The place is Grasmere Avenue, Coventry.
The year is 1977.
I’ve just finished my evening meal. It was something quite modest on a Thursday as we didn’t have much money. Something like fish fingers and mashed potatoes with frozen peas. Possibly followed by a butterscotch Angel Delight.
I had a lot of homework – a staggering amount of homework, in fact. I’ve never worked so hard since then. The remnants of the old grammar school system.
However I would always ensure to give ‘Top of My Pops’ my full attention. It generally promised more than it delivered. Glam rock was just a memory by this point, and although The Sex Pistols and The Stranglers were in the charts, so was a heap of novelty records and tame disco.
Rita Coolidge came on and there was nothing to quicken the pulse of a 15 year-old there. But next Kid Jensen, bravely disdaining to future-proof his name, announced a band from Australia called The Saints. This didn’t bode well. I was unaware of any decent Australian bands. Olivia Newton-John and The Bee Gees may have been the only artists I knew from that country and neither bespoke good pedigree.
I then experienced a two-minute epiphany, similar to the one three years previously when I’d seen Sparks for the first time. Years later I read Jon Savage’s book “England’s Dreaming” about the punk years and he described the song thus: it "speeded up the ‘Paint It Black’ riff into pure extinction. "This Perfect Day" is almost too fast: The group nearly come off the rails before singer Chris Bailey brings everything to a grinding halt in an extraordinary cluster of negatives.” He later said the song was, "the most ferocious single to ever grace the UK Top 40."
Then, 47 years later, I got round to seeing the band live for the first time. Earlier this week at the Northcote Theatre in Melbourne, in fact. Ed Kuepper wrote the song and he was there on stage, as was drummer Ivor Hay, although the original vocalist Chris Bailey is no longer around. It was a sell-out and it was great.
And here are some other days of our lives to accompany it:
Tracklist:-
This perfect day, The Saints
Digital, Joy Division
Long day, Medications
This is the day, The The
Tomorrow, Tanukichan
Monday morning, Death Cab for Cutie
By tomorrow, Black Tambourine
My favourite wet Wednesday afternoon, The Siddeleys
Favourite day, European Sun
Dog days, Dehd
Monday, Slow Fiction
Slavery days, Burning Spear
End of the day, Beck
These days, St Vincent