How to make a person feel old — tell them that what they did as an act of youthful rebellion is now in a museum as a treasured artifact. Such is the inevitable fate that awaits any major social phenomena, and the years of the Punk revolution are now to be carefully conserved in glass cases.
Punk hit London in 1976, and the latest of the 40th-anniversary exhibitions takes some of those punk rebels and asks them to look back on what those years meant to them.
What comes across from the quotes is that while the imagery of punk is the clothing and hairstyles, but for the participants, it was the music that was the entry drug into the punk lifestyle.
The rest it seems came later, as adornments to the music.
It was though, as one said possibly with a tinge of regret, the last time that the clothes you wear would shock anyone again. Today, anything goes, from walking around the supermarket wearing pyjamas to the most outrageous of catwalk fashions, it takes some effort to raise even an eyebrow on the tube commute.
Although punk hairstyles on the Lord Mayor of London’s horses came close.
The punk exhibition is open at the Museum of London until 15th January. Entry is free.
