1977 - the year punk broke

"Of course, there were plenty of bands making straight punk rock, and 1977 rounds up some of the best. At the top of the pile are the Damned (whose "Neat Neat Neat" is practically a blueprint), but bands like Satan's Rats, the Lurkers, and 999 aren't too far from the top. The collection does a fine job showing how the punk sound wasn't quite monolithic (yet) and there was room for bruised romantics like the Only Ones, old hippies like Larry Wallis, and even a woman or two. X-Ray Spex's brilliantly caterwauling "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" proved that punk wasn't a complete boys club, just mostly. Along with all the solid gold there are some chintzy knockoffs and parodies, but luckily the compilers kept those to a bare minimum just to show they existed. These few tracks are certainly skippable and they don't detract from the raw, rugged, and real history lesson the rest of the collection provides. 1977 was a vanguard year for music, and Cherry Red does a brilliant job excavating and polishing the gems, both obvious and obscure".

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"... these 87 tracks include many too old and musically proficient (Stranglers), pub rockers (Graham Parker), electro-futurists (Ultravox), even heavy metal (Motörhead), all carried along by the new waven because they were attitudinally plausible, and had killer tunes".