Punk rocker



Punk rock (often referred to simply as punk) is an anti-establishment rock music genre and movement that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock. They created fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-government lyrics. Punk embraces a DIY (do it yourself) ethic, with many bands self-producing their recordings and distributing them through informal channels.

By late 1976, bands such as the Ramones, in New York City, the Sex Pistols and The Clash, in London, were recognized as the vanguard of a new musical movement. The following year saw punk rock spreading around the world. Punk quickly, though briefly, became a major cultural phenomenon in the United Kingdom. For the most part, punk took root in local scenes that tended to reject association with the mainstream. An associated punk subculture emerged, expressing youthful rebellion and characterized by distinctive clothing styles and a variety of anti-authoritarian ideologies.

By the beginning of the 1980s, even faster, more aggressive styles such as hardcore and Oi! had become the predominant mode of punk rock. Musicians identifying with or inspired by punk also pursued a broad range of other variations, giving rise to post-punk and the alternative rock movement. By the turn of the century, new pop punk bands such as Green Day were bringing the genre widespread popularity decades after its inception.

Characteristics

Philosophy

The first wave of punk rock aimed to be aggressively modern, distancing itself from the bombast and sentimentality of early 1970s rock.^[1] According to Ramones drummer Tommy Ramone, "In its initial form, a lot of [1960s] stuff was innovative and exciting. Unfortunately, what happens is that people who could not hold a candle to the likes of Hendrix started noodling away. Soon you had endless solos that went nowhere. By 1973, I knew that what was needed was some pure, stripped down, no bullshit rock 'n' roll."^[2] John Holmstrom, founding editor of Punk magazine, recalls feeling "punk rock had to come along because the rock scene had become so tame that [acts] like Billy Joel and Simon and Garfunkel were being called rock and roll, when to me and other fans, rock and roll meant this wild and rebellious music."^[3]

In critic Robert Christgau's description, "It was also a subculture that scornfully rejected the political idealism and Californian flower-power silliness of hippie myth."^[4] Patti Smith, in contrast, suggests in the documentary 25 Years of Punk that the hippies and the punk rockers were linked by a common anti-establishment mentality. BBC News notes that "[o]n both sides of the Atlantic, more and more young disillusioned white teenagers were looking for an escape from the boredom and constraints of society, with unemployment, racial tensions and social upheaval providing fuel for their fires." ^[5]

Throughout punk rock history, technical accessibility and a DIY spirit have been prized. In the early days of punk rock, this ethic stood in marked contrast to what those in the scene regarded as the ostentatious musical effects and technological demands of many mainstream rock bands.^[6], especially progressive rock bands. Musical virtuosity was often looked on with suspicion. According to Holmstrom, punk rock was "rock and roll by people who didn't have very much skills as musicians but still felt the need to express themselves through music".^[3] In December 1976, the English fanzine Sideburns famously published an illustration of three chords, captioned "This is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now form a band."^[7] The title of a 1980 single by New York punk band The Stimulators, "Loud Fast Rules!", inscribed a catchphrase for punk's basic musical approach.^[8]

Some of British punk rock's leading figures made a show of rejecting not only contemporary mainstream rock and the broader culture it was associated with, but their own most celebrated predecessors: "No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones in 1977", declared The Clash song "1977".^[9] The previous year, when the punk rock revolution began in Great Britain, was to be both a musical and a cultural "Year Zero".^[10] Even as nostalgia was discarded, many in the scene adopted a nihilistic attitude summed up by the Sex Pistols slogan "No Future".^[1] Others found positive, liberating meaning in the movement. As a Clash associate describes singer Joe Strummer's outlook, "Punk rock is meant to be our freedom. We're meant to be able to do what we want to do."^[11]

Musical and lyrical elements

Punk rock bands often emulate the bare musical structures and arrangements of 1960s garage rock.^[12] Typical punk rock instrumentation includes one or two electric guitars, an electric bass, and a drum kit, along with vocals. Punk rock songs tend to be shorter than those of other popular genres—on the Ramones' debut album, for instance, half of the fourteen tracks are under two minutes long. Most early punk rock songs retained a traditional rock 'n' roll verse-chorus form and 4/4 time signature. However, punk rock bands in the movement's second wave and afterward have often broken from this format. In critic Steven Blush's description, "The Sex Pistols were still rock'n'roll...like the craziest version of Chuck Berry. Hardcore was a radical departure from that. It wasn't verse-chorus rock. It dispelled any notion of what songwriting is supposed to be. It's its own form."^[13]

