More of a footnote in punk history than a key moment, this was the title track of what can validly claim to be the first self-released punk album.

The reviews for The Outsiders’ debut in May 1977 were less than enthusiastic – Burchill, Parsons and Savage were particularly disparaging – and much of the album stretches the definition of punk, as you might expect from a band who would evolve into post-punk cult favourites The Sound.

Perhaps it was just their misfortune that they came from the leafy well-to-do London suburb of Wimbledon rather than a tower block beneath the Westway or a council estate in Manchester or Liverpool.

Nonetheless, this is an appealing tune, whether or not you agree that the term “self-released” should apply to a label – Raw Edge – set up by the parents of singer-guitarist Adrian Borland. I don’t see why not.

Borland had formed the group in Wimbledon in 1975 with bass guitarist Bob Lawrence and drummer Adrian Janes. They were first called Syndrome before changing to The Outsiders in tribute to Albert Camus and his book L’Etranger (also the inspiration for The Cure’s debut single Killing An Arab).

When the album came out Julie Burchill took objection not to the music but the singer’s “apple-cheeked complexion”, while Tony Parsons declared them to be “obese midgets” and this song to be “tuneless, gormless, gutless” before concluding, perversely: “I like them a lot.”

When the band split up after an equally poorly received second album in 1979, Borland and Lawrence formed The Sound, who were like the missing link between Joy Division and Echo & The Bunnymen, but whose dark, literate lyrics and lack of a marketable image condemned them to be fervently admired by a small but loyal cult following.

Throughout the next two decades Borland was astonishingly prolific with a range of bands, in a range of styles, but fell victim to depression and took his own life in 1999.