D.I.Y.: The Modern World: UK Punk II (1977-78)

Picking up where the first volume of D.I.Y.: U.K. Punk left off, D.I.Y.: The Modern World: UK Punk II (1977-78) captures the moment when punk began to fracture into post-punk, hardcore, and new wave. There are still some straightforward punk anthems from the Jam ("The Modern World"), the Buzzcocks ("What Do I Get?"), the Rezillos ("[My Baby Does] Good Sculptures"), Generation X ("Wild Youth"), and Stiff Little Fingers ("Alternative Ulster," "Suspect Device"), but the collection finds punk turning dark, noisy, paranoid, and weird through Siouxsie & the Banshees ("Hong Kong Garden"), the Fall ("Bingo Master"), Wire ("I Am the Fly"), X-Ray Spex ("The Day the World Turned Day-Glo"), the Soft Boys ("[I Want to Be An] Angleploise Lamp"), and Magazine ("Shot by Both Sides"). There's also some loutish rock from Sham 69 and 999, but The Modern World on the whole is much more interesting than that. Despite missing a few major figures like the Clash, it is a definitive portrait of the last days of the original British punk movement, and it works both as an introduction and a great, listenable overview.