Great Punk Singles

By
A great single from 1976 was - 

The Runaways - Cherry Bomb 

From way back in the almost pre-punk days of 1976 came this anthem of female teenage rebellion by all-girl group The Runaways. Was it punk? Yes course it was. "Hello daddy, hello mom...I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!!!". Mindlessly magnificent.

Great singles from 1977

Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Blank Generation  

One of the great, ground-breaking US punk songs. For the title alone it should be there in any list of influential punk compositions. Although its iconic title amounted to a lot more than the sum of its parts, it somehow exemplified the seediness of US punk and is surprisingly sloganeering for a song from that sub-genre.

The Saints - I'm Stranded 

An early 1977 surprising offering from Australian punks The Saints. Riffy and hooky, it should have been more of a success.

The Radio Stars - No Russians In Russia 

A band made up of ex-members of sixties psychedelics John's Children and seventies oddball glammers Sparks always seemed to me like gnarled, leery old rockers messing around with punk. That's exactly what they were. The song is hard-hitting, raw-sounding rock with a punk edge to it and an instantly appealing chorus.

The Dead Boys - Sonic Reducer 

Proper US CBGB's punk from these decidedly unsavoury, druggy oiks, led by nihilistic nutter Stiv Bators. Full of verve and punk power. The band were portrayed in the movie CBGB's, with Rupert (Harry Potter) Grint playing one of the band members, surprisingly well.

Celia & The Mutations - Mony Mony 

The Stranglers backed hitherto and subsequently unknown French (or maybe German) singer Celia on this punky, gritty, organ-powered Tommy James & The Shondells cover.

Plastic Bertrand - ça Plane Pour Moi 

Belgium's only punk chart hit, and what a truly great one it was too. It still sounds great today, full of blaring saxophones, killer riffs, frantic vocals and Gallic joie de vivre (or whatever that is in Flemish). 

Great singles from 1978

Rich Kids - Rich Kids 

Ex Sex Pistol Glen Matlock delivers a guitar-driven 'b' list punker.

The Motors - Dancing The Night Away 

This rousing, crashing number was the only half-decent track from plastic punk coat-tail mainstreamers The Motors. They had a guitarist who called himself Bram Tchaikovsky, I recall. Their follow-up hit, Airport, was bloody awful. 

Wreckless Eric - Whole Wide World 

A poor man's Elvis Costello-Nick Lowe-Ian Dury (take your pick) who accompanied them on the legendary Stiffs tour. The song is a fine offering of melodic new wave pop, though.

The Only Ones - Another Girl Another Planet 

A surprisingly early poppy post punker that always shows up in people's new wave playlists, including mine. That's all I know abut it, or the group, however. Sorry to all the Only Ones fans, of which there are quite a few still around. They seemed to have a cultish reputation amongst post punk snobs.

Great singles from 1979

Holly & The Italians - Tell That Girl To Shut Up

Excellent piece of girl group-inspired but hard-as-nails new wave housing project poppy punk from a US group that I never heard anything else from.

The Knack - My Sharona 

A drum-powered and horribly snappy new wave number that many people loved but I always found just a bit irritating. It still makes me nostalgic, however, so it makes the list.

Lene Lovich - Lucky Number 

Talking of bonkers - this was a bizarre but utterly memorable, word-definingly quirky one-off hit, complete with singalong "ah-oh, ah-oh" refrain that everyone went around singing at the time, together with silly Lovich moves. 

The Members - The Sound Of The Suburbs 

A number 12 hit for these punk 'c'-listers. It was a tub-thumping, fist-pumping rabble rouser, sung by Nicky Tesco (who named himself after a supermarket).

Great singles from 1980

Martha & The Muffins - Echo Beach 

Full on post punk-ish catchy new wave but without the misery from Canadian group Martha & The Muffins. Again, it is impossibly catchy as so many of the new wave hits were.

Department S - Is Vic There? 
Marvellously minimalist, sparse and extremely atmospheric piece of strangely commercial post punk. The keyboard ruled on this one. Welcome to the eighties.

