The Carpettes never reached the giddy heights of the Pistols or Clash but they made their mark on punk as one of a handful of bands from the North East.

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Last night I finally got to see Mary Coughlan live for the first time – something I’ve wanted to do ever since I got a cassette of her debut album Tired & Emotional in 1985.

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The Adicts were musically influenced by Malcolm McLaren but their image was pure Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange.

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Here’s a cracking rarity from the tail end of punk by The Pack. Built around a cracking guitar riff and a pounding rhythm, the dramatic vocals are by future Theatre Of Hate / Spear Of Destiny star Kirk Brandon.

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This is beyond meta: Teenage Fanclub, who directly inspired Yo La Tengo, a band famed for their outstanding cover versions, repaying the compliment by covering one of theirs in return.

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Not only have I never heard of Pure Hell before, but I never knew there was a punk group made up of four black guys til now.

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Another of the first wave of Manchester punk bands to evolve from the early days of The Electric Circus, V2 showed their roots by blending punk with a hefty dose of Glam… hardly surprising since most of us who jumped aboard the punk bandwagon had grown up on Slade, Sweet, T.Rex and Bowie.

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The Panik were one of the first punk bands to form in Manchester, alongside a handful of fellow travellers – Buzzcocks, The Drones, V2, Slaughter & The Dogs and The Fall.

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The first time I heard this song it made me cry and it still does. Especially today. Its lyric, written in the 1980s, articulates why a young woman with a young child might not wish to bring up a child Thatcher’s Britain.

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If you were a black kid growing up in postwar Detroit, there’s a good chance you would sing in the school choir and the church, and end up in a doo wop group before graduating to RnB and soul.

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