisical majesty of the Australian’s world weary version took the song somewhere no-one was expecting. A weird yet wonderful curiosity.
24. THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND ‘Tomahawk Kid’ (The Impossible Dream LP September 1974)
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were taken for granted by me and my generation. Buying every album they released was something we did without even thinking about it. And yet, to this day they remain as unknown as ever. A highlight of The Impossible Dream, today ‘Tomahawk Kid’ stirs something deep within, its irresistible invocation of childhood and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island making me wish for more innocent times.
25. SPARKS ‘Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth’ (Propaganda LP November 1974)
The second Sparks album of 1974, Propaganda capped an astonishing year of activity for the Mael brothers. Featuring all of the now cherished Sparks characteristics of semi operatic vocals, clever lyrics and fabulous melodies, nothing else around sounded so consistently full of invention and ideas. Unique and quite, quite brilliant yet equally bizarre and off putting to the average listener, outside of their obvious, mega hit singles, albums like Propaganda and songs like ‘Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth’ remain massively underrated.
26. MILK ‘N’ COOKIES ‘Little, Lost And Innocent’ (Single A Side January 1975)
Fey, androgynous, New York artist’s used to pop up on a regular basis during the mid-seventies. Looking for unknown group’s to call my own, I would get hold of their debut singles and then wait for the follow ups that would never come. Milk’n’Cookies were the classic example of that. Sporting long hair, sneakers and flares with a lead singer cooing in his breathy, lovesick voice about underage sex, ‘Little, Lost And Innocent’ disappeared into the ether and Milk’n’Cookies bid for stardom collapsed before it had even begun.
27. DR. FEELGOOD ‘All Through The City’ (Down By The Jetty LP January 1975)
Notwithstanding their lack of inventiveness, Dr. Feelgood deserve respect for taking pub rock out of the pub and into the nation’s consciousness. OK, so they may have been more about the rock’n’roll/rhythm and blues past than the future, but Wilko Johnson’s frantic, self-penned songs like ‘All Through The City’ painted a gritty and vivid portrayal of urban life, capturing both the mad energy and mundane routine that in 1976/77 would become so familiar.
28. THE DICTATORS ‘Weekend’ (Go Girl Crazy! LP March 1975)
If Dr. Feelgood were a portent of punk two years before the fact, The Dictators were even more so, at least that’s what it feels like in hindsight. Favourites of the New York, CBGB’s crowd, there was nothing remotely glam, camp or arty about Handsome Dick Manitoba and his boys. Very much a group either ahead or beyond their time (depending on your viewpoint), if anything their enthusiasm for wrestling, burgers, television, girls, cars and junk culture in general confused more than it converted.
29. JOHN CALE ‘Dirty Ass Rock’n’Roll’ (Slow Dazzle LP March 1975)
John Cale was another for whom the mid-seventies proved something of a creative peak with Fear, Slow Dazzle and Helen Of Troy recorded and released a little over a year apart. At fifteen I preferred Slow Dazzle, which in places sounded a little more accessible, particularly on the musical ribaldry of ‘Dirty Ass Rock’n’Roll’ which I adored above all else. It was only later I would discover that in reality the album documented an especially harrowing period in Cale’s life dominated by his excessive drug consumption, the decline of his marriage and ultimately his mental health.
30. IAN HUNTER ‘Boy’ (Ian Hunter LP March 1975)
Back in the day, Ian Hunter was always being crucified by the music press for the ordinary nature of his voice. I for one never understood that criticism because to me it was that very ordinariness that made me love his songs in the first place, his self-titled debut far more deserving of attention than crap like Lennon’s Rock’n’Roll, Supertramp’s Crime Of The Century and Bad Company’s Straight Shooter which were selling by the million around the same time.
31. FOX ‘Imagine Me, Imagine You’ (Single A Side May 1975)
With female glam artists in extremely short supply, in 1975 it was left to Noosha Fox to woo the boys with her wistful, bewitching demeanour and 1930’s glamour girl chic. A forerunner for the likes of Stevie Nicks, Kate Bush and most strikingly Alison Goldfrapp, her accented purr on ‘Imagine Me, Imagine You’ was wonderfully exotic.
