I was a secondary punk (part 3)

All this grumpiness is appropriately punk, but it sounds rather like the attitude of a Daily Mail reader in 1978. I thought punk did represent those values, of rebellion and freedom - and probably though that 1977 was year zero for music (even though I recognised, thanks to The Cramps, that the original rock'n'roll was a template for punk's energetic resistance).

Punk is, to my older self, far more interesting within a genealogy of political art - there are echoes of the futurists in the love of violence, a Duchamp parallel in the deliberate ugliness of the images (a retinal shudder whenever I look at Linder's cover for Orgasm Addict). The punk that is in the exhibition Pretty Vacant is both US and UK - and I never had that much interest in the US scene (the straight edge punks, while I appreciated their attitude towards alcohol and meat, seemed a bit dour and the politics too earnest, when they bothered to turn up).

Musically, it is business as usual - that Green Day now have a musical based on their 'punk' album American Idiot, it is obvious that the form can be assimilated even into the most iconic tin-pan-alley format. The idea that 'not being able to play' is a liberating ethos has been killed by the arrival of boy bands - they can't play instruments either (although Bieber can whack hell out of the drums when he isn't insulting the memory of Anne Frank), but they are the anodyne opposite of punk's supposed rage. If the democratisation punk thought to bring ends with production line pop artists, it might have been better to leave Pink Floyd alone.

Then again, I have two controversial opinions on pop music. One is that it is all about recorded, not live, sound. The other is that all recorded music is in the thrall of the Dark God Commerce, and questions about authenticity, rebellion and the Man are shadow play. Very simply, without the Man, there would be no record players, no means of distribution, no advancing technology.

The Man, as described by Simon Frith (The Industrialization of Music) only started pressing discs to sell the gramophone. Originally designed for office use, it quickly became evident that the gramophone was best used for entertainment. And so, recordings of stars, the whole music industry, evolved.

Punk's claim to free the music is more an attempt to steal it. Fair enough, but the master's tools and all that.