THE ULTIMATE POST-PUNK C-78

When I got big into digitizing my vinyl, it extended my already-crazed obsession with creating personal compilations of music, which started off in the 80s as tapes for potential girlfriends (who didn’t do that, right?) and continued into self-loving compilation tapes for myself. Then in 2000 I bought a car with no tape player, but with a killer CD sound system. When combined with a long commute to work, and these new digitization capabilities, many new 78-minute compilation CDs were born.

One particular “C-78” that I made back in 2004 – the C-78 reference is a respectful nod to the C-60 and C-90 nomenclature previously reserved for blank tapes – was a response to Jon Savage’s article on post-punk in a 2003 issue of MOJO magazine. Savage made a pretty solid list of 1976-1981 songs that stood aside from punk by virtue of their general weirdness and/or instrumentation, or both, while still being very much informed by it. No one has ever seemed to have come up with a better moniker than “post-punk” for this music, ridiculous as that descriptor is, considering that many of the best post-punk tracks were made before or during what’s commonly referred to as punk’s heyday. “Post Punk” is meaningful only in the sense of being a catch-all term – i.e. those bands and artists who built upon 1977 punk with new instrumentation, song structure and a more “artful” approach while retaining the aggression or the experimentation inherent in the medium. I’m comfortable with it, even if others aren’t.

I made my own list of classic post-punk songs from the 1976-1981 era, then pulled out the vinyl and the CDs and made a 78-minute CD out of my pickings. In what will probably become a more frequent occurrence here at Detailed Twang, I’m uploading the whole thing for you in a .zip file, so you can download it and burn it into your own CD (or put in into iTunes or whatever it is you kids do these days). I’m strongly considering making a second volume soon that takes in some classics that I left out, like THE MISFITS’ “Cough/Cool”; RED TRANSISTOR’s “Not Bite”; the VIRGIN PRUNES’ “Twenty Tens” and SPK’s “Mekano”. In 2004, these are the songs that I thought would represent both my tastes, and the entire “post-punk” genre, the best.

Track list

1. PERE UBU – Street Waves

2. DESPERATE BICYCLES – The Medium Was Tedium

3. THE NORMAL – Warm Leatherette

4. GANG OF FOUR – What We All Want

5. MARS – Helen Forsdale

6. THROBBING GRISTLE – United

7. TWINKEYZ – Aliens In Our Midst

8. JOY DIVISION – No Love Lost

9. SWELL MAPS – Vertical Slum

10. YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS – N.I.T.A.

11. THE FALL – Prole Art Threat

12. GORDONS – Adults and Children

13. URINALS – Black Hole

14. DOW JONES & THE INDUSTRIALS – Ladies With Appliances

15. DELTA 5 – You

16. CABARET VOLTAIRE – Nag Nag Nag

17. METAL URBAIN – Panik

18. ANIMALS & MEN – Don’t Misbehave In the New Age

19. MISSION OF BURMA – Max Ernst

20. SEEMS TWICE – Salient Feature

21. TWO BY FOURS – Little Cities

22. SHOES THIS HIGH – The Nose One

23. FLIPPER – Sex Bomb

24. BILL DIREEN & THE BILDERS -- Alien

25. NEW ORDER – Everything’s Gone Green

Download “Detailed Twang Ultimate Post-Punk C-78” (this is a .zip file)