Postpunk
When I first heard them 40 years ago, I thought the Jesus And Mary Chain were the most exciting new band I’d heard since The Sex Pistols. They still sound great in 2023.
Requiem has to be the song to remember Geordie Walker, the Killing Joke guitarist who has died. Not just for its title but for his vast metallic slabs of electric guitar that scythe through the synth bass.
Virgin Prunes began life at the same time, at the same social club in Dublin, as U2 – but went in a very different direction, blending avant-garde cabaret with improvisation and experimentation.
When what the music press lazily dubbed “The Scottish Sound” emerged at the end of the Seventies, Josef K were the yin to Orange Juice’s yang – the dark underbelly to their bright and sparkly pop.
In 1980 the postpunk landscape was expanding in all sorts of new directions. Most of them had identifiable roots in punk but Orange Juice were odds with the New Wave mainstream.
Slate are a young post-punk quartet from Cardiff barely out of their teens. With their love of poetry and epic widescreen sound, they could be the Welsh Fontaines D.C.
Chant! Chant! Chant! were working-class lads from the northside of Dublin and were Ireland’s answer to Joy Division: at least that’s what their publicist would have said if they had one.
This is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. I never tire of hearing it, with its shimmering echo from speaker to speaker, Green Gartside’s romantic vocal and Robert Wyatt’s syncopated piano.
Here’s an oddity from the depths of my punk-era singles collection. It was only decades later that a friend picked this obscurity out and recognised two of the names on the sleeve – not as musicians, but as music journalists.
Here are The Slits, half of them anyway, with ex-members of The Pop Group and Rip Rig + Panic, in session for John Peel from 1981.