5 1977🔗

I did not progress musically in 1977. I was listening to a lot of music, but it was obsolete. I just didn’t know that yet.

I didn’t progress socially, either. I finished high school and started university, and I botched both the ending (prom, graduation) and the new beginning. I was living at home, so I missed both the dorm experience and the apartment experience so critical to growing up. I had been advanced in math studies, so I wasn’t in the first-year classes with my peers. I did see them in my computer science courses, but I found those annoyingly simple. University was supposed to be the place where I finally belonged, but it certainly didn’t feel like it by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, amazing things were going on in music, but it would take me most of 1978 to realize it. I had some hints from newspapers, weekly newsmagazines, and mainstream music periodicals like Rolling Stone, but they tended to take a "news of the weird" approach, and I didn’t yet understand how to read between the lines. The band that garnered the most publicity was the Sex Pistols, mostly for behaving badly on television and in airports. I had heard their "Anarchy In The UK" single as early as November 1976, when it was released, courtesy of a late-night CBC FM show. I was surprised at how much I liked it, but I didn’t follow up. For many years I thought that the release of the "Never Mind The Bollocks" album in October 1977 was the spark that set off punk, but I was mistaken.

The real spark was the April 1976 US release of the first Ramones album and their subsequent mini-tour of the UK. The album consisted of short, minimalist songs delivered at a breakneck pace, little more than power chord progressions strummed furiously. Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) has always been adamant that the Ramones had no influence on the Sex Pistols, but this is because he didn’t like their image, of cartoonish long-haired leather-clad slackers. He didn’t play guitar; the sound of the Ramones galvanized those who did, and the UK punk scene in general. I actually knew someone in high school who bought that album, J’s successor as record reviewer for the school paper, but he made fun of it, and I didn’t see any reason to investigate. It would be a while before I heard it, or the two followup albums that the Ramones issued in 1977.

The Ramones are all dead now, but the opening song from that album, "Blitzkrieg Bop", has inexplicably become one of the staples played in stadiums and arenas during brief pauses at sporting events. My appreciation of their first four albums, and their influence, built slowly over the following years. (After those, the lead singer and guitarist stopped speaking to each other permanently because of a romantic triangle, and while they continued to record and tour for nearly twenty more years, things were never the same again.)

Two more albums released in the UK in April 1977 would play a role in my journey the following year. I thought the first Clash album was so hard when I heard it, but now it sounds surprisingly lyrical, with real, almost pretty melodies, and some complex chord changes. The production isn’t very good, but better production never did them any favours. It remains the one Clash album I can listen to all the way through, and the non-album track "1977" (the B-side of their first single) is one of my favourite Clash songs. Critical consensus gives top marks to their third album, "London Calling", but for me it has not aged as well as I would have expected, perhaps because it is closer to their later, more disappointing material. The first album was released in butchered form in the US two years later, with the more culturally obscure tracks replaced by singles. If you have a chance, seek out the original.

The Jam’s first album, "In The City", was also an April release, though due to the vagaries of my music supply, I heard their rushed and inferior second album, "This Is The Modern World" first. The band had been together for several years as a Mod-influenced outfit, and they were considerably better instrumentalists than most of the emerging punk acts, and wrote more complex songs, allowing for more scope for future evolution. They were quite successful in the UK but remained almost unknown in the US. I can still happily listen to all of the six studio albums they released over the next five years, or a compilation of their eighteen singles, all of which reached the UK top 40. Singer / guitarist Paul Weller went on to work with the Style Council, and is still releasing solo albums.

There are a few albums released in 1977 that made a huge impact on me, but I want to talk about them in the context of when I first heard them, in 1978. I should mention two albums from 1977 that took me decades to fully appreciate, but which are now among my most cherished. "Pink Flag", the debut album by Wire, was released in November. On first listen, it struck me as noisy buzzy fragments, even more minimal than the Ramones, and I passed on borrowing it and putting it on tape. Critics were somewhat perplexed as well. I remember one review in Rolling Stone calling the "the Pink Floyd of punk", which makes no sense, but it helped put me off them, as I never cared as much for Pink Floyd as did my contemporaries.

In 1989, "On Returning", a one-CD compilation of most of their first three albums, was released. I had just started buying pop CDs (when the format first appeared, I would only buy classical) but I was annoyed by a forty-minute album being released on the more expensive format that could hold more music. A 74-minute compilation seemed like a good deal to me, and it was favourably reviewed by a source I trusted. I liked all of it, but I gravitated towards the earlier music. I picked up each of those first three albums as they were reissued with bonus material. Some time in the late ’90’s, I styled my personal website with separate pages on books, movies, and music, and singled out five of each. "Pink Flag" was among the five albums I listed. I played those for my partner during the COVID pandemic, and she said of "Pink Flag", "Why is it so good?" It is now one of her favourites also.

Wire were dropped by their record label, who didn’t quite know what to do with them, after their third album in 1979. (I find this incomprehensible.) They sporadically released art-rock albums in the late ’80’s. In 1999, they started revisiting their earlier sound, though with new songs, in the series of EPs titled "Read and Burn". I saw them live during this period, in Toronto in the summer of 2011. I invited J to come along, probably the last concert I will ever see with him. The band looked like grandfathers (they probably were), but they were still capable of making some serious noise. Their work since then has been calmer and more in the art-rock vein.

The New York City band Television released their first album, "Marquee Moon", at about the same time as "Pink Flag". I heard the album in 1978, and I didn’t care for it. I may have been put off by singer / guitarist Tom Verlaine’s vocal stylings, but there were also really long songs, with guitar solos, things I couldn’t reconcile with Television being listed with the Ramones as one of the leading lights of the new scene. I couldn’t help but admire Verlaine’s guitar work, but it felt like it was all technique. The US music press loved the album, but it was not a commercial success, and the band broke up after releasing a more low-key second album the following year. I gave it another listen in the early ’80’s and still didn’t get it.

It wasn’t until 2006 that I found a used CD of "Marquee Moon" for a very good price and thought I’d give it another chance. I was stunned on listening to it afresh, nearly thirty years after its release. How could I have dismissed this album? The intricate interplay between the two guitarists is precise and compelling, and the songs stick in my head for days. When the title track (clocking in at more than ten minutes) comes up on shuffle, I have to put down what I’m doing and give it my full attention. My earlier mistake was to believe those who said it was one of the first great punk or New Wave albums. In fact, it is one of the last great prog rock albums.

Television reformed in 1992 after Tom Verlaine had released a couple of solo albums, but they (collectively or individually) never managed anything as compelling as that first album. Tom Verlaine died in 2023.