The Teardrop Explodes - Reward 

No punk here. New romanticism rears its preening head early on in the shape of pretentious singer Julian Cope. It was a great, hooky, brassy song, though.

The Vapors - Turning Japanese 

A new wave classic about masturbation that amazingly got away with it in those censor-happy days. It was one of those utterly singable numbers that remains popular on new wave-inspired radio shows to this day.

The Jags - I Got Your Number 

Another from the Nick Lowe-inspired new wave school, delivered by band members dressed in retro rock 'n' roll-style outfits that thankfully didn't detract from what was a really catchy pop song.

A great single from 1982

Bow Wow Wow - C30 C60 C90 Go! 

At the other end of the timeline is Malcolm McLaren-produced punk-infuenced but not punk strange band Bow Wow Wow, featuring a teenage Burmese lead singer in Annabella Lwin. It has all of punk's frantic, breakneck energy and is irresistibly enjoyable, as well as being completely idiotic.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Beatles: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
As with my "Red Album" review, before progressing to the album, a little background for you.... I have always had a strange relationship with The Beatles. On the one hand, aged about five, I owned a plastic Beatles guitar, so they were the first musical memory I had, along with a vague knowledge of Elvis. A lot of their output was easy for a young child to sing - the puerile "she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" was probably the first I learnt, to the frustration of my parents, who hated me saying "yeah" instead of "yes" . The accursed Yellow Submarine was number one in primary school playgrounds all over the country. In the mid sixties, The Beatles were simply everywhere, even for five-six year old kids like me. On the other hand, as the years went by and I started to develop a musical taste, I found the edgy, bad boy, rebellious appeal of The Rolling Stones far more attractive. Even at eight or nine, I viewed The Beatles as "goody-goodies&
View Full Post »

Punk: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
From 1977 to 1979, pretty much all that mattered to me was punk - the next 45 rpm release, the next gig, the picture sleeves, the coloured vinyl, the badges. It didn't last long though, did it? Almost as soon as punk had begun it was morphing either into new wave or post punk. If punk groups didn't diversify they got left behind. However, what a wonderful couple of years they were - they began with a music cult that hated the world and ended with those very acts on Top Of The Pop s. Was it all bollocks? Probably. Fucking glorious, euphoric, pogoing bollocks.  So, as Johnny Rotten might say - get a load of these fucking singles, you cunts... ⑩ BABYLON'S BURNING - THE RUTS (1978) The Ruts were one of many punk bands to form in the wake of The Clash’s first album and they ploughed that punk merged with white reggae furrow that Stiff Little Fingers also worked so well. The singer Malcolm Owen - who tragically took his own life - had a gruff, throaty Joe Strummer-type voice whic
View Full Post »

Rod Stewart: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
Firstly, a brief intro to Roderick David Stewart.... As for many of my contemporaries, it was actually Maggie May that first captivated me as a twelve year-old, watching soon to be legendary cocksman kick footballs around on Top Of The Pops . I liked his flamboyant, laddish cheekiness and it was just such a great song, wasn't it? I duly bought the single and then the equally good (if not better) You Wear It Well , followed by What Made Milwaukee Famous and Oh No Not My Baby as they duly came out. I became a Faces fan too, unsurprisingly. Rod was a lad. The Faces were lads. I was a lad. The deal was sealed. As the decade continued, I faced the dilemma that faced many Rod Stewart fans as he turned up on Top Of The Pops in make-up to sing The First Cut Is The Deepest just as punk was beginning to take off and, by 1978 was coming out with the awful cod-disco of Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? What to do? A hugely credible artist was becoming a preening self-parody in front of our eyes
View Full Post »

The Rolling Stones: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
Ah, The Rolling Stones. Where do I start? I guess I was first made aware of them as a seven or eight year-old in the 1966-67-68 period when they started to appeal to my heightening sense that the all-conquering Beatles were goody-goodies and The Stones were proper bad boys. My developing tastes found this to be an admirable thing. Even at that age, there was a nascent feeling that if the older generation - parents, teachers and the like, even the judiciary - despised them, they must have something about them. Ironically, though, my Mother loved The Stones.  Then, of course,  there was the music - loud, punchy, riffy, buzzy and singalong, but not in a "she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.." way, but in a "he can't be a man because he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me" style. The Stones always had a healthy cynicism and a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour that appealed to me no end.  Here we go with my crossfire hurricane top ten..... ⑩   UNDERCOVER OF THE NIG
View Full Post »