32. HAWKWIND ‘Kings Of Speed’ (Warrior On The Edge Of Time LP May 1975)
Known for their sonic attack as much as their ‘epitome of hippy’ lifestyle, Hawkwind were ever present during my seventies, their records dense, tricky affairs I didn’t pretend to understand. After five in as many years, Warrior On The Edge Of Time was the last great Hawkwind album, ‘Kings Of Speed’ (author Michael Moorcock’s lyrics presumably about the drug and not the motion) their last great track.
33. HEAVY METAL KIDS ‘The Cops Are Coming’ (Anvil Chorus LP June 1975)
The Heavy Metal Kids are one of the seventies best kept secrets, a group adored by those few in the know but ignored by everyone else. Maybe it was their name that put folk off. Or maybe it was their lack of great songs. But what the Heavy Metal Kids did have was former child actor Gary Holton who sang in his raucous Cockney accent and adopted a theatrical Artful Dodger persona on stage that was punk before I even knew what the word meant.
34. KILBURN & THE HIGH ROADS ‘Upminster Kid’ (Handsome LP June 1975)
It was impossible not to love Gary Holton, but whether the same can be said for the notoriously nasty Ian Dury is another matter, although luckily for him, unlike Holton, he had a barrel organ full of great tunes to back himself up. Forming Kilburn & The High Roads in 1971 with some of his art school students, lecturer Dury eventually gained a foothold in the formative pub scene four years later, ‘Upminster Kid’ an archetypal slice of observation pointing the way to his future solo career.
35. KEVIN AYERS ‘Falling In Love Again’ (Single A Side February 1976)
I knew little of Kevin Ayers but was entranced by his appearance on top TV pop show Supersonic singing his version of Marlene Dietrich’s 1930’s anthem. Transported to an idyllic, Brideshead Revisited, socialite scenario while he crooned in his distracted, bored manner, I found it playful and knowing. And yet, for all its charm, in 1976 I knew for sure that an easy listening version of ‘Falling In Love Again’ by a blond, 31 year old, hippy lothario was hardly essential.
36. DOCTORS OF MADNESS ‘Waiting’ (Late Night Movies, All Night Brainstorms LP March 1976)
Hailed as harbingers of the coming Cultural Revolution, it may not have worked out quite like that but at least the Doctors Of Madness were more exciting than Kevin Ayres. I can still recall how interesting they appeared to be in their music press interviews, leaning on writers and artists like Burrough’s, Warhol and the Velvet Underground for inspiration. So it came as a huge disappointment when, apart from frenetic opener ‘Waiting’, Late Night Movies turned out to be a fairly ropey sub glam, sub prog affair. As far as I was concerned the game was up, something the Doctors realised for themselves a couple of months later at Middlesbrough Town Hall when they witnessed their support act, a bunch of noisy urchins called the Sex Pistols!
37. HELLO ‘Teenage Revolution’ (Keeps Us Off The Streets LP May 1976)
If the game was up for a group like the Doctors Of Madness, Hello, who had been knocking around since the earliest days of glam, didn’t stand a chance. With the genre more than a year out of date, they chose the worst possible time to release their debut album. Staring out blankly from the sleeve, their satin and tat replaced by denim, denim and more denim, in amongst the standard cover versions, old hits and filler, the prophetically titled ‘Teenage Revolution’ was a terrific, slow burning slice of teen pop built on some insistent handclaps, a persistent harmonica and a disconcerting proggy fade out.
38. EDDIE & THE HOT RODS ‘Gloria/Satisfaction’ (Live At The Marquee EP July 1976)
This was more like it, a group who could boast a singer younger than Johnny Rotten, Live At The Marquee was the record that finally earnt Eddie & The Hot Rods some long overdue attention. While tunes like ‘Gloria’ and ‘Satisfaction’ were a part of every pub groups set list, the Hot Rods combined their naïve enthusiasm and youth to arrive at their own high energy version of rock’n’roll that was considered refreshingly new and more importantly, honest.
