To that 14 year old, this is a great place to start if you have expended all your energy on early 70’s art / psycho / glam music and want to hear what happened next. The whole world was thrown in the air and it was the end for many, and the start for some. Listening cross legged in a cavernous hall whilst sharing a smoke became so passé.
It was off with the flares, on with the tight jeans, spike the hair and get some exercise. If you weren’t fit at the start of ’76, after attending a few gigs you certainly were by the end of it. This was raw, high energy, punk but with an element of class attached. With all the hype behind it, the marketing men were no fools. They probably knew how to make money out of this lot. But there was more than an element of decent music and when you have Paul Cook underpinning the tracks at least you have the basis of a good song (surprisingly he did very little in terms of playing drums after their demise).
Everyone will have their favorite tracks and there is more than just the singles on here to spend some time on and you have to go a long way to find a better pop / punk song than ‘Pretty Vacant’. So, for that 14 year old, buy this, play it loud in your room and don’t listen to a word your mum and dad tell you when they shout ‘Turn that racket down’. They were there….
P.S. Little known fact. I had the chance of tickets for their last gig ever played in Huddersfield on Xmas Day 1977. Sadly I turned it down – almost as big a regret as not bothering with tickets for Live Aid. Not sure why I share this…
