ongoing 

    I remember the Ramones' Joey Ramone singing "I don't care about history/Cos that's not where I want to be" in "Rock 'n' Roll High School." And I thought then: So right! But history is where everything ends up, as much as you want to seize the moment you have now and hang onto it. And, of course, Johnny, Joey and Dee Dee Ramone are all dead now. ... And the punk rock of that era is something we now look back on, hopefully not through a misty nostalgic lens, but with a realization that this was an amazing, important, defining moment in music and pop culture

    The Harvard Film Archive kicked off a series Friday Sept. 2 called "American Punk," although one of the opening films, "D.O.A.: A Right of Passage," is not about American punk. It's about the most infamous English punk band, the Sex Pistols, on their first, only and fatal American tour, starting in January 1978. I was there for the first concert, in Atlanta at the long-defunct Great Southeast Music Hall. Third row. I bought two tickets from a couple of English kids in line for $80. It was one of the most incendiary gigs of my life, full of piss and vinegar. (THe photo is from that show.) "D.O.A." is Polish film-maker Lech Kowalski's take on that trek, with bits of English punk bands and a sort of narrative about a struggling dead-end kid in London.
 Here's my take on "D.O.A," which screens Friday at 9:15 ...
      "The children are the sufferers," says Mary Whitehouse, who was England's noted morality crusader back in the day, near the beginning of "D.O.A." The force of punk rock is shaking London as it hasn't been shaken in years. Whitehouse says she's shamed by punk. ("The children) should be full of life and adventure.")

Up to a point, she's right. Young people are the sufferers. That, however, is the point. And, frankly, early punk rock was full of life and adventure. Just not the kind of life and adventure Whitehouse imagined. When you stare the future in the face and see unemployment and boredom, you don't rejoice. You do, however, seize adventure in the angry, emotional release of punk rock. You reject a rock 'n' roll mainstream that's become staid; you reject a society that's already rejected you; you make your own fun.

The Sex Pistols, the most glorified and vilified of the British punk bands, best articulated the rage of the early period, from 1976 to 1978. With harsh melodies and soaring guitar lines the Pistols' nailed targets to the post and blasted away. With their first two British hits, "Anarchy in the UK" and "God Save the Queen," they turned seething frustration into ironic celebration. "No future for you!" railed singer Johnny Rotten. It could be two things: a call for a revolution (that never came), or a call for a clamorous party as the ship went down.

The party came to foreign soil in January 1978 - seven dates throughout the South-Southwestern US - and filmmaker Lech Kowalski followed in hot pursuit. Though that trek is the backbone of "D.O.A," importantly, it's not the only game in town. Kowalski includes film clips from other seminal punk bands such as Generation X and Sham 69 - an effect that correctly casts the Pistols as an essential part of a movement, not as isolated and exulted media stars. A subplot concerns Terry Sylvester, a dead-end London kid who struggles to cope with life and gets a band together. In Sylvester, the societal pressures that forced punk's birth are glimpsed.

From Atlanta to San Francisco, Kowalski captures the maelstrom, mostlyfrom a position in the audience. He doesn't interview Rotten or Pistols' Svengali Malcolm McLaren (who died last year), the two who best understood and manipulated the band, so the internal machinations are unexplored. Pretty sure neither Mac nor Rotten wanted anything to do with something over which they had no control. Plus, they hated each other.

Kowalski lets the camera present the sheer power - the chaotic, visceral glory of the music (complete with subtitles) and the charismatic mania ofRotten. He lets various punks and punkettes sputter through explanations of what punk rock, or life itself, means to them. Much of this is overkill (when you've seen one safety pin through the cheek . . . ), but a wasted woman in San Francisco best summarizes the philosophy underlying the Pistols' music when she says: "I do not care. I do care. But you can't care."

The most discomforting - or, for aficionados of black humor, hilarious - moments in "D.O.A" come during the infamous interview with bassist/junkie Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. Sid has mostly nodded off. Nancy nags him to wake up. Sid drops his lit cigarette on Nancy's arm. She yells at him. The most coherent answer Sid can manage is: "What was the question?" (Sid was later charged with killing Nancy and died from a heroin overdose before the trial.) I can still recall hearing Nancy's grating shriek of "Sid!!!" from when I first saw this back in the day. At the time, she was probably the most hated woman in the punk rock universe. There was, also, the feeling that she led the weak-willed, somewhat hapless Sid down the path of destruction.

From that interview, Kowalski jump cuts to the Pistols playing "Bodies" and suddenly the fury is back. The fierce musical drama leaves Sid and Nancy's personal mess as a bitter undercurrent.

"D.O.A." brings us closeup shots from an all-too-brief, frenzied period. "D.O.A." shows when and where the seed was planted. And the action it preserves on celluloid pulses with life and adventure, still.

About the series: It runs from Sept. 2 throught Sept. 26. See the website below for full schedule.  ... Some punk bands - the Pistols, the Clash, the Jam, the Ramones, Television, Talking Heads - signed to major labels. But there was also “Do It Yourself” ethos that carried over from the music to the business, and the formation of many fledgling record labels, booking agents and clubs. The DIY
attitude carried over with young film-makers who were eagerness to reject convention. The film series highlights North American films, dating from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, that feature punk music, punk performers and above all, punk aesthetics – particularly those that have been shown rarely, if ever, in the area.  The films are varied in genre and budget. While none of the films are lavish productions by any stretch, they do cover the wide domain of amateur ("Desperate Teenage Lovedolls"), indie feature ("Border Radio," "Times Square," "Suburbia," "No Skin Off My Ass") and verité documentary of hardcore L.A. punk, Penelope Spheeris' "The Decline Of Western Civilization."
  Spheeris' film, which screens Saturday September 3 at 7 p.m. and
Sunday September 4 at 5 p.m. was shot on 16mm in dive clubs, cheap apartments, and in Hollywood’s shadows at the dawn of the 1980s. The west coast scene developed and exploded - in its own way - after the English scene dissipated or splintered. There was a feeling among many of us that L.A. hardcore was too little, too late, and too damn nihilistic. Often, the ultra-speedy rhythms bypassed melody, and the wit many of the earlier bands had seemed to be absent. I remember at the time thinking X was the only great band to come out of this scene and I think I'm right, but lord knows, Black Flag had its moments and influenced hundreds of bands. And Fear - the band where we first met longtime Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea - was fascinating in its sarcastic rage. Interviewing a wide array of experts – teenagers at rock shows, musicians, club owners, music critics – Spheeris penetrates the punk scene and attitude, revealing layers of the underground heretofore unseen by a mainstream audience.  For the benefit of the uninitiated, some songs are subtitled and even slam dancing is more-or-less “explained.” Focusing on live performance by such bands as Black Flag, X, Circle Jerks, Fear, and the Germs, and including rare footage of gay punk icon (and overdose to be) Darby Crash, the documentary even-handedly and intimately studies multiple facets of punk culture while letting punks speak for themselves.

Tickets: $9.

24 Quincy St., Cambridge, 617-495-4700 http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa