Hamish Champ: No More Heroes Anymore

Time can be a kind aunt to some people, to others it can be a terrible steppe-sweeping horde of Huns, Mongols and Visigoths. More of that later though.

Thirty years ago punk rock was at its zenith; the Sex Pistols had snarled God Save the Queen, Joe Strummer was exhorting us to join the Clash's White Riot and the Stranglers were warning us there were No More Heroes.

Thirty years ago yesterday, November 4 1977, I was a 16 year-old yoof pogoing along to the Stranglers in London's Roundhouse. It was a fantastic evening, the air thick with both unfettered enjoyment that only a punk band could create - as well as the barely concealed menace that a punk rock audience always engendered.

And last night, 30 years to the day, I was pogoing along to the same band, minus 'charismatic' frontman Hugh Cornwell but with an able enough replacement, as they thundered through their first two albums, 'Rattus Norvegicus' and 'No More Heroes', plus some 'newer' classics including '5 Minutes' and 'Duchess'.

Yes, it was just like the old days, or it was - up to point. And here one considers the ravages of time.

Before the gig got under way, in the Enterprise pub over the road from the venue in Chalk Farm middle-aged men with very little hair wearing black t-shirts, jeans and boots were clutching pints of lager and singing along to the pub's juke box - playing the Stranglers, of course - with great gusto. I know because I was one of them.

Looking around the packed pub last night I realised that these men - and some women - were yesterday's punks grown up. Grown old, in fact.

But age did not wither them. OK, many were in their late 40s, some even older, and most were minus the black spikey hair and the dog collars of punk's past. But none had lost sight or sound of the music's raw message of anarchy and rebellion. True, nowadays they were likely to have things on their minds other than overturning the establishment; like, how to pay the mortgage or hold in their ballooning stomachs, but hey, we won't dwell on such matters.

Once in the Roundhouse, we pogoed to the band's opening numbers like we were 16 again. Sadly, by the sixth or seventh song the demands of jumping up and down on the spot had taken its toll on us 40-somethings. Save for a few diehards down the front it couldn't last; bodies that once were able to dance about all night were now content to merely sway.

Still, it was bloody good fun, physical limitations or not...