Radio Gonzo

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. For me it was one of the crappiest of times. I was a student at a minor, and not very good, public school which shall remain nameless, and it was either the end of 1976 or the beginning of 1977. I would like it to have been the end of 1976, because otherwise this story really doesn't make that much sense. I was one of the chosen few who bought a 7” single of the Sex Pistols' 'Anarchy in the UK' in a long defunct record shop in Barnstaple which has now been replaced by a rather nifty health food shop. However, although I was an enthusiastic convert to the new spiky sounds of punk, and even more so to the Year Zero mentality and the DIY ethic, for the last three decades I have been convinced that the Sex Pistols were not the first punk band that I heard. No, that honour went to a band called The Vibrators whose first single, 'We Vibrate', totally blew me away. As I told John Ellis, their guitarist, this afternoon as we had our second wide-ranging discu