Larkin was right but he did not tell the full story.

An old friend of mine once philosophised in a conversation that, "Punk fucked us up." I didn't argue.

Punk was my Elvis, my Beatles, certainly my Who and even my Velvet Underground to name but a few. It was an education. It did eventually become a uniform for the masses but I'm glad to be smug enough to say that I never fell into line on that front because I believed in the original DIY ethos and those that grew colourful Mohawk hair and appeared on London postcard parodies sadly missed the whole point.

Be you. Be different. Make something.

"This is a chord. This is another. This is a third...now form your own band." said a now infamous page in a fanzine that contained a hand-drawn scratch of rudimentary guitar chords. I did. It was the best experience of my life. Another story for another day.

Sure, I wasn't quite old enough to be up and out in it when it first broke but I was well aware of what was going on and grew into it. I picked it up, carried it and still do. Within the last five years I was still stenciling shirts with "You don't need permission for anything" - a phrase some of you will have heard me use face to face or in comments that I've left. It's true.

And yet, for all the boundaries that were pushed and the sheer speed and volume of some of the music and as diverse as it was (Dad was wrong when he said it all sounded the same), the song that embodied the whole thing for me and today still does wasn't really a punk song at all. It was swept along in it and rode the wave due to the timing of its release in 1977 but actually came out of the pub-rock movement that preceded the UK punk scene. It's really a pop song of the day complete with handclaps and everything! It's a song that told you that you could and should follow your dreams because you were important and could probably do something and that you certainly had something to say if you wanted to.

For all its rousing cheer, it also warned you that you'd probably get isolated along the way. I couldn't see that at the time because all I knew was all these brilliant people who were into it too and there we were making stuff, up on stage being cocky with microphones, putting records out, writing and publishing photographs etc. etc. etc.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the last one standing at a party trying to keep it going when I hear it but I know of at least one other person on here who may get a little watery eyed.

To conclude - punk did fuck us up, however, because it made any kind of conformity hard and that DOES isolate you. Sometimes I wish it didn't but, as the song itself says, maybe it's better that way.

Yes, I'm going to link to it and, yes, it's going to sound as naïve and as childish as I have here but I am learning to make no apologies.

Don't believe what you read.


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