This BBC compilation show was all about pub rock. The attitude of early punk was there (as it probably was with the early Stones, somewhere between credible tough-guy-outsider act and poser artschool side-project for privileged kids ala The Clash), but the music was unanimously terrible. The only band on the show that I liked was Doctor Feelgood, because they were fairly idiosyncratic and original. The rest were dodgy, skeevy looking English guys trying to sound like American '50s acts. Bands included Graham Parker and the Rumour, Ace, Ducks Deluxe, The Motors and even a late '70s Dave Edmunds performance.
I don't understand how this music was intended to be the home-cooking response to Prog rock. For their faults, the UK proggers actually nodded at times to, at least, the Thinking Victorian Gentlemen's loose interpretation of old Albion; a slightly harebrained sub Tolkein-esque druid-slurry, cooked up in response to an ever-increasingly mechanised world. With a page of Wordsworth and Coleridge's prose each tucked into a back pocket, these bands accidentally held the map upside down, followed the wrong Ley Lines and ended up either in outer space or up their own arses. I don't see how the most obvious return to roots for every other scruff from every other rough London suburb was to try and sound like you were trying to get signed to Sun records circa 1952... The world is a strange place, especially when it comes to perceived authenticity in music.
Of course, if you want to out-prog the prog bands then you dip into the 'Rock In Opposition' pool, and fish out Henry Cow: