A daytime gig before the appearance that evening at St John's. This was the first of at least two Soft Boys appearances at Strawberry Fair, a yearly Cambridge tradition since 1974 and reportedly still going.
Date for Strawberry Fair confirmed by a note collected alongside the setlist for this 14 Oct 1977 gig.

Photo from Robyn on social media in 2025
Throwback Thursday: ‘Twas the Summer of Hate: 1977. All across the British Isles hair was being cut, flared trousers discarded, and beards shaved off as Punk took control. If you couldn’t embrace raw Punk you had to at least bend the knee to New Wave, or become a laughing stock. For us up in Cambridge this took a while longer to come into effect than in London, the country’s nerve centre. Indeed, in isolated rural areas such as Lincolnshire there were reports of flares being worn as late as 1979. Here you see me playing an acoustic set at Strawberry Fair on Midsummer Common, Cambridge in June 1977, still with facial hair. I had pruned it somewhat, but was waiting for the nod from my partner of the time to shave it fully off. This came only days later. Minus beard, I was qualified to become New Wave, as were the rest of the Soft Boys while we sped up our material and my songwriting became increasingly paranoid. It was not a great time, as I experienced it, but there were some wonderful moments and that has to be enough. The Soft Boys mutated rapidly as our personnel changed until the Underwater Moonlight line-up fell into place two years later and we began to create that fabulous album. And there were still flared trousers in Lincolnshire…