Punk rock vocals sometimes sound nasal,^[14] and lyrics are often shouted instead of sung in a conventional sense, particularly in hardcore styles.^[15] The vocal approach is characterized by a lack of variety; shifts in pitch, volume, or intonational style are relatively infrequent—the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten constituting a significant exception.^[16] Complicated guitar solos are considered self-indulgent and unnecessary, although basic guitar breaks are common.^[17] Guitar parts tend to include highly distorted power chords or barre chords, creating a characteristic sound described by Christgau as a "buzzsaw drone".^[18] Some punk rock bands take a surf rock approach with a lighter, twangier guitar tone. Others, such as Robert Quine, lead guitarist of seminal punk rock band The Voidoids, employ a wild, "gonzo" attack, a style that stretches back through The Velvet Underground to the 1950s recordings of Ike Turner.^[19] Bass guitar lines are often uncomplicated; the quintessential approach is a relentless, repetitive "forced rhythm",^[20] although some punk rock bass players—such as Mike Watt of The Minutemen and Firehose—emphasize more technical bass lines. Bassists often use a plectrum due to the rapid succession of notes, which makes fingerpicking impractical. Drums typically sound heavy and dry, and often have a minimal set-up. Compared to other forms of rock, syncopation is much less the rule.^[21] Hardcore drumming tends to be especially fast.^[15] Production tends to be minimalistic, with tracks sometimes laid down on home tape recorders^[22] or simple four-track portastudios. The typical objective is to have the recording sound unmanipulated and "real", reflecting the commitment and "authenticity" of a live performance.^[23] Punk recordings thus often have a lo-fi quality, with the sound left relatively unpolished in the mastering process; recordings may contain dialogue between band members, false starts, and background noise.

The Clash, performing in 1980

Punk rock lyrics are typically frank and confrontational; compared to other popular music genres, they frequently comment on social and political issues.^[24] Trend-setting songs such as The Clash's "Career Opportunities" and Chelsea's "Right to Work" deal with unemployment and the grim realities of urban life.^[25] Especially in early British punk, a central goal was to outrage and shock the mainstream.^[26] The Sex Pistols classics "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen" openly disparage the British political system and social mores. There is also a characteristic strain of anti-sentimental depictions of relationships and sex, exemplified by "Love Comes in Spurts", written by Richard Hell and recorded by him with The Voidoids. Anomie, variously expressed in the poetic terms of Hell's "Blank Generation" and the bluntness of the Ramones' "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue", is a common theme. Identifying punk with such topics aligns with the view expressed by Search and Destroy founder V. Vale: "Punk was a total cultural revolt. It was a hardcore confrontation with the black side of history and culture, right-wing imagery, sexual taboos, a delving into it that had never been done before by any generation in such a thorough way."^[27] However, many punk rock lyrics deal in more traditional rock 'n' roll themes of courtship, heartbreak, and hanging out; the approach ranges from the deadpan, aggressive simplicity of Ramones standards such as "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend"^[28] to the more unambiguously sincere style of many later pop punk groups.

Visual and other elements

UK punks, circa 1986

The classic punk rock look among male U.S. musicians harkens back to the T-shirt, motorcycle jacket, and jeans ensemble favored by American greasers of the 1950s associated with the rockabilly scene and by British rockers of the 1960s. The cover of the Ramones' 1976 debut album, featuring a shot of the band by Punk photographer Roberta Bayley, set forth the basic elements of a style that was soon widely emulated by rock musicians both punk and nonpunk.^[29] Richard Hell's more androgynous, ragamuffin look—and reputed invention of the safety-pin aesthetic—was a major influence on Sex Pistols impresario Malcolm McLaren and, in turn, British punk style.^[30][31] Early female punk musicians displayed styles ranging from Siouxsie Sioux's bondage gear to Patti Smith's "straight-from-the-gutter androgyny".^[32] The former proved much more influential on female fan styles.^[33] Over time, tattoos, piercings, and metal-studded and -spiked accessories became increasingly common elements of punk fashion among both musicians and fans. The typical male punk haircut was originally short and choppy; the Mohawk later emerged as a characteristic style.^[34] Those in hardcore scenes often adopt a skinhead look.

The characteristic stage performance style of male punk musicians does not deviate significantly from the macho postures classically associated with rock music.^[35] Female punk musicians broke more clearly from earlier styles. Scholar John Strohm suggests that they did so by creating personas of a type conventionally seen as masculine: "They adopted a tough, unladylike pose that borrowed more from the macho swagger of sixties garage bands than from the calculated bad-girl image of bands like The Runaways."^[32] Scholar Dave Laing describes how bassist Gaye Advert adopted fashion elements associated with male musicians only to generate a stage persona readily consumed as "sexy".^[36] Laing focuses on more innovative and challenging performance styles, seen in the various erotically destabilizing approaches of Siouxsie Sioux, The Slits' Ari Up, and X-Ray Spex's Poly Styrene.^[37]

The lack of emphatic syncopation led punk dance to "deviant" forms. The characteristic style was originally the pogo.^[38] Sid Vicious, before he became the Sex Pistols' bassist, is credited with initiating the pogo in Britain as an attendee at one of their concerts.^[39] Moshing is typical at hardcore shows. The lack of conventional dance rhythms was a central factor in limiting punk's mainstream commercial impact^[40]; however, with the rise of hardcore in the 80s, hardcore dancing developed.