39. NICK LOWE ‘Heart Of The City’ (Single B Side August 1976)
Already infected by the Sex Pistols, in August 1976 I really didn’t want to like ‘Heart Of The City’ but couldn’t resist. I already had Jesus Johnny so Nick Lowe was never my Jesus of cool, but in the songs rapid fire, two minutes he did manage to capture the moment and tell it like it was.
40. THE MODERN LOVERS ‘She Cracked’ (The Modern Lovers LP October 1976)
As a teenager Jonathan Richman was obsessed with the Velvet Underground, so when he got around to forming The Modern Lovers they owed everything to songs like ‘Sister Ray’ and ‘What Goes On’ but with one vital difference. Whereas Lou Reed was interested in the darkness, Richman preferred the light. It helped that he was funny too, a song such as ‘She Cracked’ pointing out the ludicrousness of his straight edge stance by contrasting his behaviour with that of his drugged up object of affection.
41. PATTI SMITH ‘Pissing In A River’ (Radio Ethiopia LP October 1976)
The one anomaly in Patti Smith’s stack of tiresome albums is Radio Ethiopia, the record everyone loved to hate. Rarely discussed, much less heard, for once her trademark, pompous poetry was buried in a tide of noisy, fucked off, rock guitar. Ironically, ‘Pissing In A River’ began quietly with just Smith and a stately piano, but as the power increased it was soon back to revelling in the noise, the words unintelligible and the song all the better for it.
42. RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS ‘Another World’ (Another World EP November 1976)
As a poet, novelist, punk style icon and DIY musician, Richard Hell was the pin up boy for New York’s CBGB’s based version of punk, yet he never came close to fulfilling the artistic and commercial potential everyone, including himself, believed he had in spades. His first EP Another World encapsulates the reason why. Despite the appearance of a primitive version of ‘Blank Generation’, his one acknowledged masterpiece, ‘You Gotta Lose’ looked to the rock’n’roll past rather than the punk future while the six minute ‘Another World’s improvisational, jazz born ambition was almost too arty and abstract. Brilliant for sure, but hardly the kind of thing that was going to endear him to the masses.
43. THE SAINTS ‘Messin’ With The Kid’ (I’m Stranded LP February 1977)
The now forgotten first Saints album was rushed out by EMI to capitalise on punk, a trend they were convinced was about to die out at any moment. A collection of singles, demos and discarded recordings, it’s to The Saints credit that the record sounded so incredible and of its time in the first place. Buried near the end of side one was the fantastic ‘Messin’ With The Kid’, its six minutes of mid-tempo melancholia and heartfelt, tortured emotion an unlikely refuge from the thrilling yet relentless bludgeoning of the songs around it.
44. THE RAMONES ‘Swallow My Pride’ (Leave Home LP March 1977)
The least loved of The Ramones first four albums, artistically Leave Home moved beyond the 1-2-3-4 limitations of their legendary first album to reimagine rock’n’roll as pure pop perfection. To my ears they never got any better, Joey’s criminally underrated and ignored ‘Swallow My Pride’ the obvious highlight.
45. THE BOYS ‘Soda Pressing’ (Single B Side April 1977)
The Boys were the archetypal punk shoulda, woulda, couldas. With a history steeped in mythical outfits the Hollywood Brats and the London SS they should have been contenders. Nonetheless, despite being plagued by mishaps, bad timing and plain bad luck, tunes like ‘I Don’t Care’, ‘Soda Pressing’ and ‘The First Time’ epitomised the sound of early punk better than most.
46. THE DAMNED ‘Stretcher Case Baby’ (Limited Edition Single July 1977)
The most obscure Damned release before the advent of the digital age, ‘Stretcher Case Baby’ was given away at their first anniversary Marquee shows in early July 1977 and sent out to members of their fan club. A live staple that was considerably better than anything else they were writing at the time, the song was re-recorded a month later as ‘Stretcher Case’ for the Music For Pleasure album.
47. THE VIBRATORS ‘London Girls (Live)’ (Single A Side August 1977)
Accused of being punk bandwagon jumpers of the most cynical kind, The Vibrators worked their arses off around the country playing their hummable brand of punky pop in any shit hole venue that would have them, so endearing themselves to the tens of thousands of kid’s in the satellite towns and the shires for whom punk and groups like The Vibrators literally changed their lives.
