1988 - The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion - Caroline Coon

 1988 - THE NEW WAVE PUNK ROCK EXPLOSION - CAROLINE COON

More so than Virginia Boston's 'Shockwave' book, Caroline Coon's 1988 - The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion once acted as an inspirational blueprint for the punk rock scene in its ascendency. What Caroline did was to capture punk both at its embryonic stage and - some might say - at its height. More so than any other book apart possibly from Ray Stevenson's 'Sex Pistols File', 1988 was the punk style bible that became required reading.

Based on a series of interviews Caroline conducted between July 1976 and June 1977, her book captures a vision being born. The remarkable thing about it is that at the time, she was almost on her own, being one of the few journalists astute enough to realise the importance of the Sex Pistols and the movement she foresaw them inspiring. As she explains in the introduction, she first saw the Pistols in March 1976 at the Nashville in London but on floating the idea of writing an article on them to her editor at Melody Maker music newspaper she was practically laughed out the office. It was a whole five months later that her proposition was finally accepted and in August 1976 one of the first articles ever printed on punk was published, starting with the line 'Johnny Rotten looks bored'. The rest is history.

Like a lot of music journalists at that time, Caroline had been heavily involved in the late Sixties/early Seventies hippy counterculture. She had been in attendance at the UFO psychedelic nights with Pink Floyd, written for Oz magazine, defended and supported Oz at their obscenity trial, and even co-founded Release - the free, independent drug charity.

The difference between Caroline and many of her fellow travellers, however, was that rather than mocking or even being frightened of the new, emerging punk attitude, she recognised the similarities between the two cultures and their shared oppositional positions to the mainstream. Punks were the antithesis to hippies, for sure, but the commonalities were undeniable.

'What's so different about youth today?' she asks The Clash during her interview with them. She's met with silence. But then Joe Strummer stands up and almost relishing the drama of the moment, turns around to reveal the stark, hand-painted graffiti on the back of his boiler suit that says 'Hate and War'. It's the hippy 'Love and Peace' motto but reversed, of course. And right there, like a line being drawn in the sand, history was in the making and Caroline Coon was there recording it.

Interestingly, Caroline ends the book with the words 'Whatever happens now, the force of punk rock will be felt in society at least until 1988'. Hence the title of the book. A whole fifty years later, though no longer viewed as a 'force' as such, punk is still with us in multiple guises with even many of the original school of '76 bands still performing to mixed-age audiences.

The fallout from the 'force of punk rock' is another thing entirely. Punk rock changed lives. Some for the good, some for the bad. Some for the better, some for the worse. Punk rock ruined lives but again for some even in this it was for the best. Like an eternal paradox.

Punk rock was never the be-all and end-all of life as we know it but for those caught in its explosion at whatever period or stage of it, it certainly made life a bit more interesting than the staid, generic version sold as being 'normal'. Better a punk life than a life punked. And as for Caroline Coon? Her legacy is safe but she still deserves to be honoured once in a while and our praise to her offered.

John Serpico

Shockwave - Virginia Boston

 SHOCKWAVE - VIRGINIA BOSTON

As this is its 50th anniversary, punk rock is in for some serious revisionism over the coming months and so, when in Rome, as they say. Shockwave by Virginia Boston was one of the first books to catalogue the very early days of punk although on being published in 1978, because things were moving so incredibly fast with urgent dispatches from the frontline in the form of new, iconic records being released on a weekly basis, it was already somewhat out-of-date.

Not that it mattered, however, because Shockwave acted almost as a drawing of breath. A sort of pit-stop before plunging once more onto the super-highway of cultural discourse. Punk was - it's important to remember - centred on music though this wasn't its sole reason for being of value. Punk was a multi-faceted and multi-dimensional thing. Punk was anything you wanted it to be and was there to take whatever you wanted from it. Punk was a free-for-all. 

Shockwave starts with a quote that says 'It was going to go down as one of the most boring decades in history I should think musically. The Seventies will now be a landmark in history because of what's gone on'. The quote is from Jordan, described as being 'Punk personality'. Nowadays, of course, we all know that Jordan was in actual fact the queen and punk was her once mighty kingdom.

Shockwave is a scrapbook, essentially, composed of photographs, quotes and snippets of lyrics; and that's not to belittle it in any way as there's absolutely nothing wrong with a good scrapbook. From the introduction you can tell it's been written just after the Sex Pistols have split up in San Francisco so therefore Public Image Ltd have yet to be formed, The Clash haven't quite left England for America, Stiff Little Fingers are yet to land, and Crass have yet to rear their angry heads.

All the usual suspects from the '77 school of punk are featured in glorious black-and-white snapshots but in addition to this and just as importantly, there are lots of photos of the audiences and individuals within those audiences. This in itself speaks volumes in regard to the punk idea of levelling the playing field and breaking down the wall between audience and performer. Here it is - within the pages of Shockwave - in practice. Underscoring this is also the amount of attention paid to fanzines and all the many quotes from their editors.

Shockwave is a good book and the enthusiasm it captures is palpable. Its purpose nowadays of course is to serve as a social document of a time now long gone but the problem with this is that if you're mad enough, you can end up paying up to £200 for a copy. The lesson in this is whatever you want it to be - that coincidentally is the same lesson to be gained from punk, really. The lesson is you.

John Serpico

Zerox Machine - Matthew Worley

ZEROX MACHINE -

PUNK, POST-PUNK AND FANZINES IN BRITAIN -

1976 - 88 -

MATTHEW WORLEY

Just as flyers and posters advertising concerts of the punk rock kind are ephemeral creations with but a singular purpose so too are fanzines also ephemeral though their purpose is manifold. Punk was always a myriad and diverse culture and therein was always its great strength which means anyone who cares to discuss such things, in a bid to find meaning they often end up rendering safe that which once enamoured and enthralled. For some, punk is a very uncomplicated affair and is easily described and even easier to understand and that's fair enough because - just as it can be for those who think punk is one of the most fascinating of cultures - even a basic understanding of it can be life-changing, life-affirming and worth its weight in gold. Likewise for fanzines.

For some, the fanzine medium is a very simple, very basic, almost primitive one but for others it's nothing less than a representation of the world turned upside down. Fanzines are history as recorded from below. They are the corpuscles in the bloodstream. An antidote to the mainstream. They are fragments of dream from a whisper to a scream. If as William Burroughs once opined, that language is a virus from outer space then a fanzine can not only be (as Tim Medlock of Bristol's 'Be Bad Be Glad' zine said) "a means to raise cash for booze" but also a form of biological warfare with the dominant culture.

For anyone who's ever written a fanzine, however much it might appear to be of little significance, the actuality of it is that in doing so it has fed into the great river flowing into the ocean of cultural fecundity, which in itself is nothing less than the expression of humankind that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Creativity is the spark that starts with scratches on the stone wall of the cave and proceeds to a rocket being launched to the stars. 'Art' isn't the right word for it as art comes laden with multiple contradictions. The only contradiction in creativity is that it's a destructive urge but then as arch anarchist Mikhail Bakunin said, you have to destroy in order to create. So right there is the perfect balance. The perfect totality. The perfect and authentic source of all things.

Of course, all of this that I'm writing here reads as just so much hyperbole in regard to what is essentially a few scraps of paper held together by some staples. And yes, that is exactly what most fanzines have always been but in that simplicity is a purity and on occasion that purity can be transcended, turning a fanzine into an inspired slither of inspiration. A fanzine can enthuse. It can excite. It can empower. It can move the reader to action.

One of the most well-known examples of this is 'Sideburns' fanzine from 1977 and its drawing of three guitar chords with the added words: 'This is a chord. This is another. This is a third. Now form a band'.

Who knows how many teenagers on reading that in their bedrooms were moved to start a band? Another subliminal message underneath, however, was even more powerful, made clear by simply having the imagination to change the word 'chord' to 'fanzine' as in: 'This is a fanzine. This is another. This is a third. Now write your own'.

Matthew Worley spent eight years writing Zerox Machine - Punk, Post-Punk And Fanzines In Britain 1976-88, and after ploughing through acres of tiny print that fanzines are notorious for, I hate to imagine the state of his eyes now. So has going half-blind been worth it? Well, seeing as how this is the most comprehensive book on the subject of fanzines that I've ever read, then I would say 'Yes. Without any question'. Matthew's book is definitive. For anyone interested but with little knowledge in regard to fanzines, Matthew's book is the go-to. For those already au fait with the subject there's an overload of information for your delectation here. So much so in fact that if you've ever written a fanzine between the allotted years as said in the title, there's a good chance you've been given a mention or if not you personally then the name of your zine. Hell, even my name is in there. Zerox Machine is comprehensive, to say the least.

Most people would probably agree that Mark Perry's 'Sniffin' Glue' fanzine is the touchstone and the point at which all this zine malarkey began although as Matthew rightly points out 'The fanzines produced through punk had tangled roots'. Sniffin' Glue was Mark Perry's response to the sudden sense of freedom that punk offered though apart from creating a fanzine (even if a seminal one) the question quickly arose as to what to do with that freedom? Pointed to the exit and given the keys it became apparent that freedom and even life itself is not black-and-white.

Punk was a freedom in itself of course even if it was only the freedom of the playground in between the tedium of the school lessons, and it was this freedom that Ripped & Torn zine revelled in. On a personal note, Ripped & Torn was where I first read about Crass in a review of their Feeding Of The 5000 EP, that in hindsight was a significant event not only for myself but also for Ripped & Torn's editor, Tony Drayton. 'This album's gonna split punk in two - those in it for the right reasons, and those who aren't', Tony wrote - and he was right.

Inspired also by the Crass phenomenon, Mike Diboll's 'Toxic Grafity' zine blew a hole in the fabric of fanzine production and expanded massively the potential for both political and mental liberation. Likewise for Tony Drayton's other zine 'Kill Your Pet Puppy', particularly his 'Ants/Tuinal/Crass' edition. These are some of the zines that Zerox Machine highlights as being significant players, and I'd agree. It begs the question, however, about what actually makes for a significant and successful fanzine? Is it a large readership? A transition from underground to overground? Transformation to hard covers? The truth of the matter is that there is no precise definition because once you begin thinking in terms of 'success' it means you've lost grip of the rope attached to the rising balloon you're hanging onto. It's the 'Withnail And I' analogy all over again but rather than selling hippy wigs in Woolworths you're selling product to be consumed rather than bullets from the front line and cultural missives from the heartland. 

Distribution and availability is important although it's not the be-all and end-all as just because something is easily available, it doesn't mean it's any good - and vice versa. These highlighted zines such as Sniffin' Glue, Toxic Grafity, and Kill Your Pet Puppy somehow found their way to Bristol where I was growing up so that's how I was encountering them although other significant ones that Zerox Machine also highlights such as Jamming! and Anathema and even Alan McGee's Communication Blur didn't make it there so they passed me by. A zine such as Bristol's 'Are You Scared To Get Happy?' on the other hand was obviously on my doorstep and is another that is highlighted as being a significant player and rightly so. In fact for the record, I'd say Are You Scared To Get Happy is one of my most favourite zines ever.

It's obvious from reading Zerox Machine that the subject of 'fanzines' is a huge one and as a book it offers much to think about and to discuss. Every other page opens up a new topic to explore in regard to notions of creativity, culture, punk rock and its diaspora, alternative politics, and - of course - music and the role it plays within society and in the life of the individual. 

There are insights galore into fanzines you've probably never heard of but will want to read after Matthew's synopsis of them. I knew nothing, for example, about the zine Final Straw and the arrests that followed its publication. And to my shame, I've never read a copy of 'anti-zine' Monitor either. There are names dotted about throughout Zerox Machine that are familiar such as Martin Fry (of ABC) Mike Scott (of The Waterboys), Miki Berenyi (of Lush), Fatboy Slim, Ian Astbury (of The Cult), Dave Haslam, Steve Lamacq, etc who all started out from writing zines and who all went on to so-called greater things, plus numerous others who 'progressed' from zine writing to becoming mainstream journalists. Matthew also offers insights into certain individuals who were once prominent figures in the world of fanzines and DIY punk such as Andy Martin of The Apostles, Jon Savage and Mick Mercer. All laid out, I should add with the text on each page in two columns rather than the usual full-page block, making for a much easier-on-the-eye read.

But back to hyperbole: If you understand the meaning of the lines from William Blake's Auguries Of Innocence as in 'To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour' and more importantly recognize these lines to be true, then you should also have the wit and the wherewithal to be able to apply these lines to the medium of a fanzine? Just swap 'grain of sand' and 'wild flower' for the word 'fanzine' or even 'a few scraps of paper held together by some staples' then you're there. 

And if you're able to do that then you should probably get hold of a copy of Zerox Machine because it's more than likely you'll really enjoy and appreciate it.

John Serpico

Not Just Bits Of Paper - co-edited by Greg Bull and Mickey 'Penguin'

NOT JUST BITS OF PAPER -

CO-EDITED BY GREG BULL AND MICKEY 'PENGUIN'

Some might find it hard to believe and others impossible to comprehend but there was a time when the Internet didn't exist. A time when there was no Facebook, no X, Instagram or even MySpace. 'But how did you message anyone?' all the children ask in wide-eyed wonderment 'Or did you not message anyone ever and just sit instead around the piano of an evening singing songs?'

'Well, we had landline telephones and there were these things called 'pens' that you could write a letter with and send to people by something called 'post'. Have you heard of it?'

But by this time the attention of all the children has wandered so you instead open up your copy of Not Just Bits Of Paper and cast your mind back to slightly more interesting times when communication required effort and was a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

Not Just Bits Of Paper is a portal into a world now diminished, a world where the importance of specific bits of paper cannot be overstated. Not that these bits of paper had any intrinsic purpose beyond the sole reason they were produced for - that being to advertise and publicise events - though paradoxically, without it ever being stated or even considered they also represented nothing less than a vision.

The bits of paper we're talking about here are the flyers and posters created to announce upcoming concerts of the more 'earthy' punk rock type prevalent throughout much of the 1980s. Black-and-white, made with scissors, glue, pens, Letraset and found images. Utilising the 'cut'n'paste' method rather than desk-top publishing, then photocopied, fly-posted, stuck up in record shops, given out by hand and sent out by post enclosed with fanzines and cassette tapes purchased from various mail-order lists.

This was the way we communicated before the advent of the Internet and social media. Slow, time-consuming, sometimes wearisome but effective.

Many of these flyers and posters could be really basic in design and layout whilst others could be veritable mini-works of art. All, however, whatever the quality of them were meant to be throwaway. Ephemeral. To serve their one purpose then binned, which is what most people tended to do with them once the publicised event had passed. Very few people thought of saving them and those who did so saved them essentially for the sake of it. Not for having an eye on one day them being collectible or of any possible future monetary value to anyone. They saved them without thinking and for no reason but saved them - thankfully - they did.

Unlike nowadays, back then hardly anyone took photographs at concerts so the flyers and posters advertising these events are the only physical evidence of a lot of them ever happening. For sure, they're held in memories but memories tend to fade so the flyers and posters compensate, prod and serve to remind. Just as importantly if not more so, however, these flyers and posters - these bits of paper - acted at the time as seeds blown on the wind, as conduits for messages. Weaving gossamer-thin threads between not only friends and neighbours living in the same city, town or even village but between strangers and people of like-mind living in cities throughout the whole country.

It was subliminal. Unspoken. Like tiny beacons being lit on top of hills or flares being shot up into the night sky. These bits of paper acted as signals announcing an alternative to mainstream entertainment, mainstream news and even mainstream values. Announcing a vision. They were the corpuscles in the bloodstream of an underground punk culture that sought legitimacy not through commercial success but through the instigation of consciousness raising, further creativity and political action. Just as fanzines and concerts themselves were deemed to be, these bits of paper were the very life-blood of that punk culture.

Co-edited by Greg Bull and Mickey 'Penguin', Not Just Bits Of Paper collates a wide selection of flyers, posters and handouts from the anarcho punk era of the 1980s and for posterity lays them out and presents them in all their ragged, torn and tattered glory. As to be expected, Crass are heavily represented alongside The Mob, Flux Of Pink Indians, Antisect, Conflict, Poison Girls, Chumbawamba plus many more others. Thoughts are collected also in essays of various length and size written by some of those who were there at the time. Noticeably and interestingly they're all written from the audience point of view rather than from any band members and in doing so adds a whole other dimension to the book. Quality-wise these essays differ and again that's only to be expected but in among them are some very well-written pieces indeed, most noticeably from Ted Curtis, Rich Cross, Tristan 'Stringy' Carter and in particular one by Tim Voss.

Not Just Bits Of Paper documents a period in time that is unlikely to be ever repeated again. A period in time that impacted mightily upon a significant number of people to such an extent that their lives were inexorably altered - some say 'ruined' - for the better. A period in time that though now long gone still resonates, and that under the noise and technology-driven haste of modern day living still echoes.

John Serpico

Fight Back - Punk, Politics And Resistance - The Subcultures Network

 FIGHT BACK - PUNK, POLITICS AND RESISTANCE -

THE SUBCULTURES NETWORK

The obvious question to ask in regard to a book called Fight Back - Punk, Politics And Resistance is 'What's the point of it?' What is its intention? What is its aim? If writing about music is like dancing to architecture, then what is writing about punk as a space for political expression and action? According to the blurb on the back cover, the book's objective is 'to advance general and scholarly understanding of punk and youth culture more broadly, and to reveal the importance of youth culture as a site of political expression and to stimulate scholarly interest in the relationship between subcultures, popular music and social change.'

So it's a crash course for the ravers? A drive-in Saturday?

If approaching this book either as a reader or even as one of the contributors seeking or looking to provide an explanation of punk, then from the start you're barking up the wrong tree. If you need to have punk explained to you then it's obviously something not for you, so you might just as well spend your seed on some other more fertile ground so it might bear some fruit of actual use to you. If you feel the need to explain punk to others then you need to think twice and ponder the cliche about that which is taught by the teacher themselves need to learn the most.

That being said, what then is this weighty tome called Fight Back? What is this punk rock axe to grind? Well, without being overly dramatic, all this punk rock stuff is the stuff of life. Take away the 'rock' and what you're left with is the substance: Punk. Fight Back, then, is a collection of essays written by various academics and scholars and collated by the University of Reading-hosted Subcultures Network. And yes, it's a weighty tome but then so it should be, because it's a weighty subject it deals with. It's not a frivolous book, you might say.

If a tree falls in a forest and there's no-one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Is there any one singular meaning to life? The answer is ultimately 'yes' but when you think you know it, you're most likely going to be wrong so instead it makes better sense to be aware of multiple meanings that will bring you just as much benefit on whatever level you're looking at it on.

It's an uncomfortable truth but as ethnobotanist Terence McKenna once said 'Culture is not your friend', and once you understand this then things can start to be put into perspective and can be seen as to what is important and what is not so. This then begs the question, however, that if culture is not your friend then is subculture even less so? It's a pertinent point and it's actually here that things get interesting. 

Punk was originally a subculture that following the Bill Grundy/Sex Pistols debacle became an overnight mainstream culture, entering into public discourse. With this transformation a lot of the nuances, subtleties and contradictions within the original punk idea were lost, to be replaced by much more simple and much more easier to communicate messages and signals. Due to punk's very contradictory nature, however, those nuances and numerous unresolved contradictions though hidden, remained like honey at the core. Like essence rare.

Punk in the cultural mainstream needed to be played out and its main players to crash and burn for the nuances and contradictions to take root. They needed to be left alone and shielded to allow them to grow and even flourish, to be later explored and encouraged. In one respect, this explains the later rise of the New Punk, Crass, and Oi! scenes.

And yes, there it is: the dreaded Oi! word. The subculture within punk culture that still to this day has - as Matthew Worley points out in what is one of the best essays in the book - resisted assimilation into the 'respectable' narrative that now binds punk more generally into the nation's cultural fabric.

Oi! is the bete noir of punk, politics and resistance because of its confrontational adherence to its working class origins, and why this has caused such a problem speaks volumes. Much to his credit, Worley approaches Oi! with an open mind and in doing so concludes 'meanings have been projected onto Oi! rather than drawn from it' and that in actual fact 'Oi! was far closer to what its adherents claimed it to be than it was to what its critics accused it of being.'

And what did Oi!'s critics accuse it of being? Racist, sexist, homophobic, violent and parochial. An incubator, essentially, for Right-wing ideology. The same Right-wing ideology spewed day in day out by the Daily Mail and the Telegraph to their middle class readerships but did you ever see a so-called Nazi bonehead reading these newspapers? No. Their chosen source of news would always be The Sun and the Daily Mirror, and whilst The Sun was always Right-wing it was on a comic level and never as insidious and mean-spirited as the Daily Mail, and never as humourless and straight-faced as the Telegraph. Worley concludes that the way Oi! was castigated is an early example of what is nowadays labelled the 'demonisation of the working class', which is basically the editorial policy of the Right-wing press. All in all it's a very good essay and one that needed to be written.

So too for Peter Webb's essay on 'Crass, subculture and class' if only for the fact that any book on 'punk, politics and resistance' that doesn't include Crass is either ill-informed or in denial. Essentially, Webb describes the milieu created around Crass that enabled people from different class backgrounds to come together and creatively work towards a shared though very individualistic transcendentalism. What the essay does as well - if even inadvertently - is to highlight that the areas in which Crass were strongest such as in their promotion of pacifism and their rejection of class were also their weakest - their Achilles Heels. 

The issue of class had always been a thorn in their side from the start but it was the Falklands War that brought it to a head. Rather than chastising themselves for being too slow off the mark for not including anything about the Falklands on their newly released album at the time, what Crass missed was that it was working class boys (on both British and Argentinian sides) who were being killed. That it was working class boys who were sacrificed to protect the ship that Prince Andrew was on. Come the miners' strike of 1984, it was working class mining communities that Thatcher was destroying, not 'classless' enclaves in leafy suburbia.

To Crass, class may have mattered less than not eating meat but in the end it was issues around class and the way to deal with them as in violently or non-violently that tore them apart. In hindsight, Crass were hoisted on their own petard and if not slain were mortally wounded by their enemies because they didn't understand their enemies. Taking on Thatcher, for example, without understanding that Thatcher was out to destroy working class power (in the form of unions) and working class ethics (such as helping your neighbour and community solidarity); replacing these things instead with an accent on the individual (as in 'no such thing as society') and greed being good, well - Crass politically were on a hiding to nothing.

For all that, Peter Webb's essay is useful and somewhat important in regard to culture and resistance because it gives rise for such questions on the significance of class to be considered. It's often like opening a can of worms, it should be said, but it's also something that shouldn't be shied away from.

At another tangent, Jonathyne Briggs in his essay questions why punk initially failed to take off in France, and actually it's a really interesting question. All the right ingredients were there for punk in France to become huge: Geographically it was just across the water from the London punk explosion, just a bit more of a distance in fact as that between London and Manchester. It was only 9 years after the events of May '68 so there should still have been elements and remnants of revolutionary zeal in France, embers still glowing and just waiting to be blown to life again by a fresh wind. The Pistols, The Damned and The Clash went over to France to play in the very early days of punk, before they'd even played a lot of places in England. Metal Urbain from France recorded a version of Anarchy In The UK and were the first band to have a record released on the Rough Trade label. And of course there were all the Situationist slogans adopted by Jamie Reid for the Pistols. 

With all this, punk should maybe have been even bigger in France than in England? So why didn't it happen? Briggs puts it down to any development of a French punk subculture being hindered due to being unable to find its own identity, becoming instead a caricature in terms of fashion and musical conventions. I'm not sure this is completely true but it's an interesting notion, particularly as it begs the question if whether 'the perception of conventions that govern subcultures also confound their movement?'

Giacomo Botta's essay on the other hand suggests the complete opposite, that punk represents a complex set of ideologies and practices that transcend any specific national culture, an example of this he cites as being the Colettivo Punx Anarchici of Torino, in Italy.

But then we have another essay concerning Czech punks and skinheads where the authors suggest that subcultural identity is, in part, determined by the nature of the dominant society in which it's situated and it's relationship to subcultures that differentiate against one another.

In another essay concerning punk in East Germany, the author declares that 'punk does not exist outside of the society but within an existing framework of values, expectations and social norms'. Which is probably more like it, if not indeed very true.

All of this and more goes to show that punk is a lot more than just heads down no nonsense mindless boogie, though it should be said that Fight Back isn't going to be for everyone due in the main to it being academic and the essays presented in that typical thesis style with lots of footnotes to back everything up. The foreword to the book is written by Steve Ignorant and call me a cynic but I don't believe for one moment that he actually read the whole thing. I mean, why should he? And if he did, then he would have spotted some of the glaring mistakes in one of the essays concerning the Crass and Small Wonder labels.

The afterword, however, is an interview conducted by Matthew Worley with writer Jon Savage, presented in a typical, fanzine-style verbatim question and answer format where Savage discusses the cultural impact of punk. It's a very good interview, full of interesting and thought-provoking ideas - and it's accessible. I'd wager, in fact, that if any of the book it would have been this part that Steve Ignorant read and if he didn't then he should have done because in it Savage heaps a lot of praise upon Crass.

Above all else, however, the important thing is that Fight Back is food for thought, and in an age of oven-ready Brexit deals, post-truth Trumpian world views, and of culture wars waged by neo-conservatives in free fall, this can only be a good thing.

John Serpico

Tales From The Punkside - An Anthology

 TALES FROM THE PUNKSIDE - AN ANTHOLOGY

There was a time when the story of punk and its whole narrative was structured and presented within extremely strict parameters, starting with the Sex Pistols and more often than not ending with their demise in Texas and the words 'Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?' Back then there was always an almost holy trinity composed of just three groups: the Pistols, The Damned, and The Clash, acting as an axis around which all other bands orbited. 

Since from around the mid-1990s, however, with the growth of access to the Internet the narrative has shifted so that rather than a top-down perspective as narrated by a very limited number of talking heads, the net has been cast wide and far so as to nowadays include practically anyone who has ever been touched by punk who might now care to comment. The history of punk and its rich tapestry can now be told from the bottom-up. Rather than a bird's-eye view going from A to B we now have a worm's-eye view going from A to Z and back again - and that's no bad thing.

Tales From The Punkside is a collection of anecdotes, academic articles and personal recollections by those who were a million light years away from the original punk inner-circle but who were actually the very lifeblood of it all. At the time, punk was meant to have been the last hurrah, the full stop at the end of awopbopaloomopalopbamboom! As Johnny Rotten once posited in one of his earliest interviews "We've got to destroy the entire superstar band system." The idea being that anyone can be a Sex Pistol, summed up neatly by the slogan 'No more heroes anymore'.

The truth of the matter, however, was that there was always two versions of punk sitting alongside each other and very comfortably it should be added. One version was the lived reality. The shared, everyday experience of the euphoria elicited from the punk rock rush accompanied by the danger and the potential for violence from simply wearing your heart on your sleeve. The other version was a media construct, placing all attention upon bands, individuals and records in a hierarchical system where everything and everyone was product to be bought and consumed. Bought up, beat up and souped-up, just another cheap product for the consumer's head.

The difference between punk and any other so-called 'youth movement' was that by the mid to late 1970s there was an accumulated cultural history behind it, acting not so much as baggage to be jettisoned ala the Year Zero idea but as a propellent. Punk came loaded not only with a musical heritage stretching back to Elvis but also with the societal and political fallout from the impact of past generations and their wrestling with the world they'd found themselves in.

Punk had been born in the aftermath of the hippy dream or rather to put it more bluntly, the hippy dream-induced hangover of the late 1960s with its attendant nightmare of a headache. It's for this reason that the events of something like May '68 in Paris and the impact of Situationism upon that period is significant as evidenced by a lot of the early punk slogans. Moreover, the significance of those early slogans and the subliminal messages garnered from them are the stuff of punk dreams that took on a life of their own and which could not be accommodated, recuperated or co-opted by the profit motive via the music business - though the music business certainly tried.

The messages, hints, signals, slogans, suggestions and ideas being emitted by punk were myriad and their meanings manifold but the beauty of punk was in how it was all open to interpretation. In this light for example, Johnny Rotten's simple use of the word 'destroy' at the end of Anarchy In The UK could either be interpreted as a byword to Sid Vicious-style self-destruction or as Bakunin's idea of the urge to destroy being a creative urge. The 'Anarchy for the UK coming some time' line from the same song could be taken as a promise or a threat. 'Got no time to mess around, got a brand new rose in town' as sung by The Damned could be interpreted as meaning either a new girl or as the arrival in London of punk rock itself. The Ramones singing about how they wanna sniff some glue and Mark Perry naming his fanzine after the habit could easily be interpreted as mere comic book provocation but at the same time also be interpreted as endorsement, leading to glue being viewed almost as a 'punk drug'. And so on and so forth.

In Steve Jones' memoir Lonely Boy, the ex-Pistol at one point wonders how and when punk became associated with squatting, and it's an interesting question. It wasn't until the early 1980s that songs about squatting began to be written as in Dirty Squatters by Zounds and Psycho Squat by Rudimentary Peni, so if it wasn't originally from lyrics that squatting became linked with punk, then where was it? From Joe Strummer, possibly, and his early days with the 101ers and their squat in Maida Vale? The answer is academic, of course, as is also the question of whether the association has been a good or a bad thing? According to writers Justine Butler and Rebecca Binns in Tales From The Punkside it's a mixture of both, though the subject certainly makes for two of the best chapters in the book.

Other chapters that stand out are those written by Francis Stewart about punk in Northern Ireland during the time of The Troubles, Lucy Robinson and her casting of a beady eye over punk and its relationship to academic studies, Ted Curtis and his rummaging through his memory box of his time as an anarcho punk in Bath, and Alistair Livingstone whose voice in the book is probably the most clearest and brightest.

Alistair draws together a number of strands from the punk tapestry and weaves them into a flurry of material endeavours to fulfill a vision of a better world, that world being one in opposition to the machinations of the music business and even to capitalism generally. A world, as Alistair puts it, where everyone is an anarchist. Alistair gives mention to Crass, the Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzine collective, the Autonomy Centre in Wapping, and the Stop The City protests of the early 80s; all essential and important off-shoots and extensions of the original punk idea.

Alistair Livingstone passed away in 2018 and his inclusion in Tales From The Punkside is a nod to his legacy as a pioneer in working out what all this punk stuff meant. The same can also be said of Tales From The Punkside as a whole in that if not quite blazing a trail, shines a light upon punk, opens the door on it that little bit wider, and discusses its meaning and its place in the world so that others might follow and discuss, examine and perhaps take it further? And in the same vein as the Crass Records releases of old, all for just 'Pay no more than 5 pounds'.

John Serpico

Harmony In My Head - Steve Diggle

 HARMONY IN MY HEAD - STEVE DIGGLE

The last time I saw Steve Diggle he was as happy as Larry. This wasn't round his house for tea and biscuits I should point out but onstage with the Buzzcocks at the Paradiso, Amsterdam in 2009. He was playing his heart out on his guitar, swigging from a bottle of Champagne and smiling ear to ear looking for all the world as if he was in his natural element which, of course, he was. Whether or not any chemical stimulant was adding to his happiness is between him and his lawyer but as this was Amsterdam there was a slim chance it might have been. And why not? When in Rome and all that...

Harmony In My Head is Steve Diggle's autobiography, ghost written by Terry Rawlings, and it's a rollicking read full of of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. All the things, in fact, that you could want from an autobiography. There's also plenty of insights as you might expect in regard to the early Punk days, the Buzzcocks, and life in England during that whole Punk era with Diggle coming across as a genuinely affable, working class bloke possessed of a wit and intelligence that has seen him weather and survive decades of both personal and music business highs and lows. Moreover, he comes across as the kind of bloke you'd want want as a friend that you would very much treasure as such.

'People have forgotten just how desperate it was living in England during the early Seventies,' Diggle says, and it's true. History has a way of being written by either those with a vested interest or by those with a hankering for nostalgia, hence why as promoted by the tory press that decade is always depicted by images of piles of uncollected rubbish, striking workers, and the three-day week. The entertainment industry in the meantime depicts it as a golden age of glam rock, Hollywood blockbusters, and 'traditional' comedians telling 'traditional' jokes.

Being born into this world meant being born as mere cannon fodder fit only to be a spectator to the spectacle. Active participation in the world and the shaping of it was denied, leaving the likes of Steve Diggle with his nose pressed against the window watching life go by outside and an often ludicrous life at that. He sums it up by describing a night at the Manchester Free Trade Hall watching Patrick Moraz from prog rock group Yes, onstage with 'a fucking shop's worth of keyboards, banks and banks of them, with all those jackplug socket boards that looked like a telephone exchange. It was ridiculous but that wasn't all. Half way through a number he jumped up and blew into a 15-foot Alpine horn. That's when I knew I'd been had.'

From seemingly out of nowhere, however, the Sex Pistols suddenly appeared and from experiencing them came the notion that you don't need money or permission or even talent - you just need ideas even if those ideas are above your station.

'The message was 'Do it yourself',' Diggle tells us. 'I can't emphasize how important this was at that time, how important it was for music in this country. There were a million people on the dole and here was a band saying 'Get up off your arse. Express yourself. You can do it'. The barrier had gone between the ordinary kid on the street and the musician on the stage.'

Hence the Buzzcocks and punk's first double entendre - suggesting a vibrator - and a name as good as a Sex Pistol. Hence Spiral Scratch, the Buzzcocks debut EP on their New Hormones label that according to Geoff Travis of Rough Trade was the first independent record people really wanted. Hence a slew of classic, near-perfect singles that when compiled onto a single album - Singles Going Steady - made for a classic, near-perfect album. Hence for Steve Diggle a life of creativity, travel, art, sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.

Diggle's a candid raconteur and reveals things of interest in a very matter of fact manner, much of which I'd not even considered. I didn't know, for example, that the song 'Harmony In My Head' was inspired by James Joyce's Ulysses, one of the best though most difficult books in the world. I didn't know 'Love You More' was at the time the shortest ever A-side single released  in the UK, clocking in at just one minute and forty-five seconds. I didn't know that on signing to United Artists that the label at first refused to press 'Orgasm Addict' as they thought the word 'orgasm' was disgusting. And then likewise with 'Oh Shit', the B-side of the second single, 'What Do I Get?', where the pressing plant staff actually walked out.

And then in regard to original Buzzcocks bassist, Garth, whom little is really known about to the point of him being somewhat of a punk rock enigma, Diggle informs us he was a 'massive truck driver-type of a guy, a huge build of a man, a proper bruiser' who happened to have a certain propensity for fighting. Garth would fight with bouncers (six at a time on one occasion), band members themselves (Pete Shelley once, for buying the wrong size batteries for his ghetto-blaster), and even whole audiences, one time in Leeds wading into the front row after someone spat at him only to result in the entire stage being pelted with bottles and glasses and the band having to flee the venue for their lives.

Being a self-confessed, life-long conscientious objector to the 9-5 work ethic, Steve Diggle has successfully navigated and dodged every imaginable sling and arrow that a life of being a rock'n'roller (and a punk one at that) could possibly throw at him - and he's still standing. Harmony In My Head is a testament to that mighty endeavour and that most noble of achievements. 

John Serpico

Fashion & Perversity - Fred Vermorel

FASHION & PERVERSITY - A LIFE OF VIVIENNE WESTWOOD AND THE SIXTIES LAID BARE -

FRED VERMOREL

Has there ever been a band as much as the Sex Pistols where legend and truth have become so entwined as to become near impossible to distinguish between the two? But then 'When you have to choose between truth and legend' as Factory Records supremo Tony Wilson once said 'Print the legend', and he's a man, of course, who was an expert in such matters. This is the premise on which Fred Vermorel bases the first chapter of his book - Fashion & Perversity, A Life Of Vivienne Westwood And The Sixties Laid Bare. In fact, Vermorel takes it one step further and titles the first chapter 'Vivienne Westwood: An Imaginary Interview', it being exactly that. It's Vermorel taking liberties with everything he can recall Vivienne Westwood saying to him over thirty years of knowing her along with what she's said in interviews.

Now, who's to say if everything in this book is true or absolutely none of it? There's always been argument and confusion among the Pistols' band members themselves even over such simple things as who wrote what lyrics so who knows? According to Westwood in Vermorel's 'interview' for example: 'No one really knows who wrote the lyrics. Sometimes it was everyone, including me, in a pub, pissed. We'd come up with lines and slogans and somehow a song would emerge. Like 'Anarchy In The UK.' That was written one evening in a pub under Centre Point.' Is it any wonder there was such a fight over royalties come the end?

Other such declarations strewn throughout the 'interview' are equally questionable but at the same time equally interesting and even somewhat amusing. 'At one time Malcolm wanted me to go to Madame Tussaud's and set fire to the wax effigies of The Beatles. I thought that was inspired. Only I was worried it might start a fire and someone would get hurt.' Which, whether true or not is indeed an inspired idea. A perfect situationist stunt, even.

'It does make me smile nowadays when John Lydon says that ideas like situationism had little to do with the Sex Pistols, and that he was what counted. In fact, maybe it was John himself who had little to do with the Sex Pistols? 'Johnny Rotten' was really just a face and a mouthpiece for ideas John was often too uneducated to understand, and attitudes he was too cowardly to follow through.'

When it comes to the question of situationism there's an awful lot of evidence to point to the idea that it was in actual fact absolutely everything to do with the Pistols.

'To break through the wall of indifference Malcolm and Jamie Reid and the others around us used the sort of Dadaist tactics they'd learnt about at art college. Shock and provocation and outrage. And then more of the same. Never let up, never give in. Like the situationists they wanted to 'create a situation in which there was no going back'. Burning all bridges, going for broke.'

So might this also have included the idea to promote a blow-up Sid Vicious sex doll? Or Malcolm paying Teds to beat up punks in the King's Road?

'We were trying to start a war,' Westwood is quoted as saying, and everything right down to her T-shirt designs was all part and parcel of this. A prime example being her 'Which side of the bed' T-shirt. Composed of two lists, on one side of the shirt was everything that was hateful in British culture and on the other side everything that gave hope. 'Which side of the bed was like which side of the barricade are you on?'

And on the subject of barricades this is where Fred Vermorel comes into his own, specifically in regard to the barricades thrown up on the streets of Paris in May of 1968. Vermorel was there and in the second chapter of his book writes intelligently and very eloquently about it. Entitled 'Growing Up As A Genius In The Sixties' this particular chapter is wholly autobiographical and is all the better for it.

'Paris in May '68 was an ideological 'slippage', Vermorel writes 'A vertigo of discourses which projected political non-sense centre stage.'

On the building of the barricades, Vermorel describes how cars were shunted into the middle of the streets with cafe tables and chairs and debris added, echoing the French Revolution itself, not to mention the Paris Commune of 1871. Because more and more working class youths had started turning up from their suburbs out of curiosity and in the hope of giving the police a good hiding, the barricades began to go up in earnest - up to seven feet high. These were sons of the street and veterans of building sites so they knew how to build properly as opposed to the amateurish efforts of the students.

According to Vermorel, however, the incursion of these working class youths was not always to the students' liking who were often perturbed at the ease and panache of the street fighting of these newcomers, along with their lack of proportion and propriety and their obliviousness to liberal idealism and polysyllabic rhetoric.

At the time, nobody was acknowledging that rioting is actually serious fun and that cars being set on fire is a beautiful sight. Vermorel even suggests a metaphorical link between a riot and a collective orgasm. Describing the Grosvenor Square riot of 1967 as being less a revolution than a rugby scrimmage, Paris '68 in comparison was the moment when the imaginary burst its banks after reaching the famous situationist 'point of no return'.

The combination of student politics, working class hooliganism and situationist groups made for a heady cocktail, one that would later be commodified through the Sex Pistols and Punk. It's an analysis and an argument that Vermorel convincingly weaves, comparing the relationship of the Situationist Internationale with their student and working class 'cannon fodder' to the Sex Pistols' management team's (Glitterbest) relationship with the punks of 1976. 'Like the situationists, Glitterbest had access to an avant-gardist repertoire of examples which suggested that you can never 'go too far'. To go 'too far' was merely to enter history, timidity being the only barrier to success.'

Fashion & Perversity is an interesting addition to the Sex Pistols/Punk Rock/Situationist/May '68 canon, written by someone who by chance and acquaintance was at the centre of these cultural/political cyclones. Years later in the 1980s during Malcolm McLaren's Bow Wow Wow period, Vermorel fell out with McLaren but remained friends with Westwood though it should be said the relationship between the three was always a strange one, almost like an unfulfilled menage a trois.

Come the end of the book, we see Vermorel diagnosing McLaren as having Tourettes and this explaining the way McLaren talks, his mannerisms and even his behaviour throughout his whole life - and Vivienne Westwood agreeing with the diagnosis. When thinking about it, it's a pretty strange thing to put into print in a book, based as it is merely on amateur and idle speculation no matter if it might be true or not? But then maybe it's meant to be taken as just another stitch in the tapestry? More grist to the mill falling somewhere between truth and legend? Which brings us once again back to the Tony Wilson adage: 'When choosing between truth and legend - print the legend.'

John Serpico

The Philosophy Of Punk - Craig O'Hara

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PUNK – CRAIG O'HARA

I don't wish to be too critical but if Craig O'Hara's book The Philosophy Of Punk is about the philosophy of Punk then it's very much like a Winnie The Pooh guide to global economics as practiced and analysed within the confines of Hundred Acre Wood. Winnie The Pooh's great, of course, and AA Milne's books can teach us many important and good things but at the same time, Winnie The Pooh is a fucking bear of very little brain who gets his advice from a frightened piglet by the name of Piglet.

It's all good and enjoyable stuff but you wouldn't really base your whole existence on earth and use as a guide to life the teachings of an imaginary bear in a kids book, would you? Not unless you're a Christian or a Muslim and you follow the Bible or the Koran, of course. Ha ha ha!

In his defense, O'Hara only wrote his book originally as a 'graduation requirement' for Boston University in America and it was only meant to have been read by three professors. Hence, because this was his entire intended readership he obviously felt he needed to explain the most simplest and basic things such as, for example, what a fanzine is: 'A magazine put out by Punks for and about Punks'. This is all well and good and perfectly reasonable but it needs to be said it does tend to lower the bar somewhat.

So, what have we got? What are the main tenets of Punk philosophy, or as O'Hara puts it, 'the Key Particulars of the Punk Philosophy'? Well, according to O'Hara essentially they're A: Anarchism (encompassing pacifism and direct action). B: Gender issues (encompassing sexism, feminism, and homosexuality). C: Environmentalism (encompassing ecology and animal rights) and D: Straight Edge.

O'Hara's main sources on which he bases his research are the magazines Maximumrocknroll, Flipside, and Profane Existence, along with the book Threat By Example. Again, this is all well and good but the problem is that whilst having a global audience they are all American publications and this means that though quoting a lot from such English bands as Crass, Chumbawamba and the Subhumans, it's all perceived and interpreted through the prism of American culture, an American education, and American-forged sensibilities. It's near-unavoidable for O'Hara to not do so.

We are all a product of where we are from, be it geographically, socially or economically. I am a product of my Englishness and my background just as O'Hara is a product of his which means, of course, that my perception of Punk is as much affected by these things as O'Hara is affected by his. We can try to meet in the middle and try and build on that which we have in common but it's never going to be a hand-in-glove fit and there's always going to be differences.

With this in mind, I would argue that these differences and these commonalities are political ones and right there is the nub about O'Hara's book. Rather than it being the philosophy of Punk that he writes about, it is in actual fact the politics of Punk. If viewed this way, the whole thing tends to become a whole other ball game. Philosophy is a way of interpreting the world but as Marx said, the point isn't to interpret but to change the world. And if the political ideas you espouse are not doing this then they are redundant and they need to be reconsidered, revaluated and then reapplied.

I wouldn't say O'Hara's book is totally redundant but it's fairly close to being so. It prods at a number of ethical ideas which makes for it being worthy but unfortunately being worthy nowadays doesn't really cut it. We may not be dealing nowadays with anything so stark as, for example, Nazi extermination camps but we are dealing with the kind of politics that leads to such camps.

Western capitalism is an abomination. It's been an experiment that has served its purpose and now needs to be reined in if not totally overthrown. It is a man-made system that is essentially destroying the world. It's as simple as that. For sure, we can see the benefits of capitalism but these benefits are greatly outweighed by the downside. For sure, we can see the goodness of man and his beauty, compassion and his empathy but we also see the stupidity, the selfishness and the greed.

Being nice to your neighbour and being anti-war in an abstract kind of way is a good place to start as from little acorns great oaks grow but in our heart of hearts we know it's not enough. The juggernaut of destruction has long passed us by and is now miles in front down the highway, leaving us as little more than road kill.

To bring the juggernaut to a halt we need to somehow scrape ourselves up off the ground and somehow catch up with that juggernaut and then somehow ram it off the road. Or even somehow get in front of it and somehow build some kind of road block so as to somehow bring it to a halt. Somehow. If we fail to do so then it's going to be like the end scene in Thelma And Louise and the juggernaut is going to go flying off the edge of the cliff to its own destruction, at the same time taking out not only everything in its wake but also everything in its path.

But then there's this doubt, isn't there? This doubt that tells us that actually we know we're never going to catch up. Little victories might be gained and we might curb some particular outrage but in our heart of hearts - stuck in our tiny, isolated bubbles – we know the power we hold is as nothing compared to the power of that and those we are against. So when in Rome we do as the Romans and we attend the gladiator games, we indulge in the orgies and we get drunk on the wine. In the meantime, the barbarians are gathering at the gate, the volcano is about to blow and our empire is going to be buried.

We know it's coming, we've heard the warnings but either like the cows in the field we're too dumb to realise it's a slaughterhouse we're heading for or in actual fact we simply don't care either way as everything is so void of any meaning that life and death are now virtually the same things?

The philosophy of Punk? Let's crack open another beer and talk about something else. Something even, dare I say, a bit more interesting and a bit more relevant? Why don't we instead talk about sex, dope, guns and fucking in the street? Let's just talk about anything else! Let's talk about anything that might up our game a little bit and enable us as individuals and as a world to move forward. Let's up our game and try and break free from the stranglehold we are being held in. Let's up the ante a bit and try and escape from the self-applied noose that is slowly tightening around our collective neck.

John Serpico

Gobbing, Pogoing And Gratuitous Bad Language - Edited by Robert Dellar

GOBBING, POGOING AND GRATUITOUS BAD LANGUAGE –

AN ANTHOLOGY OF PUNK SHORT STORIES

Another day another anthology of short stories, this time compiled and edited by Mad Pride founder Robert Dellar. Gobbing, Pogoing And Gratuitous Bad Language is a collection of twenty-one punk rock stories (twenty-two if you include Nick Blinko's pages from his sketch book) written according to the blurb on the back cover by the world's leading punk authors.

What exactly qualifies you for being a 'punk author' is, of course, debatable and a question that Dellar addresses with the inclusion of a haiku-like poem by Robert Wyatt. 'Not strictly 'punk' in itself,' Dellar writes 'Wyatt's work has always been admired within punk circles for its intense spirit and sincerity'. I would tend to agree. What constitutes 'punk writing', however, is a whole other debate due to punk always being an organic concept rather than something cast in stone and held within strict parameters. Was Dellar on a hiding to nothing in trying to wrap some cloak of punk rock identity around these stories? I suspect so.

Mark Perry understands this and ably demonstrates it in what is by far the best story in the collection: 'Elvis was a punk / so was Jerry Lee', he writes in a Crass album sleeve lyrics style 'Chuck wasn't / Lennon was a punk / Macca tried, but failed / Townsend was a punk turned poet / Moon was one of the great punks / so was Hendrix / and Iggy / Zappa maybe although he was too careful, too deliberate / Lenny Bruce was a comedy punk / Dennis Hopper was a film punk / Bolan was a hippy pop elf punk and beautiful person / Patti was all punk / as was Sid / the greatest punk band were Crass / they lived the life / The Clash signed to CBS, so that counts them out / ATV – at times punk, sometimes avant-jazz-punk'.

Mark Perry was a visionary and I say that without any doubt or hesitation. Was it not he who launched Sniffin' Glue fanzine? Was it not he who wrote How Much Longer? Was it not he who forged a bridge between punk and the free festival culture of the 1970s? The Pistols and The Clash had a lot more in common with Here And Now, Hawkwind, and the Edgar Broughton Band than they would care to admit. Was it not Mark who saw through the false divisions and realised that actually, the Stonehenge free festival path was the way for punk to go if it was ever to survive, rather than running into the arms of the major record companies.

'Punk could have been so much better / but it fucked up / who cares? / it moves on / ever changing' Mark continues in a free-form flow of consciousness 'Punk is about creative energy / sexual energy / throwing yourself in the fire of eternal love / commitment / devotion / a punk life – a creative life'. And then in one fell swoop, Mark defines the meaning of punk, or if not the meaning then a meaning but one a lot better than most others: 'Punk is a word / trying to describe a feeling'.

Mark Perry's salvo, entitled A Punk Life, is a very good piece of writing and unfortunately for all the other authors featured in the book is the first entry, setting a near impossible to equal benchmark. Maybe if some of the authors had known the quality of Mark Perry's piece beforehand they would have upped their game? But of course they didn't so we read the consequences.

Nutbourne City Limits by Martin Cooper is rubbish but he's forgiven because he's the ex-singer and guitarist in Salad From Atlantis, a Brighton band I used to quite like. Mental Punk Rock Diaries by Nikki Sudden is an exercise in punk rock reminiscing that's nice because he's no longer with us, having passed away in 2006. Indeed, so too with Robert Dellar, who passed away in 2016. Stewart Home's contribution, Cheap Night Out, is short – just three pages, in fact, and for this reason alone it's good. Lisa Pember's story is genuinely good. Entitled A Warning To Young Girls, it is that very thing and a mighty sensible one too.

Unexpectedly, there's a fair amount of sex in a few of the other stories although even this fails to save them. The book ebbs and wanes and half-way through I'm getting bored. It needs to be said that just because a story is short, it doesn't make it any better. But then like the cavalry appearing on the hill along comes Old Punk, written by Ted Curtis, and the book is saved.

Though nothing at all like Mark Perry's contribution, Curtis' story is still on a par with it but for very different reasons. There is pathos and bathos here; depth, perspective and attention to the minutia, full of recognisable cultural and geographical references. A perfectly composed snapshot of an age and place giving succour to Mark Perry's dictum that punk is indeed a word trying to describe a feeling.

Mark Perry's and Ted Curtis' stories both start and (almost) end the book so in effect act as bookends, and for these two stories alone the book is worth it.

John Serpico