Top of The Pops

Early in the new year I had a brief moment of panic when I thought that I was about to depart this world. I was lying in my bum rut when my life began to flash before my eyes. It took a few seconds of confusion (during which I raised myself to rest on my elbow) for my son to point out that in fact Top of The Pops 1977 was replaying on BBC4...

1977, I was 15 - it was my life reappearing before my eyes. The year of the Silver Jubilee, the death of Elvis and Marc Bolan and the arrival in Britain of Punk.

Watching Baccara performing 'Yes Sir I can Boogie' and Brotherhood of Man with Angelo it seemed quite easy to understand how something so gritty and apparently 'down with the kids' such as punk blew us all away. But thinking about the early 70's - remember Prog rock? Glam rock was a direct descendant, there was Motown, disco, Bob Marley. Were Queen a glam rock band, Roxy Music? So the move to punk is not so easily defined. It can just be seen to have captured a moment. Just as the political wilderness, unemployment and urban decay of the early eighties could be defined by The Specials 'Ghost Town'

'This town is coming like a ghost town
All the clubs have been closed down
This place is coming like a ghost town
Bands won't play no more
Too much fighting on the dance floor
Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?
We danced and sang and the music played in the boom town'


A time that seems very familiar now, 35 years later. The 1981 riots, are they comparable to the rioting seen last year? We have the Golden Jubilee celebrated against a back ground of unemployment, austerity and disaffection.

I wonder what genre of music will be seen to have captured 'this moment' in years to come?