This post is one of a series describing my top ten London punk songs
From what I can see, kids these days don’t know what it’s like to be really, really bored; they’re missing out.
More often than not, boredom drives you to DO SOMETHING and in 1977 this meant finding a crappy guitar, learning a chord or two, joining a punk band and writing songs about being bored, a virtuous circle.
999‘s ‘Another Tulse Hill Night’ describes the utter tedium of living in a dreary suburb of south London in the mid/late 70s.
What’s happening?
What’s going on?
Every day is just the same
You sit around
Or hang around
Your best friend’s the telly
You gotta get out
It’s another Tulse Hill night for you
999 Specialised in fast, poppy punk-rock, the critics didn’t like the band but we did, we knew better.
The first couple of albums and early singles still sound rather thrilling, the kind of tracks that demand you play them LOUD, I can’t help but feel energised and un-bored when I listen to 999.
My south London twitter correspondent @bobfrombrockley tells me the place is now ‘fully gentrified’ though that doesn’t mean it’s any less boring, just more banal estate agents and ‘artisan’ coffee shops.
I passed through Tulse Hill a couple of years ago on a bus heading south, it didn’t look like much was going on.