Listening now to their debut single, Tell Me Your Plans, it’s hard to see (or hear) how The Shirts were ever considered a punk band. Yet they were staples at CBGBs in that golden era of the mid-Seventies that spawned The Ramones, Television, Talking Heads and Blondie.

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It’s hard to overestimate the sense of anticipation and mystery surrounding the return of Johnny Rotten after the dismal demise of The Sex Pistols onstage in San Francisco in January 1978.

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A lot of bands jumped on the punk bandwagon in 1977, rebranding themselves with spiky hair and safety pins, jagged guitar riffs and estuarine vocals. None were worse, or less convincing, than The Banned.

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In the summer of ’77 Skids formed in Dunfermline, which is in Scotland and not to be confused with Dumbarton.

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Does anyone remember The Freeze? Probably not unless you were living in Scotland in the early days of punk.

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Here’s another of those great first-wave postpunk bands from Edinburgh. I’ve still got their debut single, Horrorshow, and their only album, Author! Author!

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Dead Fingers Talk are another of those bands that shone brightly for a brief moment before slipping through the cracks in the immediate aftermath of punk.

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Flowers were another of the Scottish postpunk bands that blossomed briefly, recording only 11 songs over the course of their short career.

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This wasn’t The Members’ first release – Fear On The Streets introduced them on the Streets compilation – but it was their first single, released on Stiff Records in 1978.

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The Exile’s entire recording career – three EPs – was over by the end of 1977, making them trailblazers in the punkosphere – and earning them a reputation as the ‘Godfathers of Scottish Punk.’ (more…)