My sister never actually became a punk herself — too sensible at the end of the day, my sis — but her friend Sue went the whole hog into bondage trousers, safety pins, and dyed, spiky hair. Nowadays no one would bat an eyelash at the “punk” look (it’s almost quaint now) but back then I remember walking down the street with Sue in all her pierced, ripped, and bound finery and people would visibly bristle when they walked past us, looking at her in disgust as if she had some disease or her very appearance was an affront to decency. Sue found it all very amusing and, like a lot of punks, took pleasure in playing up to the tabloid guttersnipe stereotype. One time we were out, some little kids were staring and pointing at her so Sue took a big swig from her can of Coke, turned to them, and belched very loudly in their faces. They ran away, probably going home to tell their mum how rude those nasty punks were. It wasn’t all fun and games though, one day she was spat on by a Teddy Boy while walking down the King’s Road where there were often fights between Punks and Teds during the summer of 1977. I actually used to be a little scared to go down there at the time.

Punk didn’t just cause a rift in English society either, for a while it caused a big split in our house too because one thing The Clash had in common with The Bay City Rollers was that I hated them both. As I’ve also noted here before, I originally thought this album was just a horrid, moronic noise that was like being hit over the head with a brick by a gang of angry yobs. As much as it pains me to admit it now but my sister was hipper than I was at the time. It really pains me to admit that. But I eventually got hip myself (and of course became far hipper than my sister, ho ho) and came to hear what was so incredibly great about it. Obviously it’s essential, vital, life-changing etc. etc. and I think the best album The Clash made, tighter and more focused than London Calling (which I have to say I’ve always found to be just a teensy bit overrated) without an ounce of fat on it.

They never repeated the primitive and visceral punch-punch-punch of this and to their credit they never tried to either and moved on musically. This was a quickly-taken snapshot of a moment that, like punk itself, shone brightly for a very short time and burnt itself out. But what a “moment” it was while it lasted.

I still think it sounds like being hit over the head with a brick by a gang of angry yobs — but in a good way.

Download: Hate and War – The Clash (mp3)
Download: London’s Burning – The Clash (mp3)
Download: Protex Blue – The Clash (mp3)
Buy: The Clash (UK version of course)

But in the pre-punk 1970s there was another option that probably isn’t available these days: the concept album. This was the choice made by The Osmonds who, in an effort to prove that they were more than just toothy pin-ups, released the self-composed and produced “The Plan” in 1973 which was a concept album about their Mormon faith of all things. Hardly the most rock and roll of subjects to choose from but they were at least sticking to something they knew a lot about. The Osmonds were the world’s most famous members of that religion and the only things I knew about it I learned because of them. For instance, Donny Osmond’s favourite drink was 7-Up because Mormons weren’t allowed to drink alcohol or caffeine. I read that in one of my sister’s Jackie or Fab 208 magazines and for some bizarre reason I still remember it.

This was the only Osmonds album my sister bought and she probably got it because it had the big ballad “Let Me In” on it which is a lovely song but in the context of the album it sounds more like they’re singing it to Jesus instead of some young girl. It’s so dreamy I doubt if she noticed or cared though.

Download: Let Me In – The Osmonds (mp3)

Unfortunately for her the rest of the album was nothing like this. Instead the brothers went all out for the grand artistic statement and produced an overblown brew of acid rock, psychedelia, funk, and rootsy soul numbers with some dreadfully earnest and preachy lyrics. It has its moments but songs like “Traffic In My Mind” probably just made my sister wish she’d spent her record token on that David Cassidy album instead. In the lingo of the day, this is heavy, man.

Download: Traffic In My Mind – The Osmonds (mp3)

This photo reminded me of the time I saw The Clash at The Lyceum in 1980 and I was surrounded by these skinheads who kept shouting “DO WHITE RIOT! DO WHITE RIOT!” and I’m thinking to myself “Please, don’t do ‘White Riot’” because I didn’t fancy being caught in the middle of a group of blokes wearing steel-toed Doc Marten’s all going berserk. I’d gone to that concert with my sister who insisted on standing right at the front centre stage so she could be near Joe Strummer (her latest object of desire at the time) though I told her not to because it would get crazy down front the minute the band kicked off. But you know what sisters are, don’t want to take advice from their younger brothers. Well, two songs in (“Clash City Rockers” and “Safe European Home”), I could see her from my nice spot at the side and she looked like she was drowning in a violent sea of bodies crushing her and knocking her all over the place and had this look on her face that said “Help!” so I had to wade into the heaving throng and pull her out. I didn’t like to say I told her so but I did. She’d been to a Bay City Rollers concert so you think she’d be used to an out of control crowd, those girls could be more aggressive than any punk or skinhead.

I’ve had a few hairy moments at concerts myself (being knocked to the floor and trampled on at a Banshees gig comes to mind) but nothing compared to standing on the terraces at a football match when a goal is scored and the crowd surges forward, literally sweeping you off your feet into a body-crushing mass of people. Though I must admit that could be as thrilling as it was scary.

Anyway, I’m not going to play “White Riot” either, here’s the b-side of “Complete Control” instead.

Download: City of The Dead – The Clash (mp3)

The only other Fab Four-related record in the house was this Wings single my sister bought in 1977 and I would like to congratulate her on her good taste, if she had to buy only one I’m glad it was this. When the day comes that Sir Paul is up in heaven with Lennon and the two of them are sitting on a cloud arguing about who wrote the best post-Beatles song this one should be top of Paul’s list, especially this live version. One listen to this and John would concede defeat.

Download: Maybe I’m Amazed – Wings (mp3)
Buy: “Wings Over America” (album)

Could you picture us
On a Number 9 bus
To Canning Town
We two

I always really liked that bit, back then pop lyrics were all about Jean Genies, Telegram Sams and Crazy Horses and I’d never heard a big pop star singing about something as ordinary as taking a bus — if Ray Davies had been a handsome teen idol he might have written something like it. So while the song is soppy as hell I did find David’s Cockney barrow boy charm very appealing (even if he does lay it on thicker than marmalade sometimes) and could understand how all the girls could go so weak at the knees and moist in the knickers over it — and they really did, I saw him sing it live on the telly back then and when he got to the line “If I were a plumber would you love me?” you could hear the voices of a thousand swooning young ladies scream back “YES DAVID!!!!”

Hell, I think I wanted him to be my boyfriend too.

Download: If I Could – David Essex (mp3)

Cassidy initially appeared on our radar as lead singer of The Partridge Family which was the first introduction into pop fandom for both me and my sister. They were the first pop group she ever had on her bedroom wall* (to be precise it was our bedroom wall at the time, we shared a room until I was 10) and the first single I remember owning (not one I bought myself) was their version of “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.” We both watched the TV show every week and while she was swooning over David I may have had a thing for Susan Dey, though she looked a little too much like my sister for me to be entirely comfortable with that thought now.

Until the Bay City Rollers came along David was bigger than sliced bread and Jesus among the teenybopper set, at one point his fan club had more members than any other in pop history and in 1973 he sold out Wembley Arena six nights in a row which was a record at the time. Unfortunately David-mania got badly out of hand the following year when a fan was killed and hundreds were hospitalized in the hysterical crush at his White City Stadium concert. At the inquest the coroner blamed “trendy, high platform shoes” for so many girls falling over and being trampled — so 1970s fashions weren’t just ugly, they could kill you too (as I can attest to myself after once getting my flares caught in the front wheel of a speeding bike and being hurled head-first over the handlebars.)

I really liked his single “Could It Be Forever” at the time but I was only 10 when it came out and hadn’t yet learned that I was supposed to regard my sister’s taste as a bit naff and girly. With it’s whispery vocal and pillowy mountains of strings it’s as soft and dreamy as David’s smile, and listening to it now I don’t mind saying I think it actually is rather good, beautifully-produced soft pop in the mold of The Carpenters. I still wouldn’t stick a picture of him on my bedroom wall though.

Download: Could It Be Forever – David Cassidy (mp3)
Buy: “Cherish” (album)

*The first pop poster I put on the wall was of The Jackson Five so I like to think I was hipper than my sister even then.

So don’t hate me until you’ve heard this record, it’s not bad at all with a laid-back, 70s East Coast acoustic rock vibe. They wrote it themselves too, so they weren’t just pretty faces. Actually, I thought they were a a plain-looking bunch, and bass guitarist Stuart “Woody” Wood was downright ugly. No wonder on the sleeve above it looks like Les McKeown is trying to hold him down and keep him out of the photo.

Download: Eagles Fly – Bay City Rollers (mp3)
Buy (or not): “Wouldn’t You Like It?” (album)

But it’s a fickle life for the teenybop idol, “Forever and Ever” topped the charts in early 1976 right before punk came along and brought the whole 1970s teenybop era of Bell Records/Supersonic/Disco 45 crashing down. If only Slik had made it a couple of years earlier they could have been as big as, well, The Bay City Rollers I guess. But their follow-up singles flopped and before long the pretty teenage girl who breathlessly declared them to be the best thing ever had forgotten all about them and was letting their only album gather dust on the shelf behind a new one by some blokes called The Clash.

The most interesting thing about Slik was that their lead singer was a little chap by the name of Midge Ure who of course went on to form The Rich Kids with Glen Matlock, then become lead singer of Ultravox and make a fortune wearing a trench coat and looking moody in black and white videos. The other interesting thing was that they had short hair and wore straight trousers. It might not seem like much now but back when hair was long and feather-cut, and trousers and collars wider than the wingspan of a Jumbo jet they looked very different. Maybe their management had their ears tuned to the zeitgeist, pretty soon punk was going to make flares and long hair look ridiculous (I have to admit I was the last of my friends to switch from flares to straights — I actually thought flares looked better! — and it wasn’t until 1978 that I joined the modern fashion world.) When Malcolm McLaren saw Ure on the streets of Glasgow in 1975 he was so taken with how he looked he asked him to be lead singer of this band he was putting together called Sex Pistols. Midge turned him down because he thought the bloke was too obsessed with his image and never talked about the actual music much. Good for all of us that he did, the mind boggles at the thought of The Pistols with Midge Ure on vocals.

“Forever and Ever” was written Bill Martin and Phil Coulter who wrote most of the Rollers big hits and sounds pretty much like one of their records with a singalong, scarf-waving chorus but it also has these weird Gothic chanting bits complete with church bells and organ that make it sound quite unusual and, dare I say it, not unlike parts of “Vienna” by Ultravox. “The Kid’s A Punk” was the second single after their big hit and the title is probably an attempt to cash-in on the punk bandwagon that was coming (“Anarchy In The UK” had hit the charts by then) but it failed and never made the charts. I think this sounds great though, one of the last gasps of 1970s teenybop glam.

Download: Forever And Ever – Slik (mp3)
Download: The Kid’s A Punk- Slik (mp3)

*Funny story: My sister was going to a Bay City Rollers concert and got all dressed up in her Rollermaniac uniform of shin-high baggy jeans with tartan trim, denim jacket, long stripy socks, platform shoes and a tartan scarf tied around her wrist. While she was waiting for her mates to pick her up my mum asked her to pop up the shop and get a loaf of bread. Before she went out she got changed back into her “normal” clothes and when mum asked her what she did that for she replied “I’m not walking up the road dressed like that!“

“Fly Like An Eagle” is actually a pretty good album, a mix of catchy, Fleetwood Mac-esque soft rock and trippy electronics – what Miller called “space blues” – held together by a lazy, hazy vibe which suggests everyone got very high making the record. My favourite track “Wild Mountain Honey” is a very pretty ballad that floats along sprinkling fairy dust as it goes. Listening to it is like sinking into a warm bubble bath. The title track is fairly well known but this is the longer album version with the dreamy “Space Intro” beginning which is all electronic bleeps and wooshes that wouldn’t sound too out of place on a Tangerine Dream album. Its spacey groove makes it sound very modern today, though back then they probably used steam-powered synthesizers.

Download: Wild Mountain Honey – Steve Miller Band (mp3)
Download: Space Intro/Fly Like An Eagle – Steve Miller Band (mp3)
Buy: “Fly Like An Eagle” (album)

His 1975 album “All The Fun of The Fair” was the only one his my sister owned but I think she picked a winner. Like most of his oeuvre it’s a schizophrenic affair, divided between sweet ear-candy like “Hold Me Close” and “If I Could” (that one really made the girls melt) and darker matter like the subterranean “Circles” and the grand title track. This wouldn’t sound out of place among the lurid theatricality of “Aladdin Sane” with Essex playing a cracked actor fairground barker, rolling his tongue with relish around lines like “rrrrrroll on up, see the main attrrrract-shunnn” and leaning heavily on his Cockney like Bowie at his most Anthony Newley-ish. It gets increasingly deranged over its 6:40-minute length, Chris Spedding’s guitar fractures like broken glass and the track crashes in an ear-splitting pile before fading out into some maniacal horror-movie laughter that must have made all the Mums who bought the album for “Hold Me Close” drop their copies of Woman’s Realm in shock.

Julie Burchill once said that the musical tastes of teenage girls have never been taken seriously by rock critics and I wonder what Essex’s cred was at the time, whether he was given his due by the grand poobahs at the NME and Melody Maker or simply ignored as teen fodder with pretty blue eyes. What would you rather have? An ugly face and critical adulation or good looks and hordes of moist young girls throwing their knickers at you? Decisions, decisions…

Download: All The Fun Of The Fair – David Essex (mp3)
Buy: “All The Fun of The Fair” (album)