By Graham K. Rogers

In January 1977 I had a motorcycle accident that kept me off work for several months. The event set in motion a chain of events that brought me to Thailand, but for those first few months away from being a uniformed policeman, I was able to grow my hair long, wear very informal clothes and mix with some young people which also had the effect of changing my musical outlook.

The summer of that year was a time when the recent music releases had two threads in my life. On the one hand, I had bought The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, with Hotel California and Rumours respectively. The Eagles release has not stood the test of time and I sort of cringe when I hear the opening bars. In comparison, the opening note of Nina Simone's 1965, "I put a spell on you" is still galvanising.

The other part of my musical education that summer was the advent of punk. The pub we visited had a fairly liberal attitude to the young people who were its customers and the music played reflected their tastes. It was in here, for example, that I first heard Elvis Costello, the Clash and of course the Sex Pistols who later outraged the establishment with God Save the Queen (in the Queen's Jubilee year, no less) from the equally-outrageous album titled Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols.

I was reminded of this recently when I heard a repeat of a 2006 interview on WBEZ Sound Opinions podcast with Roger Ebert who died recently. He had been involved in a project to make a Sex Pistols movie and had written a screenplay, later meeting the group in London. His insights - and other comments on the podcast about anti-Thatcher music released while she was in power - led me to the iTunes store where I browsed the album.

When I clicked on the tracks, I was immediately surprised at how fresh the musci sounded. I had to remind myself that these numbers were 35 years old. While I listen to a lot of modern music that has its genesis in the punk era of the late 1970s, this sounded as if it was as up to date as new tracks I was listening to last week.

A lot was written about the musical abilities of the group, but I remember also the solo output of John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) with PIL, particularly the Metal Box album of 1979. Never Mind the Bollocks has a lot of that, starting with Lydon's focussed vocals that many have tried to emulate since. But the instruments are also clearly in tune and in time.

As I listened to the tracks, I found myself delighted over and over again by the guitar playing of Steve Jones. "Holiday in the Sun" reminding me of Stevie Winwood (and the later "Holiday in Cambodia" by The Dead Kennedys), while there were hints of the Kinks with "No Feelings". Guitar playing is well under control, exuberant and puts the lie to the "no talent" criticism raised earlier.

Lydon's sometimes-wailing voice is perfect for the angriness and sarcasm of the lyrics. The songs were, after all, a particular form of social comment of the time and are sharp both on the complacency of UK culture and of its divisive politics. The acute observations of "Problems" from which the title for this article borrows the words, "eat your heart out on a pastic tray" (0:58) also includes, "at least I know what I want to be". Lydon and Sid Vicious are also human illustrations of the times, with the former, angry and creative while Vicious was angry, overwhelmed and in the end self-destructive. Like many young artists, the arrival of fame, money, insularity and poor advice took its toll.

Musically, this album is not brilliant, but who cares. As an example of raw, rocking entertainment it scores highly. As a social comment and snapshot, it is a historical document of the feelings of a large part of British youth at that time which erupted a couple of years later in riots in many cities in Britain: don't ignore what youth is thinking. The language used has a liberal peppering of expletives, although if anyone watches movies or some TV shows, these words will not be a shock. There is just as bad in Chaucer and Shakespeare if you know where to look.

When I listened to the samples of the tracks on the iTunes Store, I was surprised at how good this felt. It only took a few minutes before I pressed the buy button. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols now joins some of the great releases that it inspired from Stranglers up to the more recent Bo Ningen who have some of the same urgency in their music.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.