So the Olympics opening ceremony isn't just going to be Teletubbies Land with sheep? Albion will rise, for the Queen will spontaneously combust when she hears God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols. A living flame will light the way. Her maj may have been lulled into submission by Gary Barlow and entertained by man of the people Jimmy Carr, but the leaked playlist planned by Danny Boyle is dangerous, man.

There is Relax by Frankie. Sex! There is a bit of Underworld. Drugs – well, lager. There is some Oasis. Rock'n'roll. There is some Handel and stodgy old Clash. For the laydeez there is some MIA and Sugababes. And, of course, some Mike Oldfield and that other famous Brit, Michael Jackson.

It's all very jolly and an essentially British playlist. Not surprising as, after Beijing, we have to pull something off. I always suspected that underneath Boyle's pastoral vision and Anish Kapoor's sketchy Helter-Skelter there would be 10,000 volunteers ready to burst this bubble. They will appear dressed in casual clothes but be a dancing mass of rioters with cricket bats. I read, too, that Boris will appear as a giant cod surrounded by commoners dressed as chips. Or perhaps I didn't. I'd hate to spoil anything.

Actually the playlist has generally been applauded. It may change and it shows our "wunnerful" sense of humour as we go through the decades: the Beatles, Led Zep, Arctic Monkeys. But ... a playlist is to be argued with surely? What do you want at your funeral, wedding or birth? (Sorry, the Stooges didn't really work for me until the pethidine kicked in, but thanks.) Yet this playlist is not really controversial because, let's face it, it is that of the dreaded "50-quid bloke". The man who spends that much in one hit, as he can't get out to gigs like he used to. He hates The X Factor and likes bands that remind him of bands he used to like when young. But he keeps up too! So here is some Dizzee Rascal, Emeli Sande and Rizzle Kicks. Harry Wales will be jerking away, but the main thing is to keep it real. I recognise this bloke. Sometimes I am him. But in some ways, because I know this guy inside out, I know that I can never be him.

Why? 'Cos while he was listening to Yes, I was listening to Marvin Gaye and while he still thinks getting the Pistols to No 1 would prove something, I don't know what that something is now: apart from proving that punk still functions as a floating guarantor of authenticity.

Look at all the punk nostalgia around the Jubilee. Peculiar and sad. Not because Westwood now loves the Queen or John Lydon does butter ads but because we can't move on. They did their bit. Lydon can do whatever he likes now: because of that meningococcal stare, that holy yelp and his arguing with ostriches on I'm a Celeb, I'll forgive him his need for a pension plan.

What I can't forgive though is the pretence that punk was the pure source. Even at the time it was the most mediated, dissected and goadingly self-conscious of subcultures – and very quickly commodified. Most people who were part of it never ever wore bondage trousers or mohicans or any of the uniform. We were messing about with loads of makeup, silly "sexy" clothes while listening to loads of dub. We did want to upset people. But mainly just people at the bus stop. We wore synthetic nan dresses from charity shops and stuck toothbrushes in our hair. That was enough to look different. Nick Coleman in his wonderful memoir The Train in the Night: A Story of Music and Loss refers to the part-time nature of punk in the provinces. Some declined "to refer to themselves as punks at all, even if they did rip all their clothes into streamers at the weekend and bought records by the Ruts". The revisionism of programmes like Punk Britannia misses this too.

The punk narrative – beautifully put together by the likes of Greil Marcus and Jon Savage – tends to make it sound like a situationist fantasy rather than the dull conformity it became. The music that came before and after in other genres has been just as revolutionary but somehow is not top of the list for the 50-quid man. Still, I wouldn't ask Boyle for a soundtrack but rather Kathryn Dayak, the genius who soundtracked The Sopranos.

But it's not about my taste, it's about making us feel good at something. It's about the one thing we can win but there's no Kate Bush, Alex Harvey, Linton Kwesi Johnson or the supreme chronicler of England, Polly Harvey.

This music was never going to represent punk, rap, dance music or even the present tense that remains underground and is not for the likes of me to know about yet. The Olympic Soundtrack is about the ultimate national branding. And so … God Save the Queen/the fascist regime is the actual business now.

There is no future in England's Dreaming? Let the games commence.