New Music No.1: The Sound Of The Streets

OK so New Music No.1: The Sound Of The Streets is not a book, but a magazine of around 60 pages that came out in early 1978. It was a curious fact that going to your local newsagent in 1977/1978 you would happen on magazines like this or poster mags for The Stranglers and Sex Pistols on the shelves alongside similar items for the Bay City Rollers or disco.

Quite why this magazine came out will always be a mystery but it was not a cash-in in any way. Ok it covers the usual Sex Pistols, Clash, Stranglers and Damned biggies but then goes on to genuinely shine a light on some of the smaller bands. So you get The Jolt, New Hearts, Eater, Sham 69, ATV, X Ray Spex and then even obscurer bands like Trash, The Flys, Blitzkrieg Bop, The Doll, The Depressions and hell even Skrewdriver! There’s a Lightning Records advert in there which I assume is why features on Kane and The Mirrors make it in there. It’s packed with photos and designed really well with its use of dayglo colours. Graphics were by Martin Studios.

The info on the bands isn’t fluff either. The guy writing about the bands genuinely knows his stuff about them and things going on at the time like McLaren managing The Slits.

So who is the writer? It’s a guy called Roger St Pierre. You can check out his introduction to the magazine below. The attitude and feeling are right but the language feels like someone trying too hard to sound punk.

It turns out that Roger (in his late thirties at the time of Punk) was like John Peel; a serious lover of music. He did PR and Promotions that included Bill Haley, and James Brown and was involved with getting Althea & Donna to number 1 in the singles charts. He ran record labels and wrote prolifically for New Musical Express and, under his Peter Kent pen-name, Record Mirror and Sounds.

He was the launch editor of 2 disco magazines –  Disco Mirror and Disco International & Club News (the end of the New Music intro has ‘Disco Sounds’ as being the next magazine and he probably would have edited that as well!) and was the key writer of the famous NME Book of Rock and wrote books on Jimi Hendrix, Bon Jovi, Ike & Tina Turner, Ah-Ha, Bob Marley and Madonna.

There was no area of music that this guy didn’t know or write about. he genuinely loved it all and though this magazine sounds like your dad sometimes trying to be hip with the kids I prefer his positivity to the rancourous sanctimonious negativity of Bushell & Parsons. His full bio is here.

Enjoy his intro.

Bright lights. Big city. Fast cars. Rock Roll bars. Gutter incidents. Police siren. Red hair. Leather jacket. Neon shirt. Thin tie. White lies. Backstreet backlash. Head throb. Downtown debris. Bourgeois boutique. Dole queue rebellion. School burning. YOUTH! YOUTH! YOUTH!!! —


Something is happening at last!

The beat of the street has finally arrived. No false messiahs please. We want the real thing this time round, thank you sir.

After years of being mollycoddled by gossamer thin heroes with a smile on their face and a wad in their wallet, at last the kids have caught on, seen them for what they really are — rich and lazy. Instead of sitting round admiring heroes from a distance, at last we’ve demanded some people we can touch, talk to, relate to. No jive. No leaping in that limo Mr. Star it won’t do no more.

Tired of the concert hall, we’ve built up our own centres of attraction, The Roxy, The Vortex, it doesn’t really matter where it is or what it’s called, as long as OUR music is playing there, we feel at home. Somewhere where we can be ourselves. Okay Mr. Natural stare in through your dirty window. Read your paper. Laugh behind our backs. Point, even though by your rules that is rude. No one, be it in town, city or isolated splendour, can have failed to notice that something has happened. Life has been brought down to our level. The view may not be pretty, but it is real.

No more tired preaching. No more telling us what to do, what to wear, what to listen to. Haven’t you heard? Something has changed.

Oh, it has been a long time coming, but it has arrived. Don’t try your cosy little “Seen it all before” jibe neither, because it won’t work, mate. The past is irrelevant. People have begun to think about today for a change instead of dwelling on the immortal yesterday and tomorrow. We’ve got to live life for the present, enjoy what we can of it. Complain about the things we don’t like. Be heard.

Can all of this really come about because of a change in musical style? Do we owe it all to the new wave, punks, blank generation, new order, call it what you will, It has arrived and it is here to stay.

Oh, the sceptics said it wouldn’t last a few weeks. That was in November ’76 when the shit initially hit the fan. How many of those have run out to get the latest fashionable punk gear down the posh shop? Too late.

HOW many frustrated musicians saw the light of day and realised that they had just as good an opportunity as anyone else to get up there and play and that once you make a step others will surely follow? Oh there are the sheep, of course. That’s the sort who see a new sensation like The Pistols doing something different and just go and copy them. Oh, how original. Don’t they realise they could be different too if they really tried? Too much like hard work huh? After all can’t miss the bandwagon can we? Two years ago it would all have been impossible, now it may be time to restock our energies and prepare for the second attack.

This seems like a good time to look at some of the names and faces of the people that have helped it all happen. It’s happened from Scotland to Manchester to London to Swindon to Dublin and beyond. From The Bears at Watford to The Zeroes of Walthamstow, from The Saints of Australia to The Ramones of New York.

Okay, so it took a while to sink in. The music papers were sceptical at first. Sounds leapt in feet first, swam and survived the high tides, NME hesitated and followed, then Melody Maker and Record Mirror. We got our own magazines, done our own way, to express things the way we thought fit at our own level and by our own methods. If the big record companies and stores don’t want to sell our records we’ve proved we can do it just as well. And it goes beyond the immediate boundaries of what is termed new wave, for where would groups like the Tom Robinson Band, Boomtown Rats and Eddie and the Hot Rods be without the wider accepted standards the movement has brought about.

This mag is dedicated to all the people who have made the whole damn thing possible, to the bands — big and small —(sorry we couldn’t fit you all in), it is for anyone who has had a good night down The Roxy or The Vortex, for anyone who has reacted to the new sounds that have been hitting us silly for the past 18 months. Most of all it’s for YOU,


‘NEW MUSIC’ is published and printed in London, England by Julian Bloom Printing Limited., Unit 7 King’s Yard, Carpenters Road, London E.15. The next issue will be entitled ‘DISCO SOUNDS’



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