48. GENERATION X ‘Day By Day’ (Single A Side September 1977)
Forgetting their clichéd posturing and three minute pop punk singles for a moment, in 1977 Generation X detailed a subtle, more personal revolution for wide eyed, sulphate snorting teens who not only demanded the right not to work but the need to do anything they didn’t want to do. In direct contrast to the nihilism and no future ethos of punk, for Billy Idol and Tony James in particular, Generation X were about optimism and building your own future, even when you were ‘going round and round, day by day, on the Circle line’.
49. THE HEARTBREAKERS ‘It’s Not Enough’ (L.A.M.F. LP September 1977)
Johnny Thunders may have been a no good junkie loser who inadvertently introduced heroin chic to British punk with disastrous effect, but The Heartbreakers remain one of the great unknown pleasures of the era. Taking the classic, early seventies, Stones model and giving it an extra dose of fuzz, muscle and bite, their brand of tough, glam tinged, rock’n’roll was phenomenal especially live, yet even on their muddy mix marred L.A.M.F. album the class of songs like ‘Pirate Love’, ‘One Track Mind’, ‘I Wanna Be Loved’ and ‘It’s Not Enough’ shone through.
50. THE ADVERTS ‘Safety In Numbers’ (Single A Side October 1977)
Witnessing The Adverts playing night after night in the dark cellars of the nation made them the punk group everyone wanted their own bunch of incompetent non-musicians to sound like, which was patently ridiculous because just a cursory listen made it clear that at least three of them really could play. One of those was singer TV Smith and it was his catchy, if a little rough around the edges, songs like ‘Safety In Numbers’ that made The Adverts so relatable.
51. MAGAZINE ‘My Mind Ain’t So Open’ (Single B Side January 1978)
The focused energy and dark paranoia of Magazine’s ‘Shot By Both Sides’ arrived a year after Howard Devoto had grown bored of punk and bored of his own group The Buzzcocks. Without doubt it was one of the best, if not the best single of the year while the b side was almost as good, its furious pace and choppy guitar interrupted by a brief, squealing sax solo reminiscent of early Roxy Music.
52. BUZZCOCKS ‘Fast Cars’ (Another Music In A Different Kitchen LP March 1978)
Hand on broken heart, all of the original, 76 vintage punks I knew were lonely, lost souls who were often aggressive and scrawled nihilist dogma over their shirts to disguise the fact that they merely wanted to love and be loved. Little wonder then that the love poet of punk Pete Shelley’s words meant so much, albeit that the fizzy pop of Another Music In A Different Kitchen opener ‘Fast Cars’ had more to do with the ecological impact of the car than romance of any kind.
53. ALTERNATIVE TV ‘Life After Life’ (Single A Side March 1978)
Reggae became a part of the punk vocabulary from the start, permeating the burgeoning youth culture musically, visually, spiritually and linguistically. The Clash may have got there first with their version of Junior Murvin’s ‘Police and Thieves’ but Mark Perry wasn’t far behind, Alternative TV’s ‘Love Lies Limp’ a curious amalgam of genres and punk’s DIY ethic. The Police it was not. And neither was the far superior, yet mysteriously unknown ‘Life After Life’ produced by Trojan Records Joe Sinclair.
54. PERE UBU ‘The Modern Dance’ (The Modern Dance LP April 1978)
Pere Ubu were at least three years ahead of their time, their dubby basslines, strangled guitars, unselfconsciously arty live shows, absurdist proclamations and Norman Normal image defining the essence of post punk. The Modern Dance continued the groups early scatter gun approach by pulling together a mixed bag of recordings to create a whole that immediately subverted punk’s DNA just as it was starting to take over the world.
55. DEVO ‘Uncontrollable Urge’ (Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! LP August 1978)
Devo’s wacky nature and smug cleverness were irritating yet surprisingly Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! turned out to be a masterwork of minimalist thought and situationist action. There was certainly a lot of angst to be had in the albums 31 minutes, but there was also a large slice of psychodrama on songs like ‘Uncontrollable Urge’, Devo’s hyper-speed ode to sexual frustration.
