Straight away though that's  its problem. A book this size says "I am the definitive guide to punk. To be better than me you will have to be bigger and more expensive and that is impossible. I have more photos and more interviews and I know all the right people."

It states in the first pages its aim to 'convey, the feel, the smell, attitude and humour of punk'  and then  through the next x amount of pages it proceeds to just kill the subject dead by overkill of photos and quoted text. As such instead of a consistent narrative you end up with a jerky ponder some beast. And that's where it fails. The photos are fantastic but there are just so many.  If a picture paints a thousand words then this book is the equivalent of War & Peace. Punk was sharp and concise...this book is not. You begin to weary soon after starting reading. Who is this book for ??? I can imagine this book sitting in some trendy forty something's loft.  Guests come around and idly flick remarking at how quaint and outrageous it all was before moving on. More and more it looks like an amalgamation of the last 4 big history of punk books.

Again its written solely form the inner circle of  punk ...the so called starters ...none of the smaller bands are represented and the beginnings of punk are just casually nailed down to the VU, MC5 & Iggy. The people interviewed are starting to resemble politicians now in that  whether what they say is the truth doesn't matter because they have repeated it so many times over the years its become the truth.  This book comes out with all the old clichés.... 'The Stranglers weren't Punk'.....99% of us knew The Stranglers WERE punk and we loved them. Arrogant statements like  'The class of 76 went on to become the main movers and shakers in subsequent decades' just make me laugh ...movers in shakers in what  ?? Music ?? world peace ???

This book fails because it seeks to glorify just the few and ignores the fact that the so called originators were passed by and even laughed at by the next wave-the Class of 77. Worse is the efforts by the authors to write themselves into the history of punk like a punky Forest Gump. As punk nonentities of the time their words are now dispersed between words of the major players  as if they were somehow seminal and part of the original gang. Jesus one of the writers was in Blue Rondo a La Turk and the other in Saatchi and Saatchi !!! Its like finding out they were  in Bucks Fizz or Stepps. Have they no taste or shame ?

All writers about Punk should be made to read two books. First Stuart Home's Cranked Up Really High for its brevity and its understanding of the evolution of genres like Punk and second  Please Kill Me which  should be held up as the prime example of the genre. Exciting, informative, inspirational, sad, funny, shocking and heartbreaking and a fucking good read...hell it could have been a novel or a film.

This book fails because it turns a microscope on a tiny but important bit of punk and chokes the excitement of it with an avalanche of images and prose. It succeeds as a giant compendium of punk  but little else. 

One day the definitive guide to Punk will be written  but big ain't necessarily better. The Punk Book sure ain't the last word.

We got to the gallery where an unfeasible amount of people were shoehorned into the gallery so that condensation was dripping down the windows. You had to have a ticket or be on the guest list... we go in  while others were interrogated. The place was filled with nonentities (including ourselves) as ghosts of punk past walked the boards...'Who are you someone asked an aged John Ellis ?'....'I used to be in the Vibrators'.....Mick Jones anonymously walked past...Beki Bondage looks had somehow faded...on a table they tried to flog the books and tshirts...photographers appeared and didn't know quite what to film until 4 preening young punks and punkettes posed for them..... Drinking a warm treble vodka with orange squash we felt this was a big mistake and spilled outside with the rest of the crowd to get some air. This was the Punk Book ...Boy George arrived and everyone sot of swarmed around him while in the background a shy man with his girlfriend drank out of a pepsi bottle unbothered. It was Paul Cook drummer of one of the greatest rock'n'roll bands ever. Summed it up.

We fucked off to the pub and there had a laugh not least at Man United and Barthez. The pub was filled with people who had escaped the party. Three piece pin striped suits sang raucously along and danced to White Riot and the Jam on the jukebox .Eventually we moved onto the nightclub and the nightmare really began.

Why ??? Because the ticket wasn't an entrance to the nightclub. You had to be chosen by a dickhead in a suit. , a couple of bouncers playing the hard men and some twat in a cravat who looked like Lloyd Weber. These people chose who were to enter the party. In the crowd were people on their mobiles saying '. Marco get me in ..Kevin Rowland get me in' begging to be let in demeaning themselves as if the pricks in front of them had any importance. I found out the one in the suit was one of the authors Chris Sullivan. In the crowd was Steve Diggle next to me asking to get in. The author saw him and let him thru but not his mate as he had queued the wrong way. He made the bloke walk all round a special way to get in while he took the piss and I thought  this wanker who contributed nothing to Punk is lording it over Steve Diggle who helped write Harmony In My Head, Ever Fallen and so many more.  If I would have had more guts I would have bottled the fucker or the whole lot of us could have rushed the door and created a riot of our own. Instead we turned our back on the lot of the egotistical pricks and went home.

Like punk never happened. You bet . What would Sid have done ?..wrapped his bicycle chain round the pretentious bastards. Nuff said !!!!!