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Commissioned to celebrate the 30th anniversary of punk, Punk:
Attitude was written and directed by influential,
Grammy award winning director and punk icon, Don Letts. The
result is a documentary film on punk music and the subsequent
cultural impact of the punk movement...
Director
Don Letts was as much a part of the London punk scene in the
1970s as anyone - he was a participant, influential DJ and
face around town, as well as being a first rate documentary
director. His recent work on The Clash film was excellent,
almost perfect, so why has Punk: Attitude so badly
missed the mark? Well, for starters it's clearly been made
for the US market.
The
film starts out in New York in the early 1970s and documents
the bands that would coalesce around CBGBs - The Ramones,
Television, Talking Heads etc - and this is all handled really
well. We then move over to London (The Kings Road to be precise)...
and it's here that things start to go wrong.
Punk,
it seems, was imported from the US - the style, the attitude,
the music. And to prove it we're presented with a bunch of
Americans who tell us so. So what about Pub Rock - the birthplace
of Ian Dury, Nick Lowe, Ducks Deluxe, The 101ers (Joe Strummers
old band) and Doctor Feelgood? These bands, and more, shaped
British Punk every bit as much as Richard Hell or Patti Smith.
Sadly, with the US market in mind, Letts ignores some of the
most influential bands at the heart of British Punk's progress.
In
fact, I've started this review some 10 minutes into the film.
Before the New York footage we're presented with Punk's predecessors
- The Velvet Underground and Iggy Pop. Full marks for their
inclusion. It's harder, however, to see why Elvis, Chuck Berry
and San Francisco's hippy contingent during the Summer of
Love qualify. Yup, that's right - this lot are 'punk' according
to Letts, or at least part of punk's heritage. Beats me!
After
Britain's original punk scene has been documented we're back
to the US for Sonic Youth and Suicide (good), Black Flag (okay),
Minor Threat, Bad Brains (bad) and a bunch of bands that never
recorded anything but were 'very influential'. Yeah, right...
More notable than Doctor Feelgood, Eddie and the Hotrods,
The Tom Robinson Band or The Undertones (all sadly missing)?
No. But when you're pandering to a US audience who wants to
know?
We
end with Nirvana - a band so un-punk that I can easily imagine
Lydon sneering at them for being hippies, and as one wise
Punk once said: "Never trust a hippy." Sadly, I think we can
now add Don Letts to that list.
His
late friend, the great Joe Strummer, berated people for "working
for the Yankee dollar"... That criticism still holds true
almost 30 years on.
Anthony
Clark
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