Punk Music Single Covers – Punk on 45
I was lucky enough in the winter of 2012 for my brother to generously buy me a Dansette record player as a Christmas present. This led to me clambering up into the loft in search of re-discovering a treasure trove of half forgotten 7″ vinyl memories.
Surprisingly most of these deplorably ignored records are in a very good condition, others are a little bit dog-eared, others show discolouring from many a year spent in dusty, and occasionally musty conditions.
Memories
Some of them brought back memories of catching the bus into my local city, Birmingham, on the day of release. The memories of the excitement of the first play on getting back home. The memories of my neighbours banging on the wall yelling for me to TURN IT DOWN (sorry Mrs. Spooner – and God bless my Mom and Dad who never once told me to reduce the volume).
Other’s of these I can’t even remember buying, and even after playing them I can’t remember the songs.
Others seem to have disappeared or are in a box I’ve yet to discover (The Damned’s ‘Neat Neat Neat‘ is one that comes to mind).
Was that really Punk?
It could be argued that some of these are not real punk music – like Jonathan Richman and Mink Deville. Maybe that’s right, maybe wrong. Punk to me was not about hair cuts or the cut of your clothes, but about a can-do attitude, individualism, and a fervent creativity in music and design. A lack of skills was not a problem in achieving what you set out to do – sometimes these inadequacies led to exhilarating new directions.
Their moment in the sun
As for the bands themselves, Peter Perret of The Only Ones succintly summed up the individuals for me on a recent edition of BBC 4’s Punk Britannia series when he said ” I think punk was a time when all the freaks, the misfits and the outlaws, had their moment… their moment in the sun”
Punk on 45
So, here are the scans of my punk music single covers, Punk on 45 – in the words of Sergio Leone, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly“…
Just seen ‘The Banned’ on ‘Top of the Pops’ playing ‘Little Girl’ – absolutely awful. Did I really buy this?
The Banned look like a few lads who just jumped onto the Punk/New Wave bandwagon as it was slowly passing in the night – no style, no passion, no belief, out to get a quick TV appearance and their much sought after 5 minutes of fame, the kind of lads whose lives are succinctly reflected in the lyrics of The Jam’s “Saturday’s Kids”.
Found this on the Wikipedia page for the band:
‘They recorded “Little Girl” in an attempt to take advantage of the popularity of punk rock, or in Aitken’s words to “work a scam to do this punk thing’.
We all make mistakes…