Breaking down the distance between performer and audience is central to the punk ethic.^[41] Fan participation at concerts is thus important; during the movement's first heyday, it was often provoked in an adversarial manner—apparently perverse, but appropriately "punk". First-wave British punk bands such as the Pistols and The Damned insulted and otherwise goaded the audience into intense reactions. Laing has identified three primary forms of audience physical response to goading: can throwing, stage invasion, and spitting or "gobbing".^[42] In the hardcore realm, stage invasion is often a prelude to stage diving. In addition to the numerous fans who have started or joined punk bands, audience members also become important participants via the scene's many amateur periodicals—in England, according to Laing, punk "was the first musical genre to spawn fanzines in any significant numbers".^[43]

Pre-history

Garage rock and mod

For more details on these topics, see Garage rock and Mod (lifestyle).

In the early and mid-1960s, garage rock bands that came to be recognized as punk rock's progenitors began springing up in many different locations around North America. The Kingsmen, a garage band from Portland, Oregon, had a breakout hit with their 1963 cover of "Louie, Louie", cited as "punk rock's defining ur-text".^[44] The minimalist sound of many garage rock bands was influenced by the harder-edged wing of the British Invasion. The Kinks' hit singles of 1964, "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night", have been described as "predecessors of the whole three-chord genre—the Ramones' 1978 'I Don't Want You,' for instance, was pure Kinks-by-proxy".^[45] In 1965, The Who quickly progressed from its debut single, "I Can't Explain", a virtual Kinks clone, to "My Generation". Though it had little impact on the American charts, The Who's mod anthem presaged a more cerebral mix of musical ferocity and rebellious posture that characterized much early British punk rock: John Reed describes The Clash's emergence as a "tight ball of energy with both an image and rhetoric reminiscent of a young Pete Townshend—speed obsession, pop-art clothing, art school ambition".^[46] The Who and fellow mods The Small Faces were among the few rock elders acknowledged by the Sex Pistols.^[47] By 1966, mod was already in decline. U.S. garage rock began to lose steam within a couple of years, but the aggressive musical approach and outsider attitude of "garage psych" bands like The Seeds were picked up and emphasized by groups that were later seen as the crucial figures of protopunk.

Protopunk

For more details on this topic, see Protopunk.

In 1969, debut albums by two Michigan-based bands appeared that are commonly regarded as the central protopunk records. In January, Detroit's MC5 released Kick Out the Jams. "Musically the group is intentionally crude and aggressively raw", wrote critic Lester Bangs in Rolling Stone:

Most of the songs are barely distinguishable from each other in their primitive two-chord structures. You've heard all this before from such notables as the Seeds, Blue Cheer, Question Mark and the Mysterians, and the Kingsmen. The difference here ... is in the hype, the thick overlay of teenage-revolution and total-energy-thing which conceals these scrapyard vistas of clichés and ugly noise. ... "I Want You Right Now" sounds exactly (down to the lyrics) like a song called "I Want You" by the Troggs, a British group who came on with a similar sex-and-raw-sound image a couple of years ago (remember "Wild Thing"?)^[48]

Iggy Pop, the "godfather of punk"

That August, The Stooges, from Ann Arbor, premiered with a self-titled album. According to critic Greil Marcus, the band, led by singer Iggy Pop, created "the sound of Chuck Berry's Airmobile—after thieves stripped it for parts".^[49] The album was produced by John Cale, a former member of New York's experimental rock group The Velvet Underground. Having earned a "reputation as the first underground rock band", VU inspired, directly or indirectly, many of those involved in the creation of punk rock.^[50]

