In Los Angeles in 1980, the first wave of local punk bands, including incendiary art-punks X, had established a groundswell of allegiance among the disillusioned. “Punk in LA was reacting against the great success and dominance of bands like Van Halen,” explains Mark Vallen, an illustrator for Slash, the influential West Coast punk magazine. “Just the whole look and feel of it reeked of elitism.” Legend goes that the boys were ready to release a single album that would follow in the tradition of their previous work. However, after hearing Husker Du’s double album Zen Arcade they reentered the studio so overflowing with creativity an entire second side was born. That scattershot mess of ideas ultimately serves as the perfect representation of what punk can and should be. Free from constraint, full color and grey, angry and joyous. Punk’s past, present, and future is all here.

Sadly, the band imploded under a cloud of misbehaviour, violence and a sophomore album flop in 1979, and we never got to find out how great they really could have been. If The Clash never really disavowed White Riot, they also never recorded anything like it again. It split the audience and ultimately split the band too. Following the success of Volume 2, Volumes 1 and 2 were compiled into a box set, released in the same original CD boxes, but a slipcase had been placed over them displaying new artwork. The cover subtitles the set 4 CD Deluxe Limited Edition. The greatest punk album of all time was made by a band trying to escape punk. Not its intent, force or even attitude, but its implied restrictions and captivity by fundamentalists. The Clash had gently expanded their scope on their second album Give ‘Em Enough Rope, but on London Calling they blew everything apart: styles, dynamics, vantage point and subject matter.

John Lydon said Richard Hell had nothing to do with punk. He was wrong. Aside from The Ramones’ D-U-M-B exception to the rule, NYC’s CBGB-based version of punk was significantly more cerebral than its largely visceral McLaren encouraged UK counterpart, and Hell – poet, style icon, novelist, nihilist, perfectionist, arsonist – was its nearly man. He could (should) have been huge: broodingly handsome, literate, ambitious, it was Hell who pioneered the electrocuted crop punk hairstyle and first repurposed torn T-shirts with safety pins. Volume 3 was released November 2003. Intended to be "the last Air guitar album in the world... ever!" according to the liner notes, there was later a "best of the best" album. Volume 3 featured a rare recording of the Pink Floyd song " Have a Cigar" by the Foo Fighters with Brian May. Queen's " Now I'm Here" also featured. The liner notes feature small quotes about each song/artist by May. Volumes 1 & 2 also did this, but focused mainly on the guitarist, rather than the song. With their debut album Los Angeles, X combined their bitter rallying against the trappings of high society with an elegant blend of art-punk that placed poetry and expression at its heart. It was a sound that placed them quite at odds with contemporaries like The Germs and Screamers. The ultimate gang of punk outriders, The Stranglers never bothered to endear themselves to the mainstream public or the music press. Early gigs often saw mass walkouts and punch-ups. In 1975, two years before their debut single, Melody Maker sneered that “the only sense in which The Stranglers could be considered new wave is that no one had the gall to palm off this rubbish before”. It’s a put-down that sounds even more risible today, given a catalogue with some 23 hit singles and 17 Top 40 albums. Why it was so influential: Just listen to virtually any ’80s pop record that came out after ‘Dare’ to hear its hallmarks. Elastica, ‘Elastica’ (1995)

In 2004, a 1-disc edited version of the first volume was released to unknown ventures with different artwork. In 2005, the series returned with a 3-CD album titled The Best of the Best Air Guitar Albums in the World Ever. Due to the fact volume 3 claimed to be the last volume, the liner notes (written by Brian May) note "OK, we lied". Most of the songs had already appeared on volumes 1, 2 & 3, but there were some which didn't, such as The Darkness' " I Believe in a Thing Called Love" and an exclusive Queen + Paul Rodgers live performance of " Fat Bottomed Girls". This is, however, an opinion that disregards all available evidence, because what we have here is not only the best punk album ever made, but it’s also one of the most powerful, enduringly influential and complete recorded statements crafted in any genre. Disagree? Go tell it to your religious fundamentalist flat-earth brethren, because you’re wrong. One of the greatest things about post-punk is the way that it makes intense bleakness danceable despite itself; and Leeds outfit Gang of Four were one of the earliest pioneers with their debut album ‘Entertainment!’. Sarcastic in title and biting by nature, it’s a record that sets out an urgent agenda with thumping drums: spanning from political violence in Northern Ireland to rampant consumerism. And Gang of Four’s politics often veer towards the personal: the likes of ‘5.45’ and ‘Contract’ nail the lingering sense of anxiety and dread that comes with a constant numbing bombardment of terrible news. “ Our bodies make us worry,” frontman Andy Gill sings cheerfully on the latter, atop spiking and uneasy dub-punk. Despair and disenfranchisement colliding with gold-standard pop writing – it doesn’t get much better than this. Although most albums use the Album in the World...Ever! suffix, some towards the late 1990s change the suffix to Anthems...Ever!, with a plural on the theme (example the album The Best Celtic Anthems...Ever!). Some even just use ...Ever! as a suffix (such as The Best TV Ads...Ever!)Traditionally dismissed by a derisory media, Sham 69 have been effectively excised from punk history. It’s not as if they didn’t sell records (a consecutive run of irresistibly hooked late-70s chart singles that left punk contemporaries such as The Clash, Damned and Jam choking on their dust) or become influential (the classic Sham template continues to define today’s street-punk). The truth is that Sham 69 were always just a little too uncomfortably authentic for an essentially middle-class, largely metropolitan music press. As Sham’s vocalist Jimmy Pursey so eloquently nailed it in his lyrics to their breakthrough Angels With Dirty Faces hit: ‘ We’re the people you don’t wanna know, we come from places you don’t wanna go.’

If this had been called 'The Best New Wave Album in the World...Ever! Vol. 1' it would have made more sense because it's a very decent collection of New Wave music, with just a sprinkle of Post Punk, and a pinch of punk for seasoning. There's a few real gems here too - Spizzenergi's 'Where's Captain Kirk?', X-Ray Spex 'The Day the World Turned Day-Glo', Bow Wow Wow's 'I Want Candy', John Cooper Clarke's epic 'Beasley Street' and Wires great hit-that-never-was, 'Outdoor Miner'! None of those are punk though they're powered by the same energy and attitudes that inspired punk. It’s true that Idol couldn’t keep his predilection for pop under wraps for long – a fact adeptly displayed by Generation X becoming one of the first UK punk bands to appear on Top Of The Pops in late ‘77. Not long after, the band’s descent into obscurity began. Idol fixed his eyes on the bright lights and departed for the charts in 1979.The Dead Boys could easily have been one of the bands of their generation. Frontman Stiv Bators should have been punk’s poster boy. But, somewhere along the line, it all went wrong. Why it was so influential: Just listen to virtually any post-punk band making music after the Millennium – Mark E. Smith’s voice is everywhere Gang of Four, ‘Entertainment!’ (1979)

EMI, Chrysalis, Polygram, Polydor, Phonogram, A&M, Warner Music, Sony Music, Castle Communications, Demon, Bright Music, Trojan and Templemill Music. This volume features repeats of songs featured in previous volumes from the series; The Stone Roses' "What The World Is Waiting For" featured on Volume 3, and Mansun's "Wide Open Space" featured on Volume 5, although the version of "Wide Open Space" here is a remix by Paul Oakenfold. Why it was so influential: Gang of Four’s kid-in-a-sweet-shop approach to genre – snatching up elements of disco, funk and dub – didn’t just shape post-punk’s scattershot approach. ‘Entertainment! also influenced everything from rap to grunge: Kurt Cobain once said that Nirvana began as a partial rip-off of Gang of Four. Joy Division, ‘Unknown Pleasures’ (1979) This is a CD compilation of power ballads. Several editions have been released since the first album, Power Ballads – The Greatest Driving Anthems in the World... Ever!, was released in 2004.In NMTB producer Chris Thomas, the Pistols found their Visconti. Their savant genius was already there – all they needed was an interpreter to translate passion into the language of vinyl, and here it was. A titanic wall of guitars, The Stooges Spectorised, the Dolls Anglicised and John Lydon distilling a lost, dismissed and disenfranchised generation’s directionless, nihilistic fury into succinct spitballs of vented spleen as intense, uncompromising and affecting as any dead poetry. Why it was so influential: Savages brought with them a dose of much-needed mythology, and raised valuable questions about why women in punk are so frequently branded as bolshy or intimidating. Fontaines DC, ‘Dogrel’ (2019) Mis-filed under ‘also-ran punk’ for way too long, Blank Generation deserves reappraisal as a truly outstanding late-70s punk classic.