Jon Savage's 1976 Something Was Going To Happen

A vinyl-only two-album set featuring the revered pop culture pundit’s choice of singles from a year that culminated in the release of the first punk 45s. Here’s Jon himself with the background.
OK, here’s the situation. The Top 10 best-selling singles of 1976 included just one banger – Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’ – and a variety of horrors topped by the Brotherhood Of Man (‘Save Your Kisses For Me’) and Elton John and Kiki Dee (‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’). At #7, after a couple of smooth US rockers, was another horror: ‘Fernando’ by Abba. Down a bit at #16 was perhaps the most egregious example of a bad year: the Wurzels’ ‘The Combine Harvester (Brand New Key)’.
I was 22/23 at the time. Old enough to have grown up with a fabulous, vibrant pop arena in the 60s, right through to the mid-70s when glam began to lose power, but young enough to still want an energetic, exciting teenage culture which I singularly was not getting from ‘Jeans On’ by David Dundas. I was living in Chester, in a bedsit far from home, and those serial chart-toppers haunted my existence. It was as though everything pop had promised had turned to dust, was just a rotten lie presided over by simpering Radio 1 DJs.
Then, in April, imported from the USA, came the Ramones – a jump cut into the present, future, now. For me the year was broken into two halves: before and after. Before, I was listening to Dr Feelgood, David Bowie and outsider funk, looking for anything that was not bland. After April, it was just the Ramones, and records that fitted the accelerant template, or that just sounded rough and aggressive – singles and cut-outs you could buy at Rock On in Camden or Rocks Off in Soho Market.
The other soundtrack was dub reggae, the records I heard on the streets in Ladbroke Grove or booming out over sound systems at that year’s carnival. ‘Police And Thieves’ was the sound of that summer but I was gripped by the kinetic deconstruction of Augustus Pablo’s “King Tubby Meets The Rockers Uptown” and the playful, sharply observed moods of Keith Hudson’s “Pick A Dub” – both of which were released in 1974/75 so are not represented here. Another obsession was Burning Spear’s “Garvey’s Ghost” dub album.
Some mainstream hits got through – such as Candi Staton’s survivalist epic ‘Young Hearts Run Free’, Blue Öyster Cult’s Byrds-noir ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’ and 10cc’s pop symphony ‘I’m Mandy Fly Me’ – plus some weird disco records. But I was fast streaming into something else. I was a pop obsessive, so I knew something was going to happen that would take me over. I could read it in the music press and feel it in my bones. In October 1976, I found it.
For this compilation, same rules as usual: singles only, roughly chronological by UK release dates. Slight liberties have been taken with Roxy Music and Buzzcocks, but both existed in some real form during 1976. As usual, around two-thirds are records I listened to at the time and that meant something to me, while the remainder I found more recently, filling in my understanding of the year. ‘Shack Up’ is a good example: I heard it through A Certain Ratio and found the Banbarra original in the bins shortly afterwards.
There is a slight reduplication with Ace’s “1972-1976” CD of a few years ago, but in reworking the period for vinyl I’ve added many new songs and also tried to wrest the track listing away from total pre-punk. That’s not what I was listening to exclusively that year, and the energy of those pre-punk records works well with the Europop of Hot Blood – demented disco – or the irresistible guitar funk of Miami’s ‘Kill That Roach’. Hovering over everything are the Jamaican sermons from Junior Murvin, Burning Spear and Max Romeo. So are we ready? Let’s go!
Fold-out cover artwork by PHILIP DIGGLE.