Larkin on Punk Rock
Bald, half deaf and almost four parts drunk,
I stick the wireless on to find John Peel,
A Northerner who plays the latest punk.
His tone reflecting how I often feel.
The Sex Pistols, he plays, The Undertones,
The Damned, XTC, Splodgenessabounds –
And suddenly I’m glad to have come home
To such base yet invigorating sounds.
There’s sink estate graffiti in their words,
The music is all insolently crude.
Yet something deep inside me half concurs:
A nihilistic truth is being pursued.
I once heard just such primal noise in jazz,
A kind of desperate throwing up of all,
But now that’s merely antique razzamatazz
Compared with something caustic by The Fall.
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