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1977

Released:
Apple Music Spotify
Tracks
  1. Lose Control
  2. Goldfinger
  3. Girl From Mars
  4. I’d Give You Anything
  5. Gone the Dream
  6. Kung Fu
  7. Oh Yeah
  8. Let It Flow
  9. Innocent Smile
  10. Angel Interceptor
  11. Lost in You
  12. Darkside Lightside
  13. Sick Party (Hidden track)

Alternative versions

UK Limited Edition

The first 50,000 pressings of the CD contain two extra tracks, “Don’t Know” and the original version of “Jack Names the Planets”, which both play before track 1.

Japanese Edition

Contains the original twelve track album plus two bonus tracks.

  1. T-Rex
  2. Everywhere Is All Around

Release details

  • Label: Infectious Records
  • Catalogue number: INFECT40
  • Formats: CD, 12” vinyl, 12” black & white splatter vinyl (2022 re-issue), Cassette
  • Charts: UK: 1
  • Producer: Owen Morris

Info

The name of the album is a reference to the year of three events which shaped the band - the births of two members of the band, the year Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was released, and the year the first punk albums were released, though it has been suspected that the Star Wars reference is the most important; the album opens with the sound of a TIE Fighter, and ends with the track “Darkside Lightside”, whose title is a Star Wars reference, and which also ends with a choral version of the Star Wars main theme. All versions of the album contain the hidden track “Sick Party”, which comes in several minutes after last track “Darkside Lightside” and features lots of drunken, foolish behaviour.

The sleeve image of a street in Amsterdam nearly delayed the release of the record as the photographer had died and the band couldn’t get hold of the widow for clearance of the shot.

On July 1st, 2022 the band remastered and re-issued the album on limited edition black and white splatter vinyl.

Quotes

Tim speaking to Jo Wiley in 1996 about the inspiration for the artwork:

We were trying to come up with a cover and we had a week to go or something. So we rang our designers, Bryan Cannon, round at his place and we were trying to think of something. We stayed up all night for two nights trying to come up with something and eventually we find this picture of a street, which was taken in Amsterdam or something, in 1950s. It is actually turned on its side and a copy of it turned on its side again and joined together in the middle. It looks really bizarre, it has got all these, it has got a mad perspective thing going on.

Tim speaking to Noisey in 2015 about the albums various hidden tracks:

I wonder how the hell we found out about that, because there’s a weird glitch in the CD manufacturing that you can do that. It’s probably out of the mind of our manager or the label. It was quite a small team at the time, but between all of us we were always trying to find inventive ways to do things. That was fucking cool!