Blondie: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
Dominated by keyboard player Jimmy Destri’s fairground sound Farfisa organ and drummer Clem Burke, funnily enough, blonde bombshell vocalist Debbie Harry was not the most notable thing about Blondie's sound. What was clear was that, embryonically, they had something - both music and an image. Harry, for sure, had a sort of Lower East Side tough girl with a romantic side image and a 60s girl group sensibility. It was built on the traditions of The Ronettes and The Shangri-Las - ostensibly hard housing project girls but with a sweet, loving vulnerability and a desire to find that perfect dream boy. Many punks in the New York scene at the time didn't go for this at all, preferring their female singers to be like Patti Smith, full of confrontational street grubbiness as if they have just spent the night in a seedy squat with God knows who. Debbie cooly overrode all that, she was better than that, wasn't she? Here is my I can tell you were no debutante top ten..... ⑩ ATOMIC (19
View Full Post »

Stevie Wonder: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
I have covered a fair bit of Stevie Wonder's remarkable career with this list, but this was not a deliberate ploy - some sixties, some seventies - it is just how it worked out. Let's get that clavinet and harmonica out..... ⑩ KEEP ON RUNNING (1971) Maybe not an obvious choice for this top ten, Keep On Running gives us the funk, big time. It's an irresistibly groovy, cookin' and most memorable number, with prominent and assertive female backing vocalists energetically helping Stevie out behind all that layered clavinet. Stevie had got really into that instrument by now, hadn't he? This sort of deep, heavy funk is very popular on today's radio, but back then stations wanted more poppy numbers. The single bombed, reaching only #90, unfortunately. That was an absolute travesty. It boils on a bubbling high heat from the first note. It is just one of those songs that, for some reason, I really like, even though it wasn't a big hit and it isn't one of those o
View Full Post »

New Wave: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
Selected here are artists from the 1977-79 period whose music was not punk but was associated with that period and often labelled "new wave". Punk in attitude maybe but not punk in sound. The music was not confrontational or aggressive, it was melodic, poppy and often sing-along. Perfect chart fare in many ways. For me, all these songs are permanently associated with that fertile period for young, exciting "new" music. ⑩ IS SHE REALLY GOING OUT WITH HIM? - JOE JACKSON (1979) Portsmouth's bug-eyed Mekon lookalike Joe Jackson is an interesting musical character. A most unlikely-looking "pop star", his beginnings were in the "new wave" of 1979 he progressed to dabbling in jazz, world music and classically-influenced stuff. He was/is a most underrated and creative artist.  Initially, Jackson seemed to have found himself at the vanguard of the “new wave” by default, because he wore punk-era thin ties and drainpipe trousers and had the afore-ment
View Full Post »

The Temptations: My Top Ten Singles

By
Image
My favourite Motown group here and another for whom a top ten is a mighty difficult one to choose songs for, and in what order. Anyway, wait a minute......hold it, wait a minute.... ⑩ JUST MY IMAGINATION (RUNNING AWAY WITH ME) (1970) Just Your Imagination (Running Away With Me) is a sublime, perfect creation and is regularly included in those "all time Motown best of" lists. Rightly so. From the bass intro, via the strings and the backing vocals through to Eddie Kendricks' beautiful lead vocal (his final one for The Temptations) the song is peerless. Oh, and how could I forget Paul Williams "every night on my knees I pray" solo vocal on the bridge? The song was also covered by The Rolling Stones on their 1978 Some Girls album and, on their performance of it on their 2007  Shine A Light live album, Mick Jagger memorably embellishes the song's killer line into "she doesn't fucking know me!" in a classic Jagger voice. Check it out.  ⑨ CLOUD NI
View Full Post »