The avowedly politicized language of punk rock bands, exemplified in the Sex Pistols’ 1976 hit ‘Anarchy in the UK’, caught the sour mood of the time. But the punk bands’ politics were as one-dimensional as their musical range, the latter all too often restricted to three chords and a single beat and dependent upon volume for its effect. Like the Red Army Fraction, the Sex Pistols and other punk rock groups wanted above all to shock. Even their subversive appearance and manner came packaged in irony and a certain amount of camp: ‘Remember the Sixties?’ they seemed to say; ‘Well, like it or not,
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