PRETTY VACANT

Music journalist Strongman (Metal Box: Stories from John Lydon’s Public Image Limited, 2007, etc.) recasts the history of British punk as the story of two bands and a bunch of also-rans.

Actually, the Clash don’t get that much ink either; Strongman spends the majority of his time making the case that the Sex Pistols and their marketing Svengali Malcolm McLaren were punk’s be-all and end-all, and therein lies the rub. Had the book been subtitled something along the lines of The Sex Pistols and UK Punk, it would have been far more legit. Granted, John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), Sid Vicious and the rest of the Pistols kicked it all off in 1976 at London’s legendary 100 Club…or did they? Maybe it was the Clash who started things reeling on the other side of town that very same year. Maybe it was the Ramones or Television or the New York Dolls at CBGB in New York City. Or maybe it was…well, according to Strongman, it was all Pistols, all the time. But music historians tend to disagree, which means his book has a major, insurmountable credibility problem. If Strongman had been more inclusive, and if he’d used Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s classic Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk as a template, he might have had something. As it is, this feels like a 300-plus-page magazine article.

Sex Pistols fans will appreciate this one, but those looking for a comprehensive history of the era and its sounds should look elsewhere.