London, UK · punk · power-pop

999

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First-wave London punk with a power-pop instinct that made them unusually durable — 'Homicide' and a catalog of sharp, hooky singles still delivered at full pelt.

999 formed in London in December 1976, part of the first wave of British punk. The band was founded by brothers Nick Cash, on vocals and guitar, and Guy Days, on lead guitar; Cash had previously played in the pub-rock band Kilburn and the High Roads, and Days had worked as a session guitarist. Bassist Jon Watson and drummer Pablo LaBritain, who had briefly played with the Clash, completed the original line-up.

The band took its name from the UK's emergency telephone number and played its first show at Northampton Cricket Club in January 1977, adopting the name 999 that May. They became regulars at the Hope and Anchor in Islington, and their self-financed debut single, "I'm Alive", built a following in the punk clubs before United Artists signed them around the same time as the Buzzcocks.

Their records paired the speed and bluntness of punk with a strong pop instinct: hooks, harmonies and guitar lines closer to power pop than to the genre's more austere corners. "Homicide" remains their best-known song, and singles such as "Emergency" and "I'm Alive" helped build a following in Britain. Five of their singles charted in the UK Top 75 between 1978 and 1981, with "Homicide" reaching the Top 40.

Between 1978 and 2007 the band released fourteen singles and twelve studio albums, including the self-titled debut, which reached number 53 in the UK, and Separates, produced by Martin Rushent and issued in the US as High Energy Plan. Extensive American touring in the early 1980s pushed their third and fourth albums, The Biggest Prize in Sport and Concrete, onto the Billboard 200, a durable following unusual among their British peers.

The band has continued performing across the decades, having undergone only two permanent line-up changes since forming in 1976. That longevity led one critic to call them one of the longest-lived groups of the punk era. Their live sets still run at the pace of the original recordings, decades on from the first-wave scene that produced them.

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punkpower-pop