56. WIRE ‘Men 2nd’ (Chairs Missing LP September 1978)
For a long while I have considered Wire’s second album to be the lesser of their first three, mostly because it was neither an example of punks possibilities as Pink Flag was, but neither was it pushing against the rapidly established conventions of post punk like 154. Criticised at the time by the NME as suffering from Pink Floyd-ism, Chairs Missing is my least listened to Wire album. As such it’s ripe for rediscovery and not just by me either.
57. ULTRAVOX! ‘The Quiet Men’ (Single A Side October 1978)
The world of John Foxx influenced many, none more so than Gary Numan. Everybody knows this, especially Numan, yet it still comes as a shock to hear the original Foxx led Ultravox! and the similarities between the two. Of course, in 1978 no-one was producing music remotely like ‘The Quiet Men’ which at the time was considered pretentious and unfashionable. It would take quite a few years before it was considered otherwise.
58. XTC ‘Life Is Good In The Greenhouse’ (Go2 LP October 1978)
These days Go2 is remembered (even by XTC’s most dedicated fans) for the inclusion of two dreadful Barry Andrews songs near the end of side two. Personally I’ve never had a problem skipping over those aberrations to get to the good stuff, songs like ‘Battery Brides’ and ‘Life Is Good In The Greenhouse’ representing some of the more experimental compositions in the Andy Partridge catalogue but being no less mesmerising for that.
59. THE UNDERTONES ‘Smarter Than U’ (Teenage Kicks EP October 1978)
I swear it was John Peel’s non-stop playing of the Teenage Kicks EP, night after night, week after week, that made me fall in love with The Undertones first record. Obviously there’s no need to mention the over exposed title track and ‘True Confessions’ (a song writer John O’Neill believes to be the better of the two), but who remembers ‘Smarter Than U’ or ‘Emergency Cases’?
60. X RAY SPEX ‘Warrior In Woolworths’ (Germ Free Adolescents LP November 1978)
Siouxsie Sioux, Gaye Advert, Faye Fife, Pauline Murray and The Slits all took to the stage during the initial punk explosion but there was no-one quite like Poly Styrene. A precociously talented twenty year old of Brixton and Somalian descent, while her peers sang about the social, political and personal issues of the times, she focused on consumerism and the increasing artificiality infesting popular culture. It was a smart, subversive view of the world highlighted by the play in a day simplicity of her songs. And yet, apart from a brief flirtation with the mainstream charts, Germ Free Adolescents remains marginalised.
61. THE MEMBERS ‘Solitary Confinement’ (Single B Side March 1979)
In 1977 my hometown of Reading had no decent punk groups of its own, not that it really mattered because with Paddington just a twenty minute InterCity 125 train ride away we were within easy reach of the Capital and punk central. But that didn’t stop us being called country bumpkins or oiks from the suburbs, something a group like Camberley’s The Members understood well enough. They appealed to the small town kids because they weren’t a part of the metropolitan cognoscenti either and never could be, the likes of ‘Solitary Confinement’ saying far more about the movement than the ubiquitous punk standards that continue to fill the genre compilations of the era.
62. THE ONLY ONES ‘You’ve Got To Pay’ (Even Serpents Shine LP March 1979)
The Only One’s escaped the accusation of punk bandwagon jumpers almost certainly because of the enduring, rock’n’roll glamour of songwriter Peter Perrett’s junkie life. Nonetheless, whether they were punk or not, there’s no denying their greatness and enduring cult status, Even Serpents Shine their best album by far with one dark melodic wonder after another revelling in Perrett’s go too themes of love, death and drugs!
63. THE MONOCHROME SET ‘Eine Symphonie Des Grauens’ (Single A Side April 1979)
Lost in the mists of musical history, The Monochrome Set appeared in the hazy period just after punk when anything seemed possible. Formed from the ashes of The B Sides, whose bass player Stuart Goddard decided he would rather be Adam Ant, their whole raison d'être was short, clever, postmodern pop songs like ‘Eine Symphonie Des Grauens’.
64. TELEX ‘Moskow Diskow’ (Looking For Saint Tropez LP July 1979)
Electronica wasn’t a part of modern music culture in the late seventies. Gary Numan may have broken down a few barriers, but for many the use of the synthesiser on any pop song remained anathema. Telex were different again. While they were amongst the earliest proponents of electro pop, with their own, very specific brand of deadpan, Belgian humour, they were considered outsiders. Even on their most ‘fantastique’ moment ‘Moskow Diskow’, it’s impossible to decide whether they were serious or an elaborate, kitsch parody.
65. THE FLYING LIZARDS ‘Her Story’ (The Flying Lizards LP July 1979)
Possibly the deepest cut here from one of the least visible albums of the post punk era, David Cunningham’s Flying Lizards were novelty one hit wonders who somehow eked out a three album career. Their self-titled debut pulled together the hit single ‘Money’, a version of ‘Summertime Blues’, some avant-garde filler and the odd gem, one of which, the quite lovely ‘Her Story’, was co-written and sung by renowned punk feminist Vivien Goldman.
66. WAYNE COUNTY & THE ELECTRIC CHAIRS ‘Berlin’ (Single A Side July 1979)
Wayne County stood out as a top tier cult figure in a movement made for cult figures. With immaculate connections going back to Andy Warhol and Bowie, his early records veered between New York style punk and novelty fun yet ‘Berlin’ was neither. Not so much electro pop as primitive electro punk, it was one of County’s most ambitious songs, putting into words his thoughts about the city that during a stay caused by UK visa problems transformed him into someone who from that point on would identify as Jayne.
67. THE B-52’S ’52 GIRLS’ (The B-52’S LP July 1979)
It never ceased to amaze me how quickly punk began to spin off into a surfeit of new styles and sounds. In 1979 they were springing up everywhere, the most prominent being new wave and The B-52’s who embodied many of the nuances associated with it. Largely a throwback to fifties and sixties pop but with a healthy dose of punk energy thrown in, their self-titled debut paired sci-fi themes with Dadaist, nonsensical lyrics, the most extreme being the driving ’52 Girls’ which is really just a list of women’s names and the actual word ‘name’ being repeated over and over again.
68. IGGY POP ‘New Values’ (New Values LP July 1979)
There’s a whole lot more to Iggy Pop than the infamous ‘Lust For Life’, ‘The Passenger’ and ‘Real Wild Child’, 1979’s New Values being as good a place to find out as any. Notable for his reunion with late period Stooges guitarist James Williamson, and possessing an echo of the rawness and nihilism from his past, its packed full of brilliant songs like the title track, the weary ‘I’m Bored’ and ‘Five Foot One’ that for some reason remain completely unknown.
69. SUICIDE ‘Radiation’ (Single B Side September 1979)
Arriving fully formed in 1977 and anticipating by several years the post punk incorporation of electronica into the mainstream, Alan Vega’s forthright tales of misery were transformed into monstrous, otherworldly maelstroms under the pulsing jackhammer of Martin Rev’s synths. Fast forwarding to 1979, the release of records by The Normal, The Human League and Cabaret Voltaire had educated our ears enough to shape Vega and Rev’s noise into something approaching pop music, a single like ‘Dream Baby Dream’ and ‘Radiation’ a stepping stone to a brilliant electronic future.
70. THE STRANGLERS ‘The Raven’ (The Raven LP September 1979)
Through the heady days of punk I refused to acknowledge the existence of The Stranglers, despite their popularity amongst boys of a certain age. So loathsome, bullying and misogynistic were they that they became persona non grata amongst my gang of misfits. Then, one day in 1979, worn down by my brothers continuous playing of it, I took an unexpected liking to their fourth studio album, a brave if pointless attempt to prove that the received wisdom that punk killed prog was a lie. As I wrote at the start of this trawl through my seventies, if a deep cut in music can be defined as a rarely heard song known only to the most dedicated of fans, ‘The Raven’ is the epitome of a deep cut and the best possible place to end this epic odyssey.
