Here's three chords, now form a band

In 1976, Mark Perry's 'Sniffin' Glue' fanzine printed a 'call to arms' in the form of the above diagram. 'Here's three chords, now form a band'. Thousands did. The UK was once more in the grip of a 'DIY' musical movement that was brash, loud and exciting.

I say 'once more' because twenty years earlier, the UK had had its first 'DIY' musical movement - skiffle. We'll get on to skiffle's definition, history, and leading lights in due course, but by way of explanation let me say that I'd looked for a blog on skiffle on the internet and found there weren't that many sources, hence my decision to create my own blog.

It's not, in all probability, going to be the definitive source of all things skiffle, but I hope it does provide some insight into a short-lived phenomenon that would give way to the all-out assault of rock and roll. It remains, however, an important step on the route to the UK leading the world in popular music in the 1960s, with many of pop music's leading lights -those they call 'the legacy artists' today (Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page) having their own beginnings in the skiffle craze of the 1950s.