What a week to be a London tourist. After feeding the Beefeaters and faking plague at the London Dungeon, you can go see a real-life original punk band play the 100 Club – maybe even slip an old Sid-alike £20 to give you an authentic bike-chaining. The Resolution festival is a five-day homage to the legendary Punk Special held here in 1976, but those looking to spit and pogo through a more traditional punk experience were better advised to smuggle a bag of Bostik into the UK Subs or Anti-Nowhere League shows another night.

London’s Ruts DC, named the Ruts for the 18 months they led punk’s second wave until the heroin death of their singer Malcolm Owen in 1980, instead provide a lesson in crossing cultural streams. They brazenly flaunt the scene’s backdoor pilfering from prog, metal, blues rock and primarily dub reggae, right down to the archaic image of singer John ”Segs” Jennings, a gregarious geezer in Arthur Daley’s overcoat, berating “soul-jahs” and “po-lice” in Jamaican patois like a righteous throwback to the 70s’ more questionable sitcoms. For an hour there’s precious little punk on offer.

They do, however, exhibit the scene’s socio-political snarl. Jennings condemns the closures of West End music venues and the Charlie Hebdo shootings, and tackles police harassment on S.U.S., war on No Time To Kill and child abuse on ponderous AOR new song Second Hand Child. At times it’s an exercise in nostalgia protest: Jah War now sounds like a historical re-enactment of the Southall and Brixton riots, while It Was Cold comes drenched in 80s nuclear paranoia.

But there’s a timeless poignancy to Jenning’s forlorn heroin lament Love in Vein, dedicated to Owen, and the roots of Pixies, Weezer and the Strokes poke through, even before they ramp up the dodgy amphetamine quotient to Clash-thrash levels through Staring at the Rude Boys, Babylon’s Burning and In a Rut, complete with an uncanny snippet of Public Image as a stamp of authenticity. Punk: tick! Now, a Hackney carriage to pearly Lambeth.