Sham 69 reading festival 19783/12/2023 You can see from the above that punk wasn’t just a rebellion against the increasingly remote and elitist nature of rock music, and prog rock in particular, and its suppliers – the withering glances you got from nearly always malodorous shop owners in guitar shops if it became quickly apparent you couldn’t play like Steve Howe were legend – no, it was at least as much a revolt against the sterile production line that was the Top 40 of the time. As for pop, I don’t know about you, but there came a point in 1976 where if I had heard any of the many endlessly overplayed singles from Rod-bloody-Stewart’s Atlantic Crossing and whatever its housewife’s orgasm-inducing favourite follow-up was called, or yet another hymn to money and divorce from the band that everyone now claims they loved at the time (you didn’t, admit it) on the radio one more effin’ time, the tranny (stop tittering at the back) would be destined for an unscheduled fight, possibly through a window. As TPA’s resident veteran of the Punk Wars, it falls upon yours truly to attempt further explanation, so here goes:īy the middle of 1976, if you were a rock fan, the various forms of the album-based genre had all become bloated and frankly, far less exciting than the last episode of Bionic Woman. Or to shorten it further, and to quote Sir Mick, “I know it’s only rock’n’roll, but I like it”. That is a quote from a four-part article I wrote eight years back for my now largely dormant blog Astounded By Sound, ( read the article here), on the rise and inevitable demise of what became known as Prog Rock. “By early 1976 as a teenager, although I was a fan of the usual prog giants, … and a lot of prog minnows for that matter, the general feeling amongst my peers and I was that why the hell should anyone need a first class honours degree in musical theory in order to form what essentially was still a rock’n’roll band?” “A punk album being reviewed on TPA?”, I hear your incredulous question, but read on and all will hopefully become clear…
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