Retrospectives are funny peculiar things. Unless you're an arch cynic, it's virtually impossible to distance yourself from the days when things were good. I remember punk rock as if it were yesterday. Nights spent in London from 1976 to 1978, and in Dublin from 1978 on: travelling by train to see the Boomtown Rats (not really punk rock at all, but a darned good revved-up pop group) in Chelmsford; going to London's legendary Rainbow venue to see Iggy Pop being supported by the Adverts; seeing the Tubes satirise the entire movement, chasing the Jam all the way from the Nashville pub to the Hammersmith Odeon, watching Slaughter and the Dogs and Talking Heads at the Roundhouse, and wondering where it would all end.
Back then, I was simply a music fan - there was no free entry to gigs or a backstage pass for a chat and a can, no checking out the show from the sound desk or the side-wings. This was front-row, eyeball-to-eyeball contact with people I might not have wanted to take home for a Christmas knees-up, but who were playing the most exciting music I had heard.
Returning to Ireland in 1978, it was clear Dublin had been similarly revolutionised. Amid a myriad of no-hopers, bands such as Revolver, Radiators from Space and the Vipers were being touted as contenders. If it wasn't the Clash in Trinity College one week, it was the Buzzcocks in a dingy venue in Mary Street the next, and Stiff Little Fingers in the Gem in Drogheda the week after that.
MacGonagles was the sweaty city centre venue where relatively unknown or moderately successful bands played. There we saw the likes of XTC and Radio Stars. Dun Laoghaire's Top Hat and Camden Street's Olympic Ballroom were where commercially successful "punk" rock bands played. In the suburbs, old cinemas such as the State in Phibsboro hosted the Ramones, Cabra's Stella Siouxsie and the Banshees. In these dank, evil-smelling rooms we saw the Stranglers, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, and witnessed the Virgin Prunes's Gavin Friday getting thrown off stage for exposing himself. Great memories for a grown man and a father of two children to have, aren't they?
The answer is, yes, of course they are. All memories need to be pricked, however. The forthcoming release of the five-CD box set, 1-2-3-4: Punk & New Wave 1976-1979, is a timely reminder that punk rock, purely as a musical movement (and not as a provider of some of the most forceful, enjoyable slabs of music in popular culture), didn't really amount to much at all. The very people that punk idealistically wanted to remove from the face of the Earth (Pink Floyd, The Bee Gees, Cliff Richard and Elton John, to name but four) are still around and are as successful as ever. So much for anarchy in the UK.
It's salutary to note that out of the 100-plus artists featured - taking into account that, presumably for copyright reasons, neither the Police nor Elvis Costello appear in the list - a mere two of the original participants are still around bothering the charts. (Robert Smith of The Cure, and, ho hum, the Jam's Paul Weller). But then, punk rock was never a career option, and the Sex Pistols were never the harbingers of music-industry doom they purported to be.
The best thing about punk rock was its vision of freedom, what Jon Savage calls "its original, gleeful negation". In his excellent book on the sociological implications of punk, England's Dreaming, Savage maintains that those who say No make history.
Yet those who say Yes also make it. On a strictly personal level, I said Yes to punk's then Utopian heresies. My scope of interest has broadened since, to accommodate a huge variety of different music, from Aqua to Zappa, and most points in between. Whenever I hear the intros to any of the first four singles by the Sex Pistols, or the first two by Stiff Little Fingers, however, I get a tickling ache in my stomach which tells me I'm still alive to the possibilities of individualism and the power of a particularly potent art form. It tells me that I'm still able to focus on something in my past that was crucially important to the way I now view the world, that there is a previous life beyond the next episode of Rugrats.
What was the worst thing about punk rock? Well, with the exception of Blondie and Siouxsie and the Banshees, it was a very male time. Punk spurned popular music tradition out of embarrassment for the word "love", which was a shame. The best thing? That the three-year period (superbly, lovingly documented, despite several glaring omissions, in 1-2-3-4: Punk & New Wave 1976-1979) attracted so many wonderful losers and splendid charlatans.
For once, the memories almost match the songs.
1-2-3-4: Punk & New Wave 19761979 (Universal) is due for release shortly