In the summer of 1980, London, England was close to a war zone with race riots and battles between police and demonstrators breaking out all the time. Then Conservative Party Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had created such a divisive atmosphere that the anger of the disaffected, the poor and people of colour, boiled over onto the streets routinely in June and July of that summer. For a while it looked like the song "London's Burning" that The Clash had written a couple of years earlier had every chance of coming true. While there were punk scenes in North America — most notably in New York City, Toronto, and Los Angeles — in comparison to what was going on in England, and specifically London, that's all they were was scenes, not the politically charged calls to action that were soundtracks for running battles with the police.
In an interview he gave in 2006, German film director Wolfgang Buld describes how news of punk had reached Germany. So when the film school he was attending demanded he do some documentary features as part of his course work, he set off to England in 1978 with a film crew to see what all the fuss was about. One of the films he made during that trip, Punk In London, has just been released in a re-mastered form on DVD by MVD Entertainment. The interviews with various musicians, and the footage of bands like The Boomtown Rats, The Jam, The Lurkers, Chelsea, Subway Sect, The Adverts, and The Clash not only capture the energy of the music and the time, but also the anger constantly simmering just beneath the surface. In the film the anger comes across as general dissatisfaction and frustration with the way things were shaping up in England at the time and make you realize the events of 1980 weren't just a spur of the moment thing, but a long time in the building.
The interview with Buld is one of two special features included on the DVD, the other being a concert given by The Clash in Munich in 1978, and while it's interesting enough for establishing a context for the movie and describing how it came about, what makes Punks In London fascinating is its subject matter. Shot with one camera and portable sound equipment, Buld and his crew go everywhere from the clubs, the old warehouses bands used for rehearsal halls, to the storefront label/record store Rough Trade which played a key role in giving bands exposure.
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