Sham 69 reading festival 1978 movie#

Pursey was totally hacked off with the aggro and it must have been overwhelming performing in front of around 15,000 people on the Friday. Here’s some audience reaction, with emphasis on the out-of-control Sham 69 set: This page has incredibly exhaustive information about Reading 1978, including audience testimonials, pictures, and information about the VHS releases. The intensity of the performance and the audience reaction led to some scuffles and then some between the “punkers” and the “longhairs,” and Jimmy Pursey of Sham 69 became incredibly frustrated at the violence-see more on that below. Whereas in the nocturnal Ultravox and Jam footage there’s some distance between audience and performer, when Sham 69 plays it’s still daylight and everyone’s on top of each other, the stage is jammed with people and the intense, pogoing audience is right there. The Sham 69 rendition of “The Kids Are United” is so intense that you could practically put it in a time capsule to represent punk. The Jam are excellent as always (although Paul Weller was unhappy with the sound and was aloof towards his punker fans), but the revelations in this footage are Penetration with Pauline Murray and Sham 69 with Jimmy Pursey. In addition to lots of galvanizing live footage (which looks pretty darn good in the transfer, considering it’s from a VHS tape), there’s also a bunch of interview footage with Paul Weller from The Jam, Jimmy Pursey of Sham 69, and so forth.

Sham 69 reading festival 1978 movie#

(These seem to be the same movie both were directed by Peter MacDonald, anyway.) The videos are only available in VHS format, but wonder of wonders, the entirety of the Kids Like Me + You video has been uploaded to YouTube, and it’s a treat. The first day of the event, Friday, August 25, featured the likes of The Jam, Sham 69, Penetration, as well as The Pirates and Ultravox, and the day was scintillating enough that two different VHS videos were produced of it, The Kids Are United and Kids Like Me + You.

1978 was the year that punk invaded the Reading Festival.