Going raj over The Rezillos

HOW well I remember watching Nationwide in 1977 and seeing some kind of risible news item about "punk rock coming to Scotland".

The main thrust of the film concerned an Edinburgh-based band called The Rezillos, who sounded appallingly tinny, looked completely wrong and, in the film, appeared to be playing in a village hall to an audience of three hippies and a shepherd.

I dismissed them with a sneer and concentrated on whatever the next Nationwide item was; probably about that bagpiper who leapt out of a plane playing Amazing Grace, and whose soft landing on his own bagpipes resulted in the most rewardingly ghastly noise this side of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.

The next time I came across The Rezillos was when they supported The Ramones in the Glasgow Apollo in December 1977 - an eat-my-words exercise of unparalleled proportions. They were just dynamite, a hyperactive comic book melange of "mondo sleazo" 60s tat and punk rock energy, dressed like interplanetary castaways and furiously deploying every trashy 60s dance in the book.

I was an instant convert, and I ran pell-mell to the record shop the following day to hunt down their debut single, Can't Stand My Baby. In those pre-Proclaimers days, it was a real novelty to hear Fay Fife singing in her native Scottish accent, peppering the lyrics with Edinburgh slang ("Ah'm gauny go raj") and memorably declaring "Ah can't stand up - let me sit DOUWEN", all of which seemed tremendously exciting and even a little daring in those primitive times.

I eventually got to support The Revillos (the "revitalised" Rezillos) and even bought a guitar from Fay's co-lead vocalist Eugene Reynolds.

Unforgettably, he met me in the centre of Edinburgh by roaring up on an old Indian Chief motorbike, with his face covered in chalky green make-up, then led me to the tenement flat he shared with Fay Fife. The front door had been sprayed fluorescent pink, and there was a full-sized Dalek in the hallway - not to mention several of those round 60s Hoovers, which Eugene was in the throes of converting into guitar amplifiers.

That was the wonderful thing about The Rezillos: there was no significant divide between their stage personae and their everyday life. They wouldn't have been caught dead wearing "civvies", and they genuinely walked it like they talked it: exhilaratingly.