V.A. Hope & Anchor Front Row Festival (1978)

Hats off to whoever did the bookings for the Hope & Anchor, a pub in Islington that championed first pub rock in the mid-seventies, then later punk rock as the decade wore on. Judging from the line-up for the pub's Front Line Festival that took place in late 1977, that booker had a deep sense of music's past and its future. Early sixties survivors like The Pirates and Steve Gibbons (and facsimiles of the same like the Pleasers) sit beside their pub rock disciples like Wilko Johnson, Tyla Gang and the Dire Straits, alongside older vets gone punk like the Stranglers, The Only Ones and 999 all of whom jostle with young punk upstarts like XTC, the Saints, X-Ray Spex (and don't forget reggae greats Steel Pulse!)



01 Wilko Johnson Band - Dr Feelgood
02 The Stranglers - Straighten Out
03 Tyla Gang - Styrofoam
04 The Pirates - Don't Munchen It
05 Steve Gibbons Band - Speed Kills
06 XTC - I'm Bugged
07 Suburban Studs - I Hate School
08 The Pleasers - Billy
09 XTC - Science Friction
10 Dire Straits - Eastbound Train
11 X Ray Spex - Let's Submerge
12 999 - Crazy
13 The Saints - Demolition Girl
14 999 - Quite Disappointing
15 The Only Ones - Creatures Of Doom
16 The Pirates - Gibson Martin Fender
17 Steel Pulse - Sound Check
18 Roogalator - Zero Hero
19 Philip Rambow - Underground Romance
20 The Pleasers - Rock & Roll Radio
21 Tyla Gang - On The Street
22 Steve Gibbons Band - Johnny Cool
23 Wilko Johnson Band - Twenty Yards Behind
24 The Stranglers - Hanging Around



Hope & Anchor Front Row Festival double L.P.