DVD review: "Punk: Attitude"

Few musical genres are as factionalized as the stuff that gets lumped as "punk." The music, the bands, the looks are so varied, it's tough to even know what we mean by the term.

"What is punk, anyway?" is a good question, and the one at the center of this new film by longtime Clash associate (and onetime member of Clash spinoff band Big Audio Dynamite) Don Letts.

The answer he comes up with is right there in the title: "Attitude." And it's a pretty satisfactory one, particularly since Letts' attempts to get at it are so openminded, evenhanded and fair.

It all boils down to punk being approach to music, art and life. It's no bullshit, not about show business but true expression, it's not pretentious but blunt, short and loud. And when it starts being too much about a particular look or sound, it ceases to be punk. It becomes new wave or some other dang thing.

There's no sense Letts is pushing any specific agenda, playing favorites or trying to lead you to a particular conclusion. He throws up a bunch of different people on the screen and lets them talk.

The interviewees are a remarkably insightful and articulate lot: Henry Rollins (Black Flag), David Johansen (The New York Dolls), Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys), Mick Jones and Paul Simonon (The Clash) and photographer-on-the-scene Bob Gruen.

Given his background, one might think Letts would focus primarily on British punk. But he doesn't. There's lots and lots of attention to given to East- and West Coast U.S. punk and its 1960s garage band roots. The film does a great job summing up musical events on both sides of the Atlantic.

Things don't stop with the 1970s heyday either. Letts traces the punk attitude into the 1980s with No Wave, the 1990s with Grunge into whatever the heck's going on today (it's too early to tell).

And, given the nihilistic point of view one tends to attach to a lot of punk, the film ends up being remarkably positive. Rather than dwell on the victims (Sid and Kurt, among others) we're left with folks like Poly Styrene talking about how punk gave them purpose, an avenue for expression and a release.

It's a valuable contribution to filmed music history. If there's any downside its the absence of key players John Lydon, Malcolm McLaren and the late Joe Strummer. Without them, it can't be taken as a definitive history.

But watch it alongside the excellent documentaries on the Sex Pistols ("The Filth and the Fury") and the Clash ("Westway to the World," also directed by Letts), and you have a very detailed picture of how this music/movement came about and its significance today.