PlanetSlade's latest free feature offers seven years' worth of trivia, anecdotes and gig reviews from my old diaries as a music fan at the height of UK pub rock, punk and ska. I started the diaries in 1975, when I was just 16, and ended them in 1981.

Among the gigs I saw and wrote about in those diaries, you'll find a 1977 Clash show in a sweaty little club (plus the NYC appearance which gave us London Calling's cover two years later), Lynyrd Skynyrd supporting the Stones at Knebworth, pre-fame encounters with both Ian Dury and Shane MacGowan, the Damned becoming the first punk band to play a major London venue and a couple of wonderfully chaotic revue tours by Stiff and 2-Tone. John Peel and the NME also figure pretty strongly.

Live music in Britain has never been more exciting than it was in that period, I had an almost indecent amount of fun and you can read all about it here .