Blondie made their debut in June 1976 with X Offender, making them one of the first ‘punk’ bands to release a single. (more…)

I’m not sure if it’s the soothingly hypnotic sounds or the hypnotically surreal images that drew me to this tune, Tacoma. Probably both. (more…)

I’ve always been a sucker for a melancholy song about grief and loss, and this one’s a real heartbreaker. The music, the lyrics, the vocals, the video… all of it. (more…)

Here’s a tragic TV moment – my childhood pop idol from the early 1970s introduces a future pop idol of the 1980s in what became a posthumous broadcast. (more…)

In the summer of 1977, the future lead singer of Ultravox was making a bold transition from boy band pin-up to punk. (more…)

Before Vienna, before Midge, Ultravox were quite a punky proposition. I remember seeing them at The Marquee in 1977. (more…)

Subway Sect were one of the first punk bands, and one of the more unusal. They played at that epochal 100 Club Festival in 1976 but their sound has more in common with what would come to be called post-punk. (more…)

Radio Stars never seemed particularly punky, and their music careers pre-dated punk by some distance. But they rode the New Wave and this cheeky single – Dirty Pictures – came out early in the game, in April 1977, on Chiswick Records. (more…)

No, it’s not a new single by IDLES (though their fans would probably believe it was if they put their name on it)… it’s the debut single by Sham 69. (more…)

Before they became purveyors of English whimsy, a kind of updated version of The Kinks, Squeeze somehow found themselves part of the punk circuit.
(more…)