I had the pleasure recently of meeting the legendary Kevin Cummins when he exhibited at the Lucy Bell Gallery in St Leanards, East Sussex while promoting his latest book “So It Goes - Punk And The Aftermath “

Punk music played a massive part during my teenage years in the late 70’s.

One of my weekly rituals was to buy the music papers that would hit the news shelves on a Thursday morning, always Sounds & NME, (New Musical Express was for the dinosaurs).This would be our guide to what gigs we would travel to over the next week or so, (this was the pre-internet age).

The music press was my introduction to Kevin’s work. Living in the south, the northern scene was unreachable to me, those superb Manchester bands where rarely within my reach, but the reviews of these gigs where often published along with Kevin’s photographs.

So It Goes encapsulates the the northern punk scene, the author was in a unique position, working so closely with The Buzzcocks and several other pivotal bands, he was totally imsersed within that scene.

As I mentioned the punk movement had a big influence on me as it did many others of mt era, talking to Kevin and reminiscing about this time was great.

Congratulations Kevin on the publication of your latest book, in my opinion a great piece of work well worth a few quid!

As for my copy and the B’dum B’dum annotation, if you weren’t there you won’t get it!