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The Daily Telegraph - 05/06/2002
Channel Hopper - Tom Horan
As the raddled alumni of The Punk Years (Play UK, Mon/Tues) recalled their days at the vanguard of a revolution, there was one word that cropped up again and again; energy. Having lived fast and failed to die young, most of the musicians and Svengalis who reminisced about 1977 look shattered. But you could see the glint of remembered passion in their eyes. "It all happened incredibly fast," said one. "People would see the Sex Pistols and start a band the next day." As for what sparked the insurrection, footage of day-to-day Britain around the time of the last Jubilee made that plain. If the past is another country, then this looked like some misrable corner of fromer East Germany - bleak and grey and broken.
Matching form to content, The Punk Years was punchy and alive, and took pleasure in being contrary. A series of reverent talking heads recalled Malcolm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood's shop Sex, a legendary spot in the birth of the movement. "Actually it was tacky and horrible and it didn't have a toilet," said John Lydon (Johnny Rotten), who moved to California years ago and looked a picture of health. Musically the show was impeccable, taking in the early New York scene and the pub-rock underworld of Ian Dury and Dr Feelgood which McClaren shamelessly ripped off. As Lydon delivered the last, sneering soundbite you felt you'd had a taste of a time when rebellion was more than just a posture used to market consumer durables.
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