Buzzcocks began 1977 with the release of their landmark Spiral Scratch EP – opening the door for a wave of indie punk labels.

As the calendar flipped over into 1977 there had still only been two UK punk singles of note – New Rose and Anarchy In The UK.

Such was the excitement of the nascent punk revolution, and such was the indifference of the record industry at the time, that we were thirsty for anything new and, in those early days, we had to feed on scraps.

So there was much excitement at the end of January over the release of the Spiral Scratch EP by Manchester band Buzzcocks.

It had been recorded only a month earlier, with £500 scraped up by the band from family and friends like Richard Boon, who was their manager and now lives around the corner from me.

Produced by Martin Hannett (credited as ‘Martin Zero’) and released on their own New Hormones label – sparking a trend for punk indie labels – it remains the only official release with their original singer Howard Devoto, who went on to form Magazine (though there’s a bootleg album with him singing).

Its four songs – two on each side – constituted about half their entire repertoire in those early days.

The standout song was Boredom, with Pete Shelley’s sublime two-note guitar solo expressing the minimalism of the punk aesthetic, and a deadpan lyric capturing the nihilism at its heart, sung in Shelley’s characteristically fey Manc-accented vocal.

I rushed down to Rough Trade to buy mine before the initial pres of 1,000 sold out and I still have it in my collection along with everything else by Buzzcocks, who I would see for the first time soon after this on the White Riot tour.

Here’s the whole EP – all four songs, all ten minutes.