Streets (punk album)
First Beggars Banquet release, early punk compilation.
Streets is a compilation album featuring early British and French punk rock bands from various independent record labels. It was the first album released on Beggars Banquet Records, with catalogue number BEGA1, and was conceived as an end-of-year roundup. The sleeve notes described 1977 as the year music moved from concert halls to the streets, with independent labels emerging and major labels losing control.
Quick Facts
- Released
- End of 1977
- Genre
- Punk rock
- Label
- Beggars Banquet
Facts from the source article.
Release and reception
Streets marked the first vinyl appearance for both the Members and the Doll. The Members’ track on the compilation helped them land a contract with Stiff Records. Within a year and two months of the album’s release, each band had scored a UK Top 30 single: the Members reached number 12 in January 1979 with “The Sound of the Suburbs,” and the Doll hit number 28 in December 1978 with “Desire Me.” The album also featured “Talk Talk Talk Talk” by the Reaction, a song that later became a hit as “Talk Talk” for Mark Hollis’s next band, Talk Talk.
Critic Robert Christgau named Streets one of the few import-only 1970s records he admired but left out of his 1981 guide. A 2004 trakMarx review of classic punk compilations called it “the first real collection of ‘highlights from independent British labels’ ever undertaken” and “utterly groundbreaking stuff.” The Punk77 website rated it an “excellent” compilation. Two tracks—Slaughter & the Dogs’ “Cranked Up Really High” and the Nosebleeds’ “Ain’t Bin To No Music School”—appeared in Mojo magazine’s all-time best punk singles list. Another track, the Drones’ “Lookalikes,” earned similar acclaim in a best-of list from Steve Gardner of NKVD Records.
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