There were a couple of bands in the mid-Seventies sending up the sort of rock’n’roll excess that spawned punk – while simultaneously revelling in exactly the sort of sounds they satirised through a proto-punk prism.

One was The Tubes, who had a song called White Punks On Dope. The other appeared in 1975 with an album called The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!

Led by an overweight ex-roadie and wrestler with a huge Afro, going by the stage name ‘Handsome Dick Manitoba’, they made hard rock, allied to a vocal and lyrical style so arch it was hard to tell exactly how ironic it was meant to be.

Whatever it was – and it confused critics, labels and fans equally – their recipe of glammed-up rock riffs (and neo-metal solos), and lyrics about teenage excess involving junk food and junk TV, hot cars and hot girls, subsequently came to be regarded as a major influence on the US punk movement.

Two Tub Man was the opening track, a hard-rocking combination of punk and metal in much the same spirit as the New York Dolls, with its snotty vocals and trashy lyrics (“I think Lou Reed’s a creep,” “I’ve got Jackie Onassis in my pants,” “What I want to do I do, who I want to screw I screw”).

Both The Dictators and The Ramones covered the Sixties song California Sun, though The Dictators did it first, along with a raucous take on I Got You Babe.

This was the opening track and it defined their proto-punk sound perfectly.