G.E.F PUT UP A GREAT POST YESTERDAY ABOUT THE SEX PISTOLS LEGENDARY FIRST GIG IN MANCHESTER BACK IN JUNE OF 1976 . . . . FROM THIS ONE NIGHT, OUT OF AN AUDIENCE OF NO MORE THAN FORTY PUNTERS . . . . DESPITE SO MANY THOUSANDS NOW CLAIMING "I SWEAR I WAS THERE" . . . . CAME A GROUP OF SOON TO BE ALMOST EQUALLY FAMOUS AND REVERED BANDS, A PROMOTER AND MUSIC WRITER . . . .
THE BUZZCOCKS, JOY DIVISION, THE FALL . . . . ALL WERE CONCIEVED ON THAT MONUMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT NIGHT IN A CITY THAT WOULD BECOME KNOWN AS 'MADCHESTER' . . . . A TOWN THAT TO THIS DAY, HAS PROBABLY SPAWNED MORE ACTS OF QUALITY, DEFINED MORE SHIFTS IN MUSICAL DIRECTION AND RELATED MUSICAL COUNTER CULTURE 'TRENDS' THAN ANY OTHER URBAN CENTRE IN THE WORLD . . . . AND IT ALL STARTED IN A 'B' GRADE HALL IN JUNE OF 1976.
This was the one single event, when tied to two more that came hot on it's heels, that created the schism in rock and roll that would become Punk . . . . a movement and an attitude that sounded the death knell for a generation of fat, bloated, irrelevant rock stars and their similarly corpulent, turgid music that had by and large infected the seventies . . . . thank fucking god !!!!!
I remember seeing the news reports on the telly as a fifteen year old at boarding school, I didn't 'get' the spitting thing, which is what drew the initial attention of the mainstream press of the day, but I vividly recall the rush that came over me when I heard just a soundbite of the music . . . . it grabbed me by the fucking balls, it was rock and fucking roll, it was ugly and brash, it was simple and straight forward, it was a breath of fresh air . . . . for a red headed schoolboy called 'Dog' who was never one of the pretty boy set, the 'service brat' who never really quite fitted in . . . . this was his salvation, his watershed moment and he knew it from the start.
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