Jon Savage is a Music journalist with a high reputation to live up to. He is responsible, after all, for the book "England's Dreaming" which is considered a classic book by all who know anything about the rise and fall of punk rock. He has also written biographies of The Kinks and a history of Disco music.
If you want an expert, Jon Savage knows his stuff. He can hold his head up alongside Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill, and Paul Morley. If you need a couple of talking heads on your music documentary, these are the ones to hire.
Jon Savage's latest project is a large coffee table book called Punk 45, which has lots and lots of images of punk and new wave picture sleeves, which were very much part and parcel of the whole package.
The medium was the message and all that.
But there is something unsettling about seeing all these stand alone manifestos side by side, page after page, in a great big glossy volume such as this. Oh, yes, this is powerful stuff. If you were around at the time, and in the midst of all this turbulent, anarchic tumult, it made perfect sense. It did not need explanation or social comment. If you got it, you got it instantly. If you didn't, all this was so much childish petulance.
Those at the eye of the storm had never seen things so clearly, and it defines the outlook of a whole generation. Listen to BBC 6 music for a couple of days, and you will see this in context. The No Future generation is now in authority.
And this is the apparent contradiction, the paradox which this book encapsulates.Each image represents an explosion of youthful idealism, energy, and yes, perhaps some naivety.
The sleeves of Borstal Break Out by Sham 69, White Mice by The Modettes, Innocents by John Cooper Clarke are all here.. Great records, great memories.
And many similar tracks can be heard on three accompanying CD's, which are sold separately.
But the coffee table format seems to encase it. To imprison the anarchy.In the Jam song "All around the World", Paul Weller once posed the question "What's the point of saying destroy?" and the following repost "Want a new life for everyone!"
Perhaps it is this positivity which has finally come home. The punk generation has come of age. And maybe, just maybe, in this context, a book such as this makes perfect sense after all.
