Punk was an ideology, not just a sound

'A shorthand for a whole cluster of ideas' ... Paul Simonon keeps it punk

My friend told me this story, so I'm not going to vouch for its veracity. He arrived at a pub in Liverpool to find a band blasting their way through an expert, energetic version of Do Anything You Wanna Do. They were brilliant. He bought them all drinks and said to the lead singer, "You should form an Eddie and the Hot Rods tribute band." "Nice idea," said the singer. "The only problem with it is that I am Eddie. And these are my Hot Rods."

I used to think this was a sad story - I wished Eddie had moved on and become a brain surgeon or a Franciscan. Playing old hits to old fans seemed like a kind of perpetual punk rock Mamma Mia! to me. After reading Dave Simpson's funny and thought-provoking piece on how Punishment of Luxury "unlocked his imagination", I'm thinking maybe I've been wrong. Music is brilliant at crystallising emotional memories (mamma mia) but sometimes - and punk was one of those times - it can also transmit a set of values.

From the very beginning punk was an ideology as well as a sound. I know this because when it kicked off, a band I was in got that ideology a bit wrong. We thought it meant "do anything you wanna do" and if that meant you wanted to do Greek folk dancing instead of the pogo, or appear on stage dressed as Robespierre, then that was fine. The moment we played our first chord someone shouted, "That's not punk rock!" and to emphasise the point, lobbed a glass. It was amazing how quickly and in what numbers people agreed with him.

I don't listen to punk music any more. But like the guy with the glass, I still use the word "punk" as a term of moral approval, shorthand for a whole cluster of ideas - a disdain for too much technical ability, a love of doing it quick and on the cheap, of doing it, not talking about it, a fear of prestige, a hatred of Sunday papers.

Final Cut Express for instance (Apple's cheap and easy editing package) is punk rock. Surprisingly, making radio plays (no pretension, fast turnaround) had its punk rock side. Maybe this is a bit sad. I've just done a series of plays for Radio 4 about a group of people who were all at an Adverts gig in 1977, and who get invited to an "audience reunion" thirty years later. One of them, by the way, is a ridiculous figure who thought Greek folk dancing might be "a bit punky".

I chose the Adverts because I thought of them as a band that made a handful of great singles, then jacked it in. Exactly what I want in a band. But no. It turns out that TV Smith too is still out there, somewhere in the long tail, making new music with a new band, for a bunch of loyal, well-organised fans.

The moment they heard about the plays they began filling the message boards with excitement and trepidation, discussing how to exploit this opportunity to remind the World of TV Smith's genius. They had the unnerving enthusiasm of steam engine enthusiasts or morris dancers or ... well of punk rockers actually. Because the way they support Smith now - through websites and message boards - is just a digital version of how punk took off in the first place (with people using workplace photocopiers to run off fanzines and publicising gigs by word of mouth, to make up for the lack of airplay and the local council banning orders).

Time and again, people I interviewed for the plays said that punk was their university, that it raised their expectations, that some of its values still strike a chord. Maybe going back to the music sometimes isn't just nostalgia, sometimes it can be a way of asking yourself if you still believe in those things, if they still excite you. But maybe too it's good to remember who unlocked the door.