1977 was the year that British punk rock burst out of the underground and became the new big thing in the U.K. music scene (not to mention a new youth movement to outrage the tabloid media's readers). A year later, if punk was still widely seen as a fad, it had grown so fast that a scene that barely existed two years earlier was now overrun with hundreds of bands, as labels both big and small documented the explosion.
1978: The Year the UK Turned Day-Glo is a three-disc box set that features 79 tracks, offering a well-curated overview of the length, width, and depth of punk and its variants in the year
the Sex Pistols broke up. (The majority are from the U.K., though the Electric Chairs and
Johnny Thunders, two American acts that enjoyed greater popularity abroad than at home, also make the cut.) Compilers David Wells and John Reed have assembled an impressive selection of good-to-brilliant recordings, running the gamut from scene stars (
the Jam,
the Boomtown Rats,
the Stranglers) and future legends (
the Fall,
U.K. Subs,
the Cure, and the Coventry Automatics, soon to rename themselves
the Specials) to the hopelessly obscure (
the Exits, whose sole release existed in an edition of 500 copies), and folks whose punk rock parodies actually turned out to be great punk records (
Jilted John,
Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias). The set also shows how the initial 4/4 stomp of punk quickly made room for any number of subgenres, including power pop, mod revivalism, and even the dawn of post-punk. Wells' liner notes include information on every act here, and they're fun reading, as well as providing thumbnail histories of a number of bands even most punk loyalists have never heard of. (It's also amusing to note that for every band of kids inspired to pick up guitars by the first salvo of punk, there was another formed by experienced musos jumping on a bandwagon that seemed simple and lucrative.) Even the most devoted punk collector is likely to find a few tracks here that aren't in their personal library, and
1978: The Year the UK Turned Day-Glo is a thoroughly enjoyable collection documenting a year full of great, passionate music. ~ Mark Deming