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On this day, 14 June 1977, London Punk band Generation X played Cardiff’s Top Rank.
The band played in front of a 350 crowd, with Steve Strange acting as the band’s roadie.
On 16 February 1977, the band went into a studio for the first time to record a demo session of five songs at De Lane Lea Studios in Wembley, North London, sponsored by Chiswick Records.
Later in the year, Generation X's first record was released by the band itself in the form of an unmarked white label for promotional purposes, with the song "Your Generation" as its A-side, and "Listen" as the B-side, taken from the De Lane Lea demo session. 250 copies were initially pressed, followed by another 500 copies, all in unmarked white paper sleeves.
In mid-March 1977, amidst a heavy performance schedule in London and increasingly beyond the confines of the capital city into England's provinces, a gig had to be abandoned at the University of Leicester mid-performance, due to Derwood Andrews requiring hospitalization from being struck on the head by a beer bottle thrown from the crowd.
In mid-April 1977, having just played their first international date in Paris in a joint billing alongside the upcoming bands The Jam and The Police, and recorded their first live radio session at the British Broadcasting Corporation's Maida Vale Studios, John Towe was asked to leave the band by James and Idol as they felt that his style of playing was too overt for what they wanted from a drummer, and James, the band's strategist, had come to the view that Towe's personality did not fit with the image that he was formulating the act into. Towe moved on to join a new outfit called Alternative TV.[25] He was replaced on drums by the 18 year old Mark Laff from North Finchley, recruited from Subway Sect after an extensive audition process for the vacancy organized by Idol and James in May 1977.
From June to August 1977 in between gigs the band practiced in a rehearsal space in the basement beneath a Beggars Banquet record shop in the Fulham Road.
In mid-July Generation X signed a recording contract with Chrysalis Records, and went into Wessex Sound Studios in North London for the band's first formal recording session for commercial release. Under the supervision of the producer Bill Price the session proved to be abortive due to the band being unhappy with the results, and Chrysalis Records sought another producer, which it found in Phil Wainman.
At the end of July 1977, the band worked with Wainman at Morgan Studios in Willesden, recording its first single "Your Generation". Wainman was not impressed with the musical ability of the band, particularly with Laff's technical proficiency or with Idol's capacity as a singer, and in response to Idol asking for his opinion during production as to whether he thought Generation X were "going to make it", answered with some dubiety.
On release at the start of September 1977, "Your Generation", with a b-side of the high-energy disaffected punk-rock song "Day by Day" (with a title taken by James from the recent publication of Robin Day's autobiography), went to No. 36 in the UK Singles Chart, after being critiqued by Elton John in a review column in the Record Mirror as 'dreadful garbage'.
The band played the song on Marc Bolan's afternoon variety show, Marc, a few days later using Granada Television's Manchester studio instruments for the performance, afterwards making off with the drum-kit and being banned by Granada for 10 years as a result.
