No one would pretend Nick Lowe was a punk – he had almost a decade in music behind him by 1976. But he plays a key role in punk pre-history.

So It Goes was the first single ever to be released by the quintessential punk label, Stiff Records in August that year.
Backed with the the more obviously proto-punk Heart Of The City, it was released on the new label with the catalogue number BUY 1.

It became Lowe’s first solo single since leaving pub rock favourites Brinsley Schwarz the previous year to join Dave Edmunds (and Billy Bremner and Terry Williams) in Rockpile, who first performed both these songs.

Lowe had tried to form a new group with members of Dr Feelgood and The Pink Fairies called Spick Ace & The Blue Sharks but they were unable to record due not to their terrible name, but to contractual conflicts with their old bands.

Record companies were not interested in signing Lowe, a bass guitarist, to a solo deal so his old Brinsley Schwarz manager Dave Robinson, now managing Graham Parker & The Rumour, and Jake Riviera, a former tour manager for Dr Feelgood, stepped in and signed him to their new label, Stiff Records.

They gave Lowe £45 to record two songs with Steve Goulding, the drummer from The Rumour, and Lowe playing bass and lead guitar. It was released on 14 August 1976 and, although it wasn’t a hit, it made its outlay back – unsurprisingly – and paved the way for the indie label explosion to follow.

Lowe’s music career had begun back in 1967 playing laid-back rock music influenced by country and blues in a band called Kippington Lodge, who soon changed their name to that of his friend and band-mate Brinsley Schwarz.

Here’s the video for So It Goes, with Nick playing with himself, so to speak, and showing his gift not only for a good tune, but some excellent rhymes including “aftershave lotion” with a “snake-hipped Persian” and the memorable couplet about “All-day discussions with the Russians”