Now is the time, or will be when you read this, when all good rock critics (and bad ones too) start summarizing and assessing and listing like lunatics. It’s the easiest column of the year to write: the best records of 1976. Trouble is I’m not a good rock critic nor a bad one either. I’m not 'a rock critic at all BECAUSE I DON’T GET ENOUGH FREE RECORDS! It’s just dandy in the States. Put “Rock Critic” under your bell-push and the records start appearing on your doormat like beer stains. But English record companies are like English rock critics— mingy and full of protestant ethic. You don’t get anything for nothing in our music business and to get an album you have to practically publish its review in advance. Like I called up RCA to ask for a copy of Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band which sounded, what I’d heard of it, real neat but maybe not worth $5.82 of my money. The girl on the phone sounded like Miss Herring, my class -teacher in primary school. “What do you want it for?” Hmmm. “I might do a column for CREEM on disco music, British vs. American?” “To the best of my knowledge,” she said, “CREEM is an American magazine and Dr. Buzzard is an American group. This is, if I may say so, a very cockeyed way of going about things.”

I agreed and she was nice and I got the record but it didn’t seem such fun then and most records aren’t worth $5.82 pr this hassle and the point I’m trying to make is that this is a very cockeyed end of the year list because most of the records of ‘76 I’ve never heard. Who knows what Rod Ste wart’s latest album or Eric Clapton’s or Dylan’s or the Stones’ or Wings’ or Stevie Wonder’s are really like? I don’t even know what Elton John released tbis year. My record collection is as accidental as most non-rock critics’. I don’t care. These were the best British records of 1976 and it wasn’t a bad year: