[Mrluvaluva]

A new TV series explores punk’s history and the rich legacy it left in British music.



The history of punk rock, like the history of wars, has been written by its victors. One might be forgiven for thinking the whole thing was about two bands: the Sex Pistols, whose feral energy exploded in 1976 and burnt out in two years; and the Clash, who endured a little longer, before imploding on the cusp of massive worldwide success.

Punk Britannia, the latest three-part series from BBC Four’s excellent music documentary strand, seeks to tell a broader, more complex and detailed story. With God Save the Queen being re-released to commemorate the Sex Pistols’ Silver Jubilee protest, punk has been reduced to a few cartoonish gestures of aggression and anti-authoritarianism. “We wanted to show how disparate and kaleidoscopic the whole era was,” explains the series’ producer, Ben Whalley. “Punk was this amazingly transformative cultural force, which is still being felt. It wasn’t necessarily all nihilistic and against everything. There was so much positive energy about it, too, and it created so much wonderful music.”

Punk Britannia reflects that diversity through interviews with many of the scene’s leading lights, including the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon) and the Clash’s Mick Jones, but also some figures who started out as punks before becoming more mainstream pop stars, such as Paul Weller, the Stranglers and Billy Idol. More intriguing still is the testimony of the fringe characters and one-hit wonders like the Devon band the Adverts.

According to Pete Shelley, lead singer with Buzzcocks, punk was all about its accessibility, about everyone having the chance to be in a band. “It was so liberating,” he says, “that idea that you could go out and do it, without any formal training. There weren’t any laws against it.” Shelley formed Buzzcocks in Bolton, after reading about the Sex Pistols’ early gigs in London. By January 1977, they were regarded as Manchester’s answer to the largely South East-based punk rock scene, and their self-released debut EP, Spiral Scratch, remains an influential example of the movement’s DIY spirit.

Via these vinyl bulletins from around the country, punk’s message spread like wildfire, and that gathering sense of excitement pervades Punk Britannia. The first programme traces the scene’s origins in mid-Seventies pub rock, going beyond bands like Dr Feelgood to uncover priceless footage of legendary oddballs such as Doctors of Madness and Ducks DeLuxe. During those pre-punk years, TV Smith, later the singer-songwriter for the Adverts, struggled to find a voice, like countless other future punk heroes, until the Sex Pistols opened the door for him.

“God knows, I’d tried,” he says, “I was at art college in Torquay, and I had a band called Sleaze. We were a mixture of glam-rock, prog-rock and experimental music – just pretentious, really. But people didn’t want to see a band doing original material that was dark and scary. They wanted third-rate Free covers.

“Gaye [Black, the band’s bassist] and I had this suspicion that something was going on in London, so we moved there in the summer of 1976. We saw Pistols gigs in little colleges and clubs, and within a few weeks walked into the 100 Club punk festival.”

The couple responded immediately, playing their first gigs with the Adverts in January 1977 at the short-lived Roxy club. The second hour of Punk Britannia brilliantly captures the urgent mood of creativity around that moment. By August 1977, The Adverts were in the Top 20 with Gary Gilmore’s Eyes, which Smith wrote about the ghoulish media coverage surrounding an American murderer on death row, who had signed a decree leaving his eyeballs to medical science.

“I was satirising the media voyeurism,” says Smith, “but I wanted to make people laugh. When the last couplet – 'Gary don’t need his eyes to see/Gary and his eyes have parted company’ – came into my head, I laughed out loud on the street.”

Such jeu d’esprit often falls between the cracks in earnest punk histories, but, as Pete Shelley notes: “You can’t have punk without humour – that would be missing the point. There was a comic element even to the name Johnny Rotten.”

Shelley’s Buzzcocks were one of the key bands who filled the void after the Sex Pistols disbanded. In the ensuing months of 1978, the band released two albums, five singles (each a classic), and played 82 gigs. The Adverts, meanwhile, soon burnt out, and as punk’s moment passed, TV Smith wouldn’t regain a foothold in music for 10 years. As Shelley wryly observes: “It was like the parting of the Red Sea – at some point, it had to close back up afterwards.”

As the final Punk Britannia episode shows, though, the post-punk landscape was still musically fertile, with many prime movers developing their own voice. Shelley followed Buzzcocks with an electronic direction, which, he says, “gave me a new source of oxygen. We all started off as punk, but then you go on and do other things. It’s a bit like the Olympic torch – it gets lit every time it goes out to another country, but it’s still the same flame.”

Punk Britannia concludes with a fabulously vivid picture of life after punk, as John Lydon reinvents himself as a serious musical talent in Public Image Limited, and a profusion of groups such as Wire, Gang of Four, the Pop Group, Crass and the Specials each carry the torch into uncharted territory. Even last weekend, when Pete Shelley reconvened Buzzcocks’ original line-up to perform the Spiral Scratch EP in London and Manchester, the record’s DIY spirit still sounded as potent at it was 35 years ago.

“That’s because it’s a good idea,” Shelley summarises, with a benevolent Lancastrian chuckle. “They’re always the hardest to kill.”

'Punk Britannia’ is on BBC Four at 9pm tomorrow, and on June 8 and 15.


Link

Sounds interesting..

[InOne]

Definitely looks worth watching

[Mrluvaluva]

Only just got round to watching this. Very interesting. It explores, in three parts, the pre-punk era, punk at it's height, and post punk.

Part 1

Youtube video

(1972-1976) A 60 minute archive celebration of BBC studio performances from the British bands that broke through courtesy of punk... from its pub rock roots with Dr Feelgood to its explosive heyday with the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Buzzcocks, The Damned, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division and many more.

Part 2

Youtube video

(1976-1978) The second installment of the three-part "Punk Britannia" documentary series, billed as a look at the "historic cosmology, meteoric impact and smouldering aftermath of the most genuinely transformative force in British popular music history.

Part 3

Youtube video

(1978-1981) Punk had shown what it was against - now what was it for? In the wake of the Pistols' demise a new generation of musicians would re-imagine the world they lived in through the music they made. Freed up by punk's DIY ethos, a kaleidoscope of musical influences broke three chord conformity.

Public Image Limited allowed Johnny Rotten to become John Lydon the artist. In Manchester, Magazine would be first to record in the wake of the Pistols' split, Mark E Smith made street poetry while Ian Curtis turned punk's external rage into an existential drama. A raft of left-wing art school intellectuals like Gang of Four and Wire imbued post-punk with a sense of radical politics and conceptualism while the Pop Group infused funk with anti-capitalist sentiment in the early days of Thatcher. Flirting with fascism and violence, the working class Oi! movement tried to drag punk from the Kings Road into the heart of the East End whilst Anarcho punks Crass embarked on the most radical vision of any.

In a time beset by dread and tension perhaps the biggest paranoia was Mutually Assured Destruction essayed perfectly by Young Marble Giants' Final Day. Released in the height of Thatcherism, Ghost Town by The Specials marked a parting of the post-punk waves. Some would remain avowedly uncommercial whilst others would explore pop as a new avenue in the new decade. The song that perhaps summed up post-punk's journey was Orange Juice's Rip It Up and Start Again.

With John Lydon, Howard Devoto, Mark E Smith, Peter Hook, Jerry Dammers, The Raincoats, Wire, Jah Wobble, Mark Stewart, Edwyn Collins, Young Marble Giants and many more.

[Kizzy]

Thanks mrluvaluva missed this sounds great, hope my fave hazel o'connor gets a mention...

[Mrluvaluva]

This was repeated again this week, and is available on the iplayer for anyone interested.