In the early 1970s, the New York Dolls updated the original wildness of 1950s rock 'n' roll in a fashion that later became known as glam punk.^[51] The New York duo Suicide played spare, experimental music with a confrontational stage act inspired by that of The Stooges. At the Coventry club in the New York borough of Queens, The Dictators used rock as a vehicle for wise-ass attitude and humor.^[52] In Boston, The Modern Lovers, led by Velvet Underground devotee Jonathan Richman, gained attention with a minimalistic style. In 1974, an updated garage rock scene began to coalesce around the newly opened Rathskeller club in Kenmore Square. Among the leading acts were the Real Kids, founded by former Modern Lover John Felice; Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band, whose frontman had been a member of the Velvet Underground for a few months in 1971; and Mickey Clean and the Mezz.^[53] In Ohio, a small but very influential underground rock scene emerged, led by Devo in Akron and Kent and Cleveland's The Electric Eels, Mirrors, and Rocket from the Tombs. In 1975, Rocket from the Tombs split into Pere Ubu and Frankenstein. The Electric Eels and Mirrors both broke up, and The Styrenes emerged from the fallout.^[54]

Britain's Deviants, in the late 1960s, played in a range of psychedelic styles with a satiric, anarchic edge and a penchant for situationist-style spectacle presaging the Sex Pistols by almost a decade.^[55] In 1970, the act evolved into the Pink Fairies, which carried on in a similar vein.^[56] With his Ziggy Stardust persona, David Bowie made artifice and exaggeration central—elements, again, that were picked up by the Pistols and certain other punk acts.^[57] Bands in London's pub rock scene stripped the music back to its basics, playing hard, R&B-influenced rock 'n' roll. By 1974, the scene's top act, Dr. Feelgood, was paving the way for others such as The Stranglers and Cock Sparrer that would play a role in the punk explosion. Among the pub rock bands that formed that year was The 101'ers, with lead singer Joe Strummer.^[58] Bands anticipating the forthcoming movement were appearing as far afield as Düsseldorf, West Germany, where "punk before punk" band NEU! formed in 1971, building on the Krautrock tradition of groups such as Can.^[59] In Japan, the anti-establishment Zunō Keisatsu (Brain Police) mixed garage psych and folk. The combo regularly faced censorship challenges, their live act at least once including onstage masturbation.^[60]

A new generation of Australian garage rock bands, inspired mainly by The Stooges and MC5, was coming even closer to the sound that would soon be called "punk": In Brisbane, The Saints also recalled the raw live sound of the British Pretty Things, who had made a notorious tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1965.^[61] Radio Birdman, cofounded by Detroit expatriate Deniz Tek in 1974, was playing gigs to a small but fanatical following in Sydney.

Origin of the term punk

Prior to the mid-1970s, punk, a centuries-old word of obscure etymology, was commonly used to describe "a young male hustler, a gangster, a hoodlum, or a ruffian".^[62] As Legs McNeil explains, "On TV, if you watched cop shows, Kojak, Baretta, when the cops finally catch the mass murderer, they'd say, 'you dirty Punk.' It was what your teachers would call you. It meant that you were the lowest."^[63] The first known use of the phrase "punk rock" appeared in the Chicago Tribune on March 22, 1970, attributed to Ed Sanders, cofounder of New York's anarcho-prankster band The Fugs. Sanders was quoted describing a solo album of his as "punk rock—redneck sentimentality".^[64] In the December 1970 issue of Creem, Lester Bangs, mocking more mainstream rock musicians, made ironic reference to Iggy Pop as "that Stooge punk".^[65] Suicide's Alan Vega credits this usage with inspiring his duo to bill its gigs as a "punk mass" for the next couple of years.^[66]

Patti Smith, performing in 1976

Dave Marsh was the first music critic to employ the term punk rock—in the May 1971 issue of Creem, he described ? and the Mysterians as giving a "landmark exposition of punk rock".^[67] In June 1972, the fanzine Flash included a "Punk Top Ten" of 1960s albums.^[68] That year, Lenny Kaye used the term in the liner notes of the anthology album Nuggets to refer to 1960s garage rock bands such as The Standells, The Sonics, and The Seeds.^[69] The fanzine Bomp! also used punk in this sense.^[70] In May 1973, Billy Altman launched the short-lived punk magazine.^[71] Bassist Jeff Jensen of Boston's Real Kids reports of a 1974 show, "A reviewer for one of the free entertainment magazines of the time caught the act and gave us a great review, calling us a 'punk band.' ... [W]e all sort of looked at each other and said, 'What's punk?'"^[72]

Roger Sabin, the author of a history of punk has noted that "punk is a notoriously amorphous concept" ^[73]. By 1975, punk was being used to describe acts as diverse as the Patti Smith Group—with lead guitarist Lenny Kaye—the Bay City Rollers, and Bruce Springsteen.^[70] As the scene at New York's CBGB club attracted notice, a name was sought for the developing sound. Club owner Hilly Kristal called the movement "street rock"; John Holmstrom credits Aquarian magazine with using punk "to describe what was going on at CBGBs".^[74] Holmstrom, McNeil, and Ged Dunn's magazine Punk, which debuted at the end of 1975, was crucial in codifying the term.^[75] "It was pretty obvious that the word was getting very popular", Holmstrom later remarked. "We figured we'd take the name before anyone else claimed it. We wanted to get rid of the bullshit, strip it down to rock 'n' roll. We wanted the fun and liveliness back."^[70]

