Screams From the Balcony
Punks and Dishonesty
By Jack Firneno Illustraion by Jeremy Forson

The Class of 1977 railed against many social ills, but one that doesn't usually make it into the history zines is their distaste for deceit. Three of Britain’s first punk bands weighed in on the subject:

The Sex Pistols came first in 1977 with the aptly titled “Liar” on Never Mind the Bullocks. As usual, Johnny Rotten is alternately caustic and cutting, chanting, “lie” and then twisting the knife as he calls out his opponent’s backhanded ways. It’s kind of ironic, coming a band whose story is so fraught with tall tales and hokum.

The Damned dropped a song with the same name on 1979’s Machine Gun Etiquette. They approached the subject humorously, painting their B.S. artist as a guy who would “smoke your last cigarette [and] say that someone else did,” and “send your mum to the bed to find if your sister’s frigid.”

The Clash’s eponymous debut in 1977 offered “Cheat,” a track not on the album’s American release. Here it seems Joe Strummer is OK with skirting the rules, advising people to “Cheat if you can’t win” and that “If you wanna survive you better learn how to lie.” The song almost sounds like a reflection of his own efforts to conceal his privileged upbringing to fit in with the underclass punk crowd. The band reconciled this with “The Card Cheat” on 1979’s London Calling, where a small time hustler is shot dead when he’s found with a card up his sleeve.