Dave Porter has a question. He wants to know where clouds go. “After they pass by, are they just like people, that go on and then die?” The figurative bit between his teeth, he wonders if small clouds “are lonely, like you and I? Do they just go to rain, or is that a tear from their eye? Sometimes I feel like a small cloud passing by, never knowing where I’m going and never knowing why.”

Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols was issued on 28 October 1977. It’s an anniversary worth marking. Forty years is a long time and the decades between then and now have not reduced interest in the band or the punk rock maelstrom surrounding them.

Committed fans of Emerson, Lake & Palmer are spoiled for choice when they need to feed their passion for prog rock’s most eminent trio. Decent shape original pressings of their albums can be picked up for under £10.

Pere Portabella’s remarkable Vampir Cuadecuc is almost impossible to classify. It may have been filmed on the set of Jesús Franco's 1970 Hammer horror film El Conde Dracula – with the obviously enthusiastic participation of a cast led by Christopher Lee – but it certainly isn’t a "making-of" film.

They’re all going into TV nowadays, and here amid the cinematic runners and riders at the LFF is David Fincher directing Mindhunter. It's Netflix’s new series about the FBI in the Seventies, when the Bureau was slowly starting to realise that catching criminals needed more than the old “just the facts, ma’am” approach.

Before they even step on stage The Pretenders win me to their side. An announcement prior to their appearance tells the audience, “The Pretenders request you keep your phone in your pocket.” Brilliantly, these aren’t idle words. As the gig progresses security quietly but firmly approach anyone with their phone out and asks them to desist. A few songs into the set, Chrissie Hynde has just begun a stripped-down take on her 1986 hit “Hymn to Her”, accompanied only by Welsh keyboard-player Carwyn Ellis, when she stops short. “Would everyone rather watch you take pictures than me sing?” she asks an unwise soul at the front who has disobeyed her request.

As a fan of gigs as communal events, rather than of everyone being partly somewhere else, partly concerned with informing the world they were at said gig, this anti-phone stuff is pleasing. But there’s much more to The Pretenders than a Luddite rock’nroll statement. Their performance emanates a sense of having a good time, boasting much cheeky interplay, fronted by a woman who still regards the concert as a spontaneous display of energy.

Chrissie Hynde has led The Pretenders, on and off, in various guises, for almost 40 years. Behind her on stage, surrounded by Perspex screens, is Martin Chambers, distinctively mutton-chopped, white hair slicked back, an amazing drummer and the sole other member from the classic late Seventies line-up which was decimated by drug deaths. Hynde wears a glittery pink jacket, tight jeans, studded belt, and a Pretenders tee-shirt, a svelte presence wielding an equally glittery guitar, her hair shaggy, punky, her features dominated by measured kohl eyes.

The set, which kicks off with the title track from last year’s Alone album, is peppered with most of the hits – a double punch of “Back on the Chain Gang” and “Talk of the Town” fires things up nicely – but the band seem to enjoy themselves most on numbers that settle into a punk-skiffle rhythm then turn into a jam, as on “Thumbelina” which blossoms into an astounding take on “Middle of the Road”. This grows faster and faster, with guitarist James Walbourne soloing at boggling speed and ferocity, playing off against Chambers' provocative drum patterns.

Hynde is in jovial form – dismissing her phone ban later in the set as a crabby whim. She tells anecdotes, notably about a failed play for the male lead in the video for “I’ll Stand by You”. She asks the crowd at one point, since this is Brighton, why haven’t they made her a gay icon like Madonna. Her singing voice is fine, as it ever was, retaining her trademark combination of softness and steel, which comes to the fore on “Stop You Sobbing”.

However, as she says after twangy Lynch-ian slowie “Let’s Get Lost”, “This is getting too serious, we came to rock’n’roll.” And they surely do in their two encores, notably on 2002 chugger “Break up the Concrete” and bass-led debut album closer “Mystery Achievement”, before eventually giving in to crowd pleas at the last and cheerfully striding through their only chart-topper, “Brass in Pocket”. They gather, arms around each other, and wave at us, thanking us at the very end. It’s a regular concert ritual, of course, but The Pretenders on stage tonight really do seem to be in the flush of something fresh, which is invigorating to witness.

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Overleaf: 37-minute set of The Pretenders live in 2016

One New Year’s Eve in the 1970s, hot young session musicians Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were assured by Grace Jones that they could penetrate the inner sanctum of Studio 54 by dropping her name at the door. A doorman thought otherwise and invited them to "fuck off". Making alternative arrangements, they bought a couple of bottles of Dom Perignon – “rock’n’roll mouthwash”, in Rodgers’ phrase – and went home to jam.

Anyone who finds Eric Clapton and The Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb stepping up to offer their services as their producer is obviously special. It’s a view reinforced by knowing Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham and Small Faces were already their champions. Only one person fits this unique bill.

Immediately before recording their first album in 1977, Motörhead were on their last legs. They went into the studio after playing what was initially conceived as their farewell show. Appropriately, no one then could have predicted that the band formed by Hawkwind’s former bass player in 1975 would become integral to rock’s rich tapestry. It wasn’t even their first attempt to make an album: one begun in 1975 had been shelved.

There’s a moment in The Deuce (Sky Atlantic) – a rare quiet one – where a working girl called Darlene is visiting a kindly old gent on her books. He has A Tale of Two Cities on his TV, the old black and white version with Dirk Bogarde as Sydney Carton preparing to do a far far better thing. As the final shot of the guillotine pulls back over the Paris rooftops, Darlene (played by Dominique Fishback) can’t believe what she’s just seen.