Yeah there was a lot of shite.
I used to go into a record shop in town and buy albums without ever hearing them, usually it was based on something I'd seen in Thrasher or fanzines or stuff, but a lot of the time it was just shite. John Peel was a decent bet but even he put some shite stuff out from his sessions.
I thought the idea of "punk" was to look for something away from the mainstream, so if you called yourself punk or waited for TOTP to tell you what the best song was then you weren't really punk.
It was the same with the rave scene, when it was a bunch of us in a field it was fresh and different, but as soon as it started making it to the charts and drunks started turning up we moved on.
Now I have no clue what's going on and that's how it should be, young people should be creating new stuff away from the mainstream, I'm a boring old git and as soon as someone like me finds out about it then it's already past it's best.