The year of punk, at last! For many people punk rock appeared in 1977 with the silver jubilee and all that, but the first stirrings were in 1976 hen those of us who religiously read the NME and Melody Maker every week and listened to John Peel after lights out had heard about all the activity and then, towards the end of the year, finally got to hear Anarchy in the UK.

So why isn’t Anarchy in the UK the song of the year for me? Well it came out towards the end of the year and that year was one with a glorious summer. It seemed to go on for ever. Our school was in the middle of the Essex countryside and we had good facilities for a state school. For months we would spend our free time making good use of the swimming pool and then laying out on the field outside to dry off, playing tennis on the hard courts or the grass courts, or practising our athletics. At the end of the afternoon we would often be in the main common room listening to the radio.

Sunshine was everywhere and so was music. Although many of us were devoted to prog rock, metal and were completely ready for punk, it was the pop chart music that soundtracked that summer for us. There are dozens of great songs from 1976 that could represent it for me. To name but a few:

• Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac
• Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word by Elton John (or anything off the Blue Moves album)
• Year of the Cat by Al Stewart
• Music by John Miles
• Let ’em in or Silly Love Songs by Paul McCartney
• I Wish by Stevie Wonder
• Golden Years by Bowie
• The Boys Are Back In Town by Thin Lizzy
• All By Myself by Eric Carmen
• Dancing Queen by ABBA
• If You Leave Me Now by Chicago (memories of our school disco slow dances)

Hearing any of those will send me right back to that summer, in such a way that I get flashes where suddenly and for a split second my mind is there and I can picture a place where I was at the time. I love the experience when you don’t just remember a time and place but inhabit it, albeit very briefly. For Proust it might the taste of madeleines that does it, but for me it is hearing Daddy Cool by Boney M.

And it wasn’t just singles by now. At school we could sign out a record player and set it up in a classroom to play our records. Groups of us would bring along our own albums and so we had access to a greater pool of music than just our own few. Because of the random way that records were acquired, the ones available were not always the big sellers and so some fairly obscure albums in the outside world were common currency at school. For example, a favourite of mine at the time was Imaginary Voyage by Jean-Luc Ponty. I think I picked it up because I recognised the name from when he was a guest musician on Elton John’s Honky Chateau album. Another abum that got a lot of play in 1976 was Infinity Machine by Passport. I still listen to it now and recommend it, especially the track Ju-ju Man.

Apart from that, we were steeped in Black Sabbath, Brand X (because of the Genesis connection), Rod Stewart, Thin Lizzy (Jailbreak and Johnny the Fox in the same year!), the mandatory Frampton Comes Alive, and the ever-present Genesis and Elton John. I can’t imagine schooldays without Genesis and Elton John and 1976 was the year of Blue Moves and A Trick of the Tail.

Out of all that, I have plucked Lido Shuffle and that is partly out of guilt. It was a song that was always on the radio that summer and it was well liked, but I feel guilty for not following up and listening to more Boz Scaggs. The album Silk Degrees was heavily advertised in the music press but nobody at school happened to have a copy so I never heard it until much later when I bought the CD. It is a masterpiece. Apart from the four singles it also has Georgia and We’re All Alone. I really think my life would have been improved by owning Silk Degrees in 1976 instead of the album Starz (by Starz).

Lowdown might be a better song with a better hook, but it was Lido Shuffle that was the big hit for us so that is my song for the year, even if I was a bit tempted by Roadrunner by Jonathan Richman as well.