‘Electronic Punks’ was the title of the Prodigy video that came out at around the same time as ‘Jilted Generation’, and at the time that was a bang-on description of the Prodigy; their uncompromising sound, DIY work ethic and two fingers at the world attitude was the closest thing British music had produced to a Nineties punk.

But then came ‘Firestarter’. I was one of the few people I know who truly hated this record, and not in the way that Liam Howlett would have wanted me to. From the first time I heard Keith’s Wannabe Rotten vocals, and saw the video, I realised that it was all getting a little bit self-conscious. ‘Breathe’ was even worse, and within weeks, we had Keith Flint’s hair and piercings adorning the front of many a magazine, little kids being scared by him on TOTP (which must have made them feel really hard) and guitars aplenty in the mix. ‘Fat Of The Land’ was the second most overhyped album of the summer, and contained a sum total of four (three and a half?) good tracks. Sure, for my money ‘Mindfields’ is the best thing they’ve done since ‘Poison’, but the cheap-shot ‘controversy’ of ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ shows exactly how much they’ve lost the plot. In believing the hype, they’ve turned from a true punk act into nothing more than another shock-tactic rock band.

You see, green hair and pierced tongues and Union Jack trousers are not punk. Maxim is far punker than Keith, because punk isn’t about how you dress or how you sound, but a certain underlying ethic. Similarly, not being able to play the guitar very well is not in any way punk, nor is not writing very good songs. Step up ‘second best band in Britain’ (©Alan McGee, but he thinks Oasis are the best band in Britain) Three Colours Red. Their Glastonbury performance was a masterclass in how to totally fail at being punk- cover a Pistols song, insult your audience, spit, swear- and then they were blown offstage by a bunch of teenagers who epitomise punk. Symposium are punk because they don’t try to be. They jump about enthusiastically, tangle themselves up in cables, trip over and generally just have a laugh. Recently, singer Ross dislocated his knee halfway through a song and managed to get to the end of his vocal before passing out, and you don’t get much more punk than that.

But of course, none of these bands I’ve mentioned are punk anyway, are they? I mean, quite a lot of people have heard of them to start with, and they’re signed to labels that can afford to distribute their records through shops, making them whores to the corrupt corporate industry, and therefore they’re not punk in the slightest. Bollocks.

Let’s get one thing totally clear. This obscurist, snobby attitude towards music is not punk. The fact that a band release records on their own label by mail order only and only sell ten copies to their mates does not validate them as a band, in the same way that signing to a major label does not automatically invalidate the band’s music. I stumbled across a website recently, which slated Ian McKaye’s Dischord label, one of the coolest and most uncompromising hardcore labels, for being too mainstream and being in the pocket of The Man. This is the same perverse thinking that led to Jello Biafra (ex of The Dead Kennedys and founder of Alternative Tentacles Records) being beaten up outside a nightclub for ‘selling out’. As a wise man once said, people who don’t sell out generally have nothing worth selling, and let’s face it, how is anyone going to smash the system if no-one has heard of them and you can’t get hold of their records?

Tim.