Rough Cut and Ready Dubbed

A slick editing job (courtesy of a BFI grant) applied to street-level vérité footage produces a virtual Disappearing World on the tribal poses and fragmented rock culture of 1980, replete with mutual slag-offs from bands and fans about skins, mods, police, fascists, and 'selling out', a laughable subtext of pop-press punditry, and much middling gig coverage. Something of a wake for punk's decline, it's full of self-parodic shock values, and best communicates a sense of musical recession, mapping a territory rife for the subsequent easy ascendancy of back-tracking trends. John Peel contributes his customary good sense in small doses; almost everyone else dissipates enthusiasm in antagonism. Primarily one for the sociologists and amnesiac nostalgists.