Pere Ubu: The Modern Dance - 1978

Almost before punk had even begun to threaten the mainstream, post punk sort of began with this dense, bleak, intense bass-dominated album that has to rank alongside Devo's debut as one of the weirdest and unclassifiable offerings from this era. 

It is full of those big, rubbery, throbbing basslines that post punk bands would heartily gobble up over subsequent years, along with a jerky, yelping early Talking Heads-style vocal madness from fat lad David Thomas, and all sorts of strange noises and lyrical concepts thrown in. 

Despite its oddness, there is a strange, mysterious appeal to tracks like the deep, staccato Real World, the bassy Chinese Radiation, the sombre Over My Head, the early Roxy Music-ish Laughing and the frenetic Modern Dance (the only one of their tracks I had any real knowledge of from back then). The glass smashing noises of Sentimental Journey is too pointlessly indulgent, however. 

While many, such as myself were preoccupied with The Clash, The Jam and The Ramones at the time, this was what you heard pre-gig at many punk venues, along with Devo, Public Image Ltd and Magazine. These were very much the first foundation bricks of post punk. I always thought they were French back in 1978, but they were actually from Ohio, interestingly, like Devo.