West Coast stalwarts Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys and the Descendents had all split up, violence was increasingly common – if not a given – at gigs, and creativity was at an all-time low. Obviously everyone thinks that their music taste is amazing at that age, but really, what a time to be a music fan.”
“I’m one of those people who was lucky enough to have been born at exactly the right time, because I turned 18 in 1977 as the first wave of these incredible records were being released. “It’s one of those clichés, but punk rock absolutely changed my life,” The Undertones’ bassist Michael Bradley told us.
Its lead protagonists were fearsome, wild-eyed, intimidating and exhilarating all at once, and laid out a blueprint which would become a touchstone not just for punk’s legacy, but that of modern alternative music as we know it. When it hit the shores of the UK in a sneering ball of rage and spit, that energy was distilled into a white hot and purposefully anarchistic expression of the disillusion and discontent that came from life in the forgotten corners of Thatcher’s Britain.
From its ramshackle beginnings on the USA’s East Coast, where bands as diverse as the Velvet Underground, and the hamburger-and-wrestling-obsessed Dictators were fused by nothing more than their shared, snarling attitude, punk developed a few key characteristics: a propensity for both fearless experimentation and rampant nihilism.