Early history

New York City

The origins of New York's punk rock scene can be traced back to such sources as late 1960s trash culture and an early 1970s underground rock movement centered around the Mercer Arts Center in Greenwich Village, where the New York Dolls performed.^[76] In early 1974, a new scene began to develop around the CBGB club, also in lower Manhattan. At its core was Television, described by critic John Walker as "the ultimate garage band with pretensions".^[77] Their influences ranged from garage psych pioneer Roky Erickson to jazz innovator John Coltrane. The band's bassist/singer, Richard Hell, created a look with cropped, ragged hair, ripped T-shirts, and black leather jackets credited as the basis for punk rock visual style.^[78] In April 1974, Patti Smith, a member of the Mercer Arts Center crowd and a friend of Hell's, came to CBGB for the first time to see the band perform.^[79] A veteran of independent theater and performance poetry, Smith was developing an intellectual, feminist take on rock 'n' roll. On June 5, she recorded the single "Hey Joe"/"Piss Factory", featuring Television guitarist Tom Verlaine; released on her own Mer Records label, it heralded the scene's do it yourself (DIY) ethic and has often been cited as the first punk rock record.^[80] By August, Smith and Television were gigging together at another downtown New York club, Max's Kansas City.^[78]

Out in Forest Hills, Queens, several miles from lower Manhattan, the members of a newly formed band adopted a common surname. Drawing on sources ranging from the Stooges to The Beatles and The Beach Boys to Herman's Hermits and 1960s girl groups, the Ramones condensed rock 'n' roll to its primal level: "'1-2-3-4!' bass-player Dee Dee Ramone shouted at the start of every song, as if the group could barely master the rudiments of rhythm."^[81] The band played its first gig at CBGB on August 16, 1974. Another new act, Blondie, also debuted at the club that month. By the end of the year, the Ramones had performed seventy-four shows, each about seventeen minutes long.^[82] "When I first saw the Ramones", critic Mary Harron later remembered, "I couldn't believe people were doing this. The dumb brattiness."^[83] The Dictators, with a similar "playing dumb" concept, were recording their debut album. The Dictators Go Girl Crazy! came out in March 1975, mixing absurdist originals such as "Master Race Rock" and loud, straight-faced covers of cheese pop like Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe".^[84]

That spring, Smith and Television shared a two-month-long weekend residency at CBGB that brought major attention to the club.^[85] During this time, Richard Hell wrote "Blank Generation", which would become the scene's emblematic anthem.^[86] Soon after, Hell left Television and founded a band featuring a more stripped-down sound, The Heartbreakers, with former New York Dolls Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan. The pairing of Hell and Thunders, in one critical assessment, "inject[ed] a poetic intelligence into mindless self-destruction".^[30] In August, Television—with Fred Smith, former Blondie bassist, replacing Hell—recorded a single, "Little Johnny Jewel", for the tiny Ork label. In the words of John Walker, the record was "a turning point for the whole New York scene" if not quite for the punk rock sound itself—Hell's departure had left the band "significantly reduced in fringe aggression".^[77]

Facade of legendary music club CBGB, New York

Other bands were becoming regulars at CBGB, such as Mink DeVille and Talking Heads, which moved down from Rhode Island. More closely associated with Max's Kansas City were Suicide and the band led by drag queen Wayne County, another Mercer Arts Center alumna. The first album to come out of this downtown scene was released in November 1975: Smith's debut, Horses, produced by John Cale for the major Arista label.^[87] The inaugural issue of Punk appeared in December.^[88] The new magazine tied together earlier artists such as Velvet Underground lead singer Lou Reed, the Stooges, and the New York Dolls with the editors' favorite band, The Dictators, and the array of new acts centered around CBGB and Max's.^[89] That winter, Pere Ubu came in from Cleveland and played at both spots.^[90]

Early in 1976, Hell left The Heartbreakers; he soon formed a new group that would become known as The Voidoids, "one of the most harshly uncompromising bands" on the scene.^[91] That April, the Ramones' debut album was released by Sire Records; the first single was "Blitzkrieg Bop", opening with the rally cry "Hey! Ho! Let's go!" According to a later description, "Like all cultural watersheds, Ramones was embraced by a discerning few and slagged off as a bad joke by the uncomprehending majority."^[92] At the instigation of Ramones lead singer Joey Ramone, the members of Cleveland's Frankenstein moved east to join the New York scene. Reconstituted as the Dead Boys, they played their first CBGB gig in late July.^[93] In August, Ork put out an EP recorded by Hell with his new band that included the first released version of "Blank Generation".^[94]

