(2022, Cherry Red)

SERIES OVERVIEW

If you were a young person in the very late 70s, but old enough to be really into music, then you’ll be aware that 1979 was a pivotal year in the aftermath of the punk revolution in the UK. Where 1977 saw punk “die” (not) and fall off radio’s radar, it diversified and injected fresh excitement into ska and mod music, and 1978 was where punk-influenced music began to chart again, becoming a lasting influence in popular music.

Witness for the prosecution, exhibit 1: Cherry Red’s “1979: Revolt Into Style,” a three-disc buffet of singles both famous and completely obscure that collectively represent what I would call the DIY-versification of rock and pop after the kick in the nads the corporate-label acts got from punk. The youth of the late-70s, who saw little to no future and what might be coming under Thatcher looked pretty bleak, protested in the form of their own contributions to sound and culture.

Importantly, punk (and let’s not forget The Velvet Underground) taught a LOT of artists across genres that it was okay to write political songs, angry songs, message songs, and really just anything that was on their minds more so than just love songs. It also took from punk rock the idea that your message should be important, so get to it quick and don’t hang about — plus it wore Lou Reed’s “not a trained singer” influence as a badge of honour for quite a number of the vocalists.

Punk’s most direct musical mutation was collectively known as New Wave, but a fair amount of it was just pop and rock underneath a studied anti-style — or as Bowie would phrase it just a year later, “same old thing in brand new drag/comes sweeping into view.” Following the punk explosion of musical rage, David seemed to be signaling that being too political and serious all the time might make Jack a dull boy before too long, and Scary Monsters was the proof.

Bowie needn’t have worried. As a new decade containing a fearful future foretold by Orwell loomed, the forces of traditional pop put up a brave fight to hold on to their power and popularity. As Bill Nelson puts it in the lead-off track, “Though I know the time is nearly 1984, it feels like 1965.” The song in which he sings that takes its title from a poem about Elvis (Presley, not Costello) that includes the line “he turns revolt into a style.”

And that’s exactly what was happening by the time 1979 rolled around. The songs in this compilation — which showcase that half-way point between wanting to change the world and the more traditional rock-band path of wanting to get rich & famous & groupies — range from deadly serious to clearly taking the piss, using whatever sound and vision they had to hand.

The accompanying booklet for the set contains bits of background info about each song, which provides for a list of interesting tidbits. The journey through the sets themselves provide all the variety of a musical rollercoaster, and even the hit-and-miss parade of songs do succeed in painting a picture of the emerging “new normal” for bands and artists.

Though still bound musically by the traditional rules of rock music, the new “wave” here comes to the fore in singing styles, subject matter, arrangements, and a sense of urgency that gives a lot of the music its power. In a few cases, the mastering for these records sounds as though it came from the 45s themselves, as undoubtedly the master tapes in some cases couldn’t be located.

As with all samplers, whether music or chocolates, it’s all basically good — and half the fun is finding new gems. We’ll highlight our previously-unknown best cuts, and what we thought was the worst songs on each given disc.

DISC 1 – THE MUSIC

As mentioned, every disc in this set has a mixture for familiar and “new to my ears” material, which keeps things interesting (another key rule for the post-punk set: don’t get too formulaic). While there were only a handful of tines on Disc 1 that I’d keep on rotation (nine or 10 songs out of the 24 on this disc), not a single song rated a no-star or one-star rating from me, and you gotta love a disc with a packed 77 minutes of runtime and little filler.

Among my favourites on Disc 1 was the lead was the lead off, “Revolt Into Style,” by Bill Nelson’s Red Noise — very much ahead of its time and probably would have been a bigger hit if Nelson’s vocals were more prominent in the mix. Other four- or five-star efforts in my opinion included:

★ “I Feel Flat” (Andy Arthurs and the Rock-Along Combo), which showcased the adenoidal style singing that was briefly in fashion, paired with a very catchy tune and “not a love song” lyrics about loneliness.

★ “Rhythm of Cruelty” by Magazine, which — alongside “The Staircase” by Siouxsie and The Banshees, “Rebellious Jukebox” by The Fall, and “Sink Your Boats” by Ian Dury and the Blockheads on this disc — showcased bands that emerged into the public consciousness fully formed, like Zeus’ children, and already sure in their trademark sound.

★ “Stop Being a Boy” (the Squares), which may or may not be an ahead-of-its-time song about gender identity but with a hefty dose of irony in the way it is sung versus its lyrics. I don’t want to spoil it, but I could imagine the late Tiny Tim having a go at a song like this (!).

★ “Me I Disconnect From You” by Gary Numan is far and away the most original song, both musically and lyrically, on this disc — and as anyone who knows Numan’s second album (as Tubeway Army) can attest, this single served as a powerful advance scout for the synthesizer armies already assembling, that would come into their own with the 80s. Young Mr. Webb had some money and skills behind him, and it really stands out in the context of this mostly bass/drum/guitar driven disc.

★ “Highly Inflammable” by X-Ray Spex, by contrast, shows off more range that they had previously been known for — hinting at a future new direction — but became their farewell single when singer/songwriter Poly Styrene (Marianne Elliot-Said) left.

There were a few ties for two-star rated tracks, but for me the single worst song on this disc was by Toyah (the band, starring Toyah Willcox) with the “why on earth is this here” prog-rock track “Victims of the Riddle (Part 1),” which the influential New Musical Express (NME) accurately dubbed “theatrical froth.” She’s a strong singer in the Kate Bush mold, but let’s just say I’m in no rush to hear Part 2.

Another noteworthy “odd man out” is Eddie & the Hot Rods’ song “Media Messiahs.” They were a traditional power-rock band (hence the name) that got the memo and tried gamely to go with the flow, reasonably successfully.

This was an unsubtle but relevant “message” song about the existing mainstream media of the time. The band never quite cut it with me, but at least they were reading the tea leaves of the times and trying to become (stay?) relevent as the world temporarily moved on from crotch-rock, and as a result they have managed to wangle their way onto quite a number of “New Wave” samplers, and even made the soundtrack album to Rock n Roll High School.

The other tracks here range from “Not bad, not great” to “amiably forgettable,” and quite a few of the artists not singled out in the list above still went on to bigger and better — but again the important thing is not just the songs you find you like and/or are familiar to you from way back then. It’s the journey of hearing these artists working with their new insights, new rules, and new sounds is itself a revistation to a time, place, and political reality that had a profound effect on what had been, to this point, a more easily-defined decade of mainstream entertainment.