There’s something about 1976. Above all, it was a pivotal year in music: reggae was its peak and punk was an obscure art school sub-genre about to be turned into a commercial anti-art dogma. While punk flared up on the streets of London, Manchester, and New York, Jamaica’s capital Kingston was literally on fire, with uncontrolled violence and gang warfare. 1976 was also about many more things and while this article focuses mainly on the albums released in the 12 months, I have broadened it out, as you shall see.
Max Romeo: War Ina Babylon
Diatribes on poverty and inequality, corruption of the clergy and a call for politicians to take the road to righteousness litter the magnificent War Ina Babylon. The cover reflects the music: a distraught woman holding her head in her hands with a handkerchief to cry into. Roots reggae opener ‘One Step Forward’ urges politicians to take the “narrow” road to righteousness. Then we’re into ‘Chase the Devil’ with its famous opening “Lucifer son of the morning, I'm gonna chase you out of earth”, the frightening title track and ‘Uptown Babies’, a dissection of the class divide.
Ramones: Ramones
Sounding a little dated now, perhaps, but incendiary then, Ramones was latched on to by anyone who mattered in 1976 and became THE must-have item of that long hot northern hemisphere summer. To many, it’s considered to be the first true punk rock album, and still inspires to this day. It’s 14 tracks, among them ‘Beat on the Brat’ and ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, last all of 29 minutes. Nowadays, T-shirt City is bustling with Ramones tops but do those snotty teens wearing them even have a copy of the album that set them to a career of trademark buzzsaw guitars and short songs?
David Bowie: Station to Station / Nic Roeg: The Man Who Fell To Earth
Changing tack once more, the album’s opener, the 10-minute title track began with the sound of an approaching train, more than three full minutes pass on a slow, hypnotic instrumental march before Bowie finally sings. It then erupts into a celebratory groove, leading into a lengthy, wild outro. It’s almost two songs welded into one. Kraftwerk were also an influence for Bowie and he would continue the musical adventure on the so-called “Berlin trilogy”. The cover used a still from the film The Man Who Fell to Earth in which Bowie took the lead role as a stranded alien. Released months after the album, it is a monumental sci-fi flick that bemuses and bedazzles in equal measures.
100 Club Punk Special
You could pin punk’s rise to the very first Sex Pistols gig, to the Screen on the green Midnight Special in late August, or even the Pistols’ foul-mouthed tirade at Bill Grundy on prime-time television that sparked tabloid front-page headlines. But this mini festival was the moment that seemed to propel the burgeoning movement into something more tangible and publically-consumable. It featured the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, The Damned, and The Clash, as well as Siouxise and the Banshees which had only just formed and pretty much played on the hoof. Whatever happened to the Stinky Toys?
Can: Flow Motion
I had to force myself to like Can but it was worth the pain. They are very much an acquired taste. By 1976 the German avant-garde prog-jazz-punkers found themselves on Top of the Pops with the electro-beat heavy ‘I Want More’ which features here. Flow Motion might be more accessible and it plays with disco rhythms, but it remained very much a Can album with a ten-minute track to close that continues a fine tradition of freeform recording.
All the President’s Men
The film of the book of the event. Watergate was still raw in America, and in journalism around the world. The revelations of reporters Woodward and Bernstein in the Washington Post (and by other reporters) were like a Molotov Cocktail thrown at the established political processes. This was Dirty Politics before it became part of the culture. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford play the said reporters braving obstacles at every turn to get the story. And there were many of them, but their doggedness culminates in the president resigning. A film can’t truly encapsulate years of chasing or a 336-page book but it covers whatever it is able to do with fantastic dramatic effect.
Debris: Static Disposal
From Chickasha, Oklahoma, Debris formed in 1975 and self-released this solitary LP. A Dada/punk/psych masterpiece recorded in just under seven hours. It was a mindblowing album coming with a provocative, bondage-themed sleeve. Like The Saints’ debut, they were a band oblivious to the coming punk explosion yet this also sounds like a punk masterpiece. Debris came from the same harvest as Captain Beefheart, the Stooges, early Roxy Music and other pre-punk mainstays of the time. After this, they disappeared.
Godzilla vs Megalon
Nuclear testing unleashes mayhem on the undersea kingdom of Seatopia, causing a series of environmental disasters that nearly wipes out Rokuro, the schoolboy protagonist at the centre of this film. Then ... fighting … a flying robot … napalm bombs … the world in danger … Tokyo smashed. In other words, exactly what all the original Godzilla films do best. (Although the film was released in 1973 in Japan, it didn't receive a full theatrical release in the US, and more generally "the west", until the balmy summer of 1976 - Ed)
The Damned: New Rose
It might be lauded as the first British punk single, but ‘New Rose’ was a classic three-minute pop song. The famous spoken intro – “Is she really going out with him?” – is from the Shangri-La’s ‘Leader of the Pack’ for fox sake. Fuelled by amphetamine sulphate and cider, ‘New Rose’ laid a marker for all other punk bands to follow. Only a few ever did.
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry: Super Ape
Genius at the controls. Take a breath, open your mind and listen to this masterpiece of roots music. A must have for all Perry lovers and for the new generations interested in reggae music. Super Ape might not be the best reggae album of the 70s nor even Perry’s finest but it set a trend; reggae and dub meets, well, all sorts of sounds and influences. Various reissues and re-shaping has occurred in the past 44 years but the original still stands strong.
Scotland 2, England 1, Hampden Park, 15 May
This game would become a skeleton in goalkeeper Ray Clemence's cupboard after allowing a saveable Kenny Dalglish shot to roll through his legs for Scotland's winning goal. Mick Channon had given England an early lead but there was only ever going to be one winner. Bruce Rioch equalised just six minutes later. Clemence would later say he had Dalglish’s shot covered, but it bobbled and the next thing he knew it went through his legs and into the net. Scots fans didn’t care, they’ve never let the keeper forget it to this day.