The term punk initially referred to the scene in general, more than the sound itself—the early New York punk bands represented a broad variety of influences. Among them, the Ramones, The Heartbreakers, Richard Hell and The Voidoids, and the Dead Boys were establishing a distinct musical style; even where they diverged most clearly, in lyrical approach—the Ramones' apparent guilelessness at one extreme, Hell's conscious craft at the other—there was an abrasive attitude in common. Their shared attributes of minimalism and speed, however, had not yet come to define punk rock.^[95]

Joey Ramone, the vocalist and songwriter for the Ramones

Other U.S. cities

Music sample:

"Hot Wire My Heart"

Sample of "Hot Wire My Heart" (1976) by Crime, an alternate take of the first single by a West Coast punk band

Problems listening to the file? See media help.

In 1975, Suicide Commandos formed in Minneapolis—one of the first U.S. bands outside of New York to play in the Ramones-style harder-louder-faster mode that would define punk rock.^[96] As the punk movement expanded rapidly in the United Kingdom in 1976, a few bands with similar tastes and attitude appeared around the United States. The first West Coast punk scenes emerged in San Francisco, with the bands Crime and The Nuns,^[97] and Seattle, where the Telepaths, Meyce, and The Tupperwares played a groundbreaking show on May 1.^[98] Rock critic Richard Meltzer cofounded VOM (short for "vomit") in Los Angeles. In Washington, D.C., raucous roots-rockers The Razz helped along a nascent punk scene featuring Overkill, the Slickee Boys, and The Look. Around the turn of the year, White Boy began giving notoriously crazed performances.^[99] In Boston, the scene at the Rathskeller—affectionately known as the Rat—was also turning toward punk, though the defining sound retained a distinct garage rock orientation. Among the city's first new acts to be identified with punk rock was DMZ.^[100] In Bloomington, Indiana, The Gizmos played in a jokey, raunchy, Dictators-inspired style later referred to as "frat punk".^[101]

Like their garage rock predecessors, these local scenes were facilitated by enthusiastic impresarios who operated nightclubs or organized concerts in venues such as schools, garages, or warehouses, advertised via inexpensively printed flyers and fanzines. In some cases, punk's do it yourself ethic reflected an aversion to commercial success, as well as a desire to maintain creative and financial autonomy.^[102] As Joe Harvard, a participant in the Boston scene, describes, it was often a simple necessity—the absence of a local recording industry and well-distributed music magazines left little recourse but DIY.^[103]

Australia

Music sample:

"(I'm) Stranded"

Sample of "(I'm) Stranded" (single, 1976) by The Saints, later issued on (I'm) Stranded (1977)

Problems listening to the file? See media help.

At the same time, a similar music-based subculture was beginning to take shape in various parts of Australia. A scene was developing around Radio Birdman and its main performance venue, the Oxford Tavern (later the Oxford Funhouse), located in Sydney's Darlinghurst suburb. In December 1975, the group won the RAM (Rock Australia Magazine)/Levi's Punk Band Thriller competition.^[104] By 1976, The Saints were hiring Brisbane local halls to use as venues, or playing in "Club 76", their shared house in the inner suburb of Petrie Terrace. The band soon discovered that musicians were exploring similar paths in other parts of the world. Ed Kuepper, coleader of The Saints, later recalled:

One thing I remember having had a really depressing effect on me was the first Ramones album. When I heard it [in 1976], I mean it was a great record ... but I hated it because I knew we’d been doing this sort of stuff for years. There was even a chord progression on that album that we used ... and I thought, "Fuck. We’re going to be labeled as influenced by the Ramones", when nothing could have been further from the truth.^[105]

On the other side of Australia, in Perth, germinal punk rock act the Cheap Nasties, featuring singer-guitarist Kim Salmon, formed in August.^[106] In September, The Saints became the first punk rock band outside the U.S. to release a recording, the single "(I'm) Stranded". As with Patti Smith's debut, the band self-financed, packaged, and distributed the single.^[107] "(I'm) Stranded" had limited impact at home, but the British music press recognized it as a groundbreaking record.^[108] At the insistence of their superiors in the UK, EMI Australia signed The Saints. Meanwhile, Radio Birdman came out with a self-financed EP, Burn My Eye, in October.^[109] Trouser Press critic Ian McCaleb later described the record as the "archetype for the musical explosion that was about to occur".^[110]

United Kingdom

Music sample:

"Anarchy in the U.K."

Sample of "Anarchy in the U.K." (single, 1976) by the Sex Pistols, later issued on Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (1977)

Problems listening to the file? See media help.

