Pissing In A River

I am a big fan of the Rough Trade Shops 'Counter Culture' annual compilations. Or at least, I became a fan after Graham alerted to me to them...They are 2 CD compilations of the RT shop staff's favourite tracks of the year, and whilst there are a few mainstream-ish tunes on them, it's mostly pretty leftfield stuff across a lot of different genres.

For this year, they have issued Counter culture 1976 to accompany 2006, and my cds arrived yesterday. Most of the tracks from 2006 are new to me, and I do like a lot of them, but in comparison with the 1976 disc, which includes The Ramones, Candi Staton, The Saints, Dennis Brown, Patti Smith, Nick Lowe -they seem rather forgettable. Not that I remember any of that stuff - in 1976 I was 8 years old and under attack from the ladybird swarm that descended that summer, and it was well before I even thought of buying any records - 'Everybody Wants To Be A Cat' was where it was at for me in those days...