The debate has run for fifty years, which in pub terms is roughly a century and a half.
LONDON, England (Seeker News) – There are two kinds of argument in London: the kind about who is going to pay for the next round, and the kind about who is the real punk. The second one has no end date and costs more.
I had it again tonight, at a corner table in the Bent Nail, a pub with a carpet so sticky it should be on the electoral roll. The band was there, the zine crew was there, and Gareth from Dust Jacket Records was there, holding a seven-inch like a man holding a grudge.
The Opening Statement
It started because Maurice, our roadie, announced that he had seen a headline about the Sex Pistols announcing a 2026 tour featuring Frank Carter. Someone then showed us a second headline, on AXS, in which John Lydon fires back at the current Sex Pistols line-up. Neither of these things is a surprise. In punk, the only thing more regular than a reunion is a row about the reunion.
I am not going to take a side, partly because I am not qualified and partly because Clive was already holding a beer mat as if it were a legal brief. But I would like to record that within thirty seconds the table was in uproar. Fifty years on, we still cannot agree on whose name goes on the door.
The Case for the Prosecution
Dervla opened for the “real punk is whoever is still angry” camp. She believes authenticity is a matter of tempo, and that anyone who slows down after forty is a folk singer in disguise.
Gareth took the opposing view. He says real punk is a matter of the vinyl, that if you have not got the first pressing then you have not got the argument. He pointed at his shop, then at the air, then at me, as though the three were a single Venn diagram.
Clive, whose entire character is a man in the wrong jacket, said that it all depends on the tax return. His view is that punk is a spirit available to everyone, including the senior leadership of a regional insurer, and that the question should be put to a panel. We told him to sit down. He did not sit down. He is an actuary and cannot be moved by tone alone.
Everyone in London is the real punk, right up to the moment somebody else turns up with a better jacket.
Exhibits From the Archive
To settle the matter, Maurice produced his phone and a few offerings from the public record. The Museum of London has a page called tales of punk from the museum’s collection, which suggests that the scene is already firmly in the glass-case phase of its life. If your own gig posters are in a museum, you are, by definition, a heritage site, and no heritage site has ever played a good encore.
Then Dervla found a diary item in Westminster Extra on a plaque for the Strummer squat. A plaque. On a squat. A building that people broke into on purpose is now being marked with a small brass sign, like a bishop’s birthplace. I had to put my drink down. The old squatters would have wanted it, I suppose, as long as the plaque was a bit crooked.
I mention this because it is all part of the same story. Punk was a door kicked open, and London has since put a rope across it and charged four pounds for the audio guide.
The Zine Crew Intervenes
Around ten, the zine crew rejoined the discussion. They produce a photocopied magazine called Spit and Polish, one issue a year, folded by hand on a kitchen table and sold for the price of a pint. It has a circulation of about sixty, and a readership which, I am proud to say, includes at least two people who have never met any of us.
They contended that the real punk is whoever makes a thing. A magazine, a record, a badge. I liked that. It also lets me off, because I once cut a stencil out of a cereal box and sprayed it on a wall in Hackney, where it remained for about nine days before the council painted over it in a calming grey.
I read the humour pages the way other people read a cricket score, and I told them how much I admired NewsBiscuit’s post about its original anthology. A book is still a book, even if somebody has typed it. Clive said that was not an argument. I said it was not meant to be.
The Late Return
At eleven, Clive confessed something. He took out of his coat a library copy of a pamphlet he borrowed in 1993 and never returned. He was quite shaken. “I’m a thief,” he said, “and I’ve been calling myself a punk for thirty years.”
I told him that it was very much the right way round, and showed him a farm.fm piece about an Orwell book returned thirty-one years late. He cheered up a good deal. Thirty-one years, and the book came back, and nobody exploded. There is hope for the overdue in all of us.
I told him the fine had probably been forgiven by now and the library was, if anything, delighted. Then we went through the usual ritual of arguing about it for forty minutes and ended up agreeing that nobody wins.
Verdict, Such As It Is
- The real punk is not the person with the loudest amp.
- The real punk is not the person with the oldest jacket.
- The real punk is whoever is currently carrying the equipment.
That last one is, I believe, the only truth we have reached in fifty years. It is also the reason I am walking home with a bass amp and Clive is walking home with a library book.
I shall keep this argument going as long as I can, and if you want to follow it, you can read my daily notes at The London Prat, alongside plenty of British news with a straight face and some English news roundups for the days when the argument is too much for one person. Goodnight, whoever you are.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/