After a brief period unofficially managing the New York Dolls, Englishman Malcolm McLaren returned to London in May 1975, inspired by the new scene he had witnessed at CBGB. He opened Sex, a clothing store specializing in outrageous "anti-fashion".^[111] Among those who frequented the shop were members of a band called The Swankers. In August, the group was seeking a new lead singer. Another Sex habitué, Johnny Rotten, auditioned for and won the job; McLaren became the band's manager. Adopting a new name, the group played its first gig as the Sex Pistols on November 5, 1975, at St. Martin's School of Art^[112] and soon attracted a small but ardent following.^[113] In February 1976, the band received its first significant press coverage; guitarist Steve Jones declared that the Pistols were not so much into music as they were "chaos".^[114] The band often provoked its crowds into near-riots. Rotten announced to one audience, "Bet you don't hate us as much as we hate you!"^[115] McLaren envisioned the Pistols as central players in a new youth movement, "hard and tough".^[116] As described by critic Jon Savage, the band members "embodied an attitude into which McLaren fed a new set of references: late-sixties radical politics, sexual fetish material, pop history, ... youth sociology".^[117]

Bernard Rhodes, a sometime associate of McLaren's and friend of the Pistols', was similarly trying to make stars of the band London SS. In spring 1976, the group broke up, spinning off two new bands: The Damned and The Clash, which was joined by Joe Strummer, The 101'ers former lead singer.^[118] On June 4, 1976, the Sex Pistols played Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall in what came to be regarded as one of the most influential rock shows ever. Among the approximately forty audience members were the three locals who had organized the gig—they soon began performing as the Buzzcocks. Others in the small crowd went on to form Joy Division, The Fall, and—in the 1980s—The Smiths.^[119]

In July, the Ramones crossed the Atlantic for two London shows that helped spark the nascent UK punk scene, an impact that was later exaggerated by the band's members.^[120] On July 4, they played with the Flamin' Groovies and The Stranglers before a crowd of 2,000 at the Roundhouse.^[121] That same night, The Clash debuted, opening for the Sex Pistols in Sheffield. On July 5, members of both bands attended a Ramones club gig.^[122] The following night, The Damned played their first show, as a Pistols opening act in London. In critic Kurt Loder's description, the Pistols purveyed a "calculated, arty nihilism, [while] the Clash were unabashed idealists, proponents of a radical left-wing social critique of a sort that reached back at least to ... Woody Guthrie in the 1940s".^[123] The Damned built a reputation as "punk's party boys".^[124] This London scene's first fanzine appeared a week later. Its title, Sniffin' Glue, derived from a Ramones song. Its subtitle affirmed the connection with what was happening in New York: "+ Other Rock 'n' Roll Habits for Punks!"^[125]

Another Sex Pistols gig in Manchester on July 20, with the Buzzcocks debuting in support, gave further impetus to the scene there.^[126] In August, the self-described "First European Punk Rock Festival" was held in Mont de Marsan in the southwest of France. Eddie and the Hot Rods, a London pub rock group, headlined, while the Sex Pistols were excluded for "going too far" and The Clash backed out in solidarity. The only band from the new punk movement to appear was The Damned.^[127]

Over the next several months, many new punk rock bands formed, often directly inspired by the Pistols.^[128] In London, women were at the center of the scene—among the initial wave of bands were the female-fronted Siouxsie & the Banshees and X-Ray Spex and the all-female The Slits. The Adverts had a female bassist. Other groups included Subway Sect, Eater, The Subversives, the aptly named London, and Chelsea, which soon spun off Generation X. Farther afield, Sham 69 began practicing in the southeastern town of Hersham. In Durham, there was Penetration, with lead singer Pauline Murray. On September 20–21, the 100 Club Punk Festival in London featured the four primary British groups (London's big three and the Buzzcocks), as well as Paris's female-fronted Stinky Toys, arguably the first punk rock band from a non-Anglophone country. Siouxsie & the Banshees and Subway Sect debuted on the festival's first night; that same evening, Eater debuted in Manchester.^[129]

Some new bands, such as London's Alternative TV and Edinburgh's The Rezillos, identified with the scene even as they pursued more experimental music. Others of a comparatively traditional rock 'n' roll bent were also swept up by the movement: The Vibrators, formed as a pub rock–style act in February 1976, soon adopted a punk look and sound.^[130] A few even longer-active bands including Surrey neo-mods The Jam and pub rockers The Stranglers and Cock Sparrer also became associated with the punk rock scene. Alongside the musical roots shared with their American counterparts and the calculated confrontationalism of the early Who, journalist Clinton Heylin describes how the British punks also reflected the influence of the "glam bands who gave noise back to teenagers in the early Seventies—T.Rex, Slade and Roxy Music".^[131] One of the groups openly acknowledging that influence were The Undertones, from Derry in Northern Ireland.^[132] Another punk band formed to the south, Dublin's The Radiators From Space.

The Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K." poster—a ripped and safety-pinned Union Flag^[133]

In October, The Damned became the first UK punk rock band to release a single, the romance-themed "New Rose".^[134] The Sex Pistols followed the next month with "Anarchy in the U.K."—with its debut single the band succeeded in its goal of becoming a "national scandal".^[135] Jamie Reid's "anarchy flag" poster and his other design work for the Pistols helped establish a distinctive punk visual aesthetic.^[136] On December 1, an incident took place that sealed punk rock's notorious reputation: On Thames Today, an early evening London TV show, Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones was goaded into a verbal altercation by the host, Bill Grundy. Jones called Grundy a "dirty fucker" on live television, triggering a media controversy.^[137] Two days later, the Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, and The Heartbreakers set out on the Anarchy Tour, a series of gigs throughout the UK. Many of the shows were cancelled by venue owners in response to the media outrage following the Grundy confrontation.^[138]

Second wave

By 1977, a second wave of the punk rock movement was breaking in the three countries where it had emerged, as well as in many other places. Bands from the same scenes often sounded very different from each other, reflecting the eclectic state of punk music during the era.^[139] While punk rock remained largely an underground phenomenon in North America, Australia, and the new spots where it was emerging, in the UK it briefly became a major sensation.^[140]

North America

The California punk scene was in full swing by early 1977. In Los Angeles, there were The Zeros, The Germs, The Weirdos, X, The Dickies, The Bags, and the relocated Tupperwares, now dubbed The Screamers.^[141] San Francisco's second wave included The Avengers, Negative Trend, The Mutants, and The Sleepers.^[142] The Dils, from Carlsbad, moved between the two major cities.^[143] The Wipers formed in Portland, Oregon. In Seattle, there was The Lewd.^[144] Often sharing gigs with the Seattle punks were bands from across the Canadian border. A major scene developed in Vancouver, spearheaded by the Furies and Victoria's all-female Dee Dee and the Dishrags.^[144] The Skulls spun off into D.O.A. and The Subhumans. The K-Tels (later known as the Young Canadians) and Pointed Sticks were among the area's other leading punk acts.^[145]

In eastern Canada, the Toronto protopunk band Dishes had laid the groundwork for another sizable scene,^[146] and a September 1976 concert by the touring Ramones had catalyzed the movement. Early Ontario punk bands included The Diodes, The Viletones, The Demics, Forgotten Rebels, Teenage Head, The Poles, and The Ugly. Along with the Dishrags, Toronto's The Curse and B Girls were North America's first all-female punk acts.^[147] In July 1977, the Viletones, Diodes, and Teenage Head headed down to New York City to play a four-day showcase at CBGB. Punk rock was already beginning to give way there to the anarchic sound of what became known as No Wave, although several original punk bands continued to perform. Leave Home, the Ramones' second album, had come out in January. September saw Richard Hell and The Voidoids' first full-length, Blank Generation.^[148] The Heartbreakers' debut, L.A.M.F., and the Dead Boys', Young, Loud and Snotty, appeared in October; the Ramones' third, Rocket to Russia, in November. The Cramps, whose core members were from Sacramento by way of Akron, had debuted at CBGB in November 1976, opening for the Dead Boys. They were soon playing regularly at Max's Kansas City.^[149] The Misfits formed in nearby New Jersey; by 1978, they had developed a style known as horror punk.

The Ohio protopunk bands were joined by Cleveland's The Pagans,^[150] Akron's Bizarros and Rubber City Rebels, and Kent's Human Switchboard. Bloomington, Indiana, had MX-80 Sound and Detroit had The Sillies. The Feederz formed in Arizona. Atlanta had The Fans. In North Carolina, there was Chapel Hill's H-Bombs and Raleigh's Th' Cigaretz.^[151] The Chicago scene began not with a band but with a group of DJs transforming a gay bar, La Mere Vipere, into what became known as America's first punk dance club. Tutu and the Pirates and Silver Abuse were among the city's first punk bands.^[152] In Boston, the scene at the Rat was joined by the Nervous Eaters, Thrills, and Human Sexual Response.^[151] In Washington, D.C., the Controls played their first gig in spring 1977, but the city's second wave really broke the following year with acts such as Urban Verbs, Half Japanese, D'Chumps, The Penetrators,Rudements, and Shirkers.^[153] By early 1978, the D.C. jazz-fusion group Mind Power had transformed into Bad Brains, one of the first bands to be identified with hardcore punk.^[151][154]

Australia