Punk bands refuse to play clubs that don't allow minors. Punk fans like the fact that their favorite music rubs the establishment the wrong way. Some hardcore punk gives kids the option of joining a peer group that doesn't use drugs. Rock music has been feared ever since its origins, from Elvis referencing the Devil in Songs to ACDC singing about hell. Whether it's been concerned parents or devout Christian groups, there have always been people afraid of their music being passed on to their children.
But no other genre has caused so much fear, so much danger, yet so much excitement for youth as punk has caused. It's the 1970s. Popular music was dominated by disco and complicated rock and metal bands.
Those teens who wanted to pick up an instrument without barely being able to play it and start a band had nothing to relate to. No genre where they could fit in. That is until early 1974 when a new scene started up in Manhattan.
A scene that would home many bands to the late 80s. that would later be called some of the most influential bands in the genre of punk and rock in general. Bands such as Television, Ramones, Misfits, Blondie and Talking Heads. This scene would be so groundbreaking that it quickly spread overseas to the UK. This is where the genre would truly take shape and become what we know it as today.
Bands such as Sex Pistols and The Clash would become the face of the genre and would influence bands for years to come. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, let's go back to where PUNK really began. I'm an anti-coaster, I am an alligator, I'll destroy, pass it by, cause I am.
I cast, I cast You're right, I'm taking out the jams, motherfucker! The origins of punk sound roots back to garage rock and the genre now known as protopunk. Bands such as MC5 and the Stooges are two of the biggest influencers for their sound.
But the sounds of punk actually date back even further than them. Elements of the genre would go back to the late 1950s to R&B and Rockabilly bands. A song considered by many to be one of the first proto-punk songs is Jerry Lott's song Love Me.
The chaotic and thundering sound of the song would become a large part of what punk sounds like. like. Jerry Lott's screaming vocals are undoubtedly the synthesis of punk sound. The 1964 song You Really Got Me by The Kinks is another one of the most influential proto-punk songs.
The song was one of the first songs to bring distorted guitars to the mainstream and made many guitarists strive for similar sounds. The sound was created after the guitarist Dave Davies sliced the speaker cone of his amplifier and poked