r/postpunk

Manchester, June 4th, 1976: the Sex Pistols play the Lesser Free Trade Hall to somewhere between thirty and fifty people. Buzzcocks organized it. Devoto and Shelley booked the hall after seeing the Pistols in London, then couldn't get a full lineup together in time to play themselves, so they made their live debut at the second show, July 20th, alongside Slaughter & the Dogs.

The room across both nights allegedly held Ian Curtis and Bernard Sumner (not yet in a band together), Morrissey, Mark E. Smith, Tony Wilson, and Martin Hannett: more or less the entire production chain of Manchester post-punk, years before most of it existed. David Nolan's book I Swear I Was There is still the closest thing to a documented account, though even he admits a chunk of the guest list is self-reported decades later by people who wanted to have been there.

I own a bootleg 7" of the gig, "I Swear I Stayed for the Encore E.P.," on a fake Chiswick label, and wrote up the full "alleged" attendee list and more background here, if anyone's interested:

https://www.thesenseofdoubt.com/blogs/archive/the-gig-nobody-agrees-on-sex-pistols-at-the-lesser-free-trade-hall-1976