“What Do I Get” (1977) – Buzzcocks


“What Do I Get” (1977) – Buzzcocks
* Written by Pete Shelley * 45: “What Do I Get” / “Oh Shit” * Produced by Martin Rushent * Label: United Artists * Charts: UK (#37)

Self-pitying shrapnel flung out from the British punk maelstrom of 1977. Inward woes come off as outward blows. Pete Shelley’s resigned vocal atop his band’s roar can strike a listener as mockery, true pain, or anger, all three of which make for therapeutic listening if you’re feeling shafted. Here were the early stirrings of Gen-X “get” consciousness, which were what the Buzzcocks were all about, and made them seem more of a band of the future than, say, the Clash, whose bigger-picture social concerns were the last gasps of a passé school of thought.  

“Gary Gilmore’s Eyes” (1977) – The Adverts


“Gary Gilmore’s  Eyes” (1977) – The Adverts
 * Written by T.V. Smith * 45: “Gary Gilmore’s Eyes” / “Bored Teenagers” * Produced by the Adverts and Larry Wallis * Label: Anchor

Music journalist Mikal Gilmore is the younger brother of the infamous spree killer who demanded execution by firing squad, thereby reinstating the death penalty in 1977. In his memoir Shot to the Heart, Mikal writes of his own days immediately following the execution: “I …spent many nights lost in the dark glory of punk rock. I liked the way the music tried to make its listeners accommodate the reality of a merciless world. One of the best punk songs of the period was by a British band, the Adverts. It was called ‘Gary Gilmore’s Eyes.’ What would it be like, the song asked, to see the world through Gary Gilmore’s dead eyes? Would you see through the eyes of somebody who wanted to kill the world, and then kill himself?”

“After the Rain” (1979) – Bruce Cockburn


“After the Rain” (1979) – Bruce Cockburn
 * Written by Bruce Cockburn * LP: Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws * Produced by Gene Martynec * Label: True North

“After the Rain” is a wordy expression of pantheistic ecstasy in which a frolicking piano hook settles into a bemused minor 7th chord. The song’s bliss-amid-blight theme recurs all throughout Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws, perhaps the most poetic and musically sophisticated of all Christian pop albums. The following year of 1980 would find the inventive Canadian singer-singwriter Cockburn newly divorced and taking a much harder look at his world.

“Action Time Vision” (1978) – Alternative TV

“Action Time Vision” (1978) – Alternative TV * Written by Alex Fergusson and Mark Perry * 45: “Action Time Vision” / “Another Coke” * LP: The Image Has Cracked * Produced by Alternative TV and Chris Gray * Label: Deptford Fun City Records

Punk manifesto music in which the London band’s initials are given an “alternate” reading. Singer Mark Perry, the former editor of the punk zine Sniffin’ Glue, sings the title words with such authority – as though someone were taking dictation – that the listener assumes more meaning is intended than is actually perceived. He does the same upward curls at the end of his phrases that Johnny Rotten always did. They’re oratorical, didactic flourishes, and they make his announcement elsewhere on their The Image Has Cracked album (“Good Times”) that original member Alex Fergusson got kicked out for being a “dictator” seem ironic. The band’s previous single, in fact, was a reggae-tinged expression of sexual lethargy called “Love Lies Limp,” and there’s no question that the Fergusson-less lineup sounded more committed to virility.

“Thunder” (1976) – The Runaways


“Thunder” (1976) – The Runaways
 * Written by Kari Krome and Mark Anthony * LP: The Runaways * Produced by Kim Fowley * Label: Mercury

In this song from side A of the Runaways’ debut LP (never released as a single), the double-tracked voice of Cherie Currie shares similarities with the double-tracked voice of Denise Nickerson, who sang lead on some of the “Short Circus” sequences on The Electric Company, the kids show on PBS that ran from 1971 to 1977. It invites mental images, as it plays, of pre-teen kids in rust-colored polyester outfits shimmying while the word THUNDER flashes across the screen.

“(I Live for) Cars and Girls” (1975) – The Dictators

“(I Live for) Cars and Girls” (1975) – The Dictators * Written by Andy Shernoff * LP: Go Girl Crazy! * Produced by Murray Krugman and Sandy Pearlman * Label: Epic

You approach Handsome Dick Manitoba, “Adny” Shernoff, and their gang of NYC White Castle goons in the spirit of satire. You hear them mangle the words for “I Got You Babe,” have a crack at the Rivieras’ “California Sun,” and extol their particular ilk as a “Master Race.” Then you get to the last song, “(I Live for) Cars and Girls,” and you sense that their whole disjointed/displaced Beach Boy shtick is no joke. The sounds they’re making actually do come from some deep inner source of yearning and self-identity.

“Luton Airport” (1979) – Cats U.K.

“Luton Airport” (1979) – Cats UK * Written and produced by Paul Curtis and John Worseley * 45: “Luton Airport” / “Sail Away” * Label: WEA * UK singles chart: #22

This easy-to-forget British fad hit capitalized on a 1977 Pygmalion-esque TV commercial for Campari liqueurs, in which a gentleman dressed in white (played by Jeremy Clyde), tries to woo a beautiful young cockney lady (played by Lorraine Chase). “Were you truly wafted here from paradise?” he asks, to which she responds, “Nah, Luton Airport,” referring to the busy North London hub for low-cost domestic and European airlines. The record, credited to an assembled group of female vocalists called Cats UK, took advantage of the late ’70s catchphrase. But here’s what else it took advantage of—the early 1979 Squeeze #2 hit “Cool for Cats,” whose musical framework and lyrical cadences it mimics and whose vocalist (Chris Difford) had sung with a thick cockney accent. That also explains the name of the group and possibly even their willing usage of the “UK” appendage, seeing that Squeeze had billed themselves as UK Squeeze in the US for their debut LP. The popularity of “Cool for Cats” probably influenced this song’s inception more than the Campari ad itself, and although the connection had to have been obvious to listeners at the time, it seems to have faded from the present-day narrative.

“Carmentea” – Miguel Angel Martin (1978)


“Carmentea” – Miguel Angel Martin (1978)
 * Written by Miguel Angel Martin * Colombian LP: Miguel Angel Martin y sus Joropos * Label: Orbe

Miguel Angel Martin, from the Arauca region of Colombia that borders Venezuela, composed and recorded a version of his song “Carmentea” in the early sixties, after which it caught fire and metamorphosed into regional folkore. Martin went on to develop a name for himself as a celebrated musician, folklorist and journalist, while the real life subject of his paean, the woman with “black eyes that kill” (Carmen Teresa Aguirre), inspired a number of written investigations. This 1978 version of the song features a lead harp along with a call-and-response chorus (with female voices). The sound and instrumentation of the record, which includes David Paralas and “Los Copleros del Auraca,” is of the “joropo” genre more typical of Venezuela.

 

“Ne ljuti se, Dragana” (1979) – Slavko Perović

“Ne ljuti se, Dragana” (1979) – Slavko Perović * Written by Branislav Radonjić * Produced by Slobodan Nikolić * LP: Ne ljuti se, Dragana * Label: Jugoton

Slavko Perović is a Serbian singer with a backlog of participation in the mariachi craze of fifties-sixties Yugoslavia. His 1979 LP Ne ljuti se, Dragana (don’t be angry, Dragana) is an affable assortment of acoustic schlager, with four of the ten songs, including the title track, being compositions credited to Branislav Radonjić. He’s the one who also leads the trio of musicians (two guitars and a flute, an unusual combo for the genre) who accompany Perović. All of the rest are traditional.


“Byker Hill” (1976) – Dave Swarbrick and Martin Carthy

“Byker Hill” (1976) – Dave Swarbrick and Martin Carthy * Written by Trad. Arr. * Produced by Bruce Rowland * LP: Swarbrick * Label: Transatlantic
 

The fiddle of London-born Dave Swarbrick sounds like the very essence of the sixties-and-beyond British folk revival. He made it sing with a distinct combination of wisdom, lamentation, and (especially) humor, and fiddlers have been using his sound as a role model for half a century now. Although he was among the first to plug into an amplifier and breathe fire as he would do alongside Richard Thompson in Fairport Convention, the Dave Swarbrick identifier that might open the ideal playlist is this 1976 instrumental version of “Byker Hill.” It’s a 9/8 reinterpretation of a miner song that he and Martin Carthy had originally recorded with vocals in 1967, but this one, from his solo debut LP Swarbrick, gambols and spins so effortlessly that even though it clocks in at five minutes — twice the time of the earlier version — it could go on for another ten or fifteen minutes and you’d be too entranced to notice.