If you organised the punk bands who emerged in the Class of ’77 into a football league, The Lurkers would be in the second or third division. But like one of those teams enjoying a giant-killing cup run, they still had their glory moments. (more…)

If bands like Television and Talking Heads were outliers in the punk firmament, then The Dead Boys, led by the scrawny, malnourished Stiv Bators, were perhaps its archetype. (more…)

Talking Heads were one of the least punky-sounding punk groups when they released their debut single in the summer of 1977. (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…)

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.
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In the early days of punk I would often find myself arguing with friends who insisted punk was rubbish because the musicians couldn’t play and the singers couldn’t sing. In the case of Johnny Moped, they might have had a point. On both counts. (more…)