THE YEAR IN...POST-PUNK/ NEW WAVE

In 1978, the Sex Pistols were disintegrating, and punk calcifying as literalists like Sham 69 attempted to carry on in its “true”, reductionist spirit, which would eventually degenerate into Oi. John Lydon was growing weary of Sid Vicious’s glassy-eyed nihilism, of manager Malcolm McClaren’s treatment of the Pistols like pawns in his own neo-situationist game. With a parting shot of, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” onstage in San Francisco at the start of the year, Lydon dropped his mic and quit the group

- David Stubbs

In his absence, the Pistols’ moral and creative bankruptcy would see them bringing in train robber Ronnie Biggs and singing jovial songs about Belsen.

Concurrent to all of this was a wealth of activity in the great crater they had left on their original detonation, with much of it impacting on Top Of The Pops, under the banner of new wave, a quirkier, more codified take on punk’s reset to basics. Some of it was highly intelligent, a remaking of pop with a sense of irony and of pop-as-commodity: The Rezillos’ Top Of The Pops, for example, which they performed on the show, reaching No 17. Or there was X-Ray Spex, fronted by Poly Styrene, using plastic product to critique both sex symbolism and consumerism on the likes of The Day the World Turned Day-glo.

Elsewhere, however, new wave seemed to be a mere matter of jerkiness and guttural vocals a la Elvis Costello. He was masterful, his acolytes on Stiff Records less so. The dreary Airport by The Motors, meanwhile, felt like an example of the moltenness of punk cooled right down to a grey functionality. XTC, led by Andy Partridge and influenced as much by Beefheart as punk, were angular, competent but no more, while Squeeze were craftsmen, creating durable, South London-inspired songs for the ages, without exciting any great revolutionary impact.