4. DischargeHear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing

Discharge do write short pop songs. They’re like punk rock haiku. I love Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing and still listen to it regularly. To me it’s not only a great punk rock record it’s also a very psychedelic record, which may not seem normal to most people.

Of all the records I ever listened to while tripping on acid, this is the one that sounded the best. You’d think with the lyrics and the cover that it would be a scary proposition. It was more like getting wrapped up in the sound. The guitars sounded like they were in a hall of mirrors, there are so many layers bouncing back and forth. You can almost kind of view the whole record as one long song, or a piece with these little movements. I’ve obviously thought about it way too much while tripping on acid!

From that era – the early 80s – I was really into Discharge, Crass, Zounds, some of the other Crass bands, but a lot of the other stuff like Peter And The Test Tube Babies seemed really dumb to me and weak. I didn’t get into Oi! bands. They’d tend to have these dumb singalong choruses and chanting and the guitar parts always seemed to be like "the box" – a four-fret pattern.

Of course I loved a lot of the earlier UK punk rock bands. That’s a problem with these lists where you have to think of thirteen albums. I can’t fit The Damned in there, I can’t fit Pere Ubu. I could but I’d have to take something out and all these records are equally important to me. It’s like choosing between children or favourite grandparents!