Watch Videos of Punk Scene on the Kings Road, Chelsea in London From Between the Late 1970s and Early 1980s

In the mid-1970s, by day Phil Munnoch was a mild-mannered copywriter working for an ad agency in the heart of the city. He was neat, he was clean, he looked smart in his collar and tie, sharp pressed trousers and bright, shiny shoes. But Phil had a secret that he kept from his colleagues. At the end of each working day, like some postmodern superhero Phil would change out of his work clothes into tight fitting bondage trousers, studded dog collar and badge-covered plastic jacket to become his punk alter ego Captain Zip.

In 1978 Phil aka Captain Zip started documenting the young punks who were “escaping the mundanity of averageness” by parading around the streets of Beaufort Market and the King’s Road. Phil liked the way these youngsters dressed, the way they rebelled, they energy they exuded–it was “a great sort of liberation of the human spirit.”

“I spent almost every Saturday between 1978 and 1981 filming on the King’s Road, ‘punk is dead’ says graffiti outside Seditionaries, but it lives on in every frame of this turbulent time capsule.”

As a punk, he was more readily accepted by the other punks when he started filming their activities every weekend between 1978 and 1981. Phil edited together the first eight of these home movies into the short documentary Death is their Destiny.

(via Flashbak)