Punk, the most notorious pseudo-movement in the history of 20th-century popular music, is becoming cuddly with age. The Sex Pistols, punk’s most outrageous act, has reunited after almost two decades to travel the United States in the aptly named Filthy Lucre Tour. The Pistols are without their famous bassist Sid Vicious, who could not join his former colleagues because he died of a heroin overdose in 1979 while awaiting trial for the murder of his wife. Even so, the Sex Pistols tour has generated friendly and amused press coverage about the bald spots, pot bellies, and mellow attitudes sported by these once-vilified nihilistic revolutionaries. And if you just can’t get enough romantic celebrations of junkies and speed freaks, you can turn to Please Kill Me, a brand-new oral history from punk journalist Legs McNeil.

I was a part of the punk scene in late 1970s New York, where it was invented — fast, brief songs which playfully evoked rock ‘n’ roll’s preacid- rock Age of Innocence. The New York scene had an ethos different from the militant class-consciousness of the British punk the Sex Pistols represented. New York punks were unapologetic about their comfortable suburban origins, playful and irreverent in tone, and pretty affirmative about modern American life. Indeed, in many ways, New York punk represented a first skirmish within American popular culture with the then-gathering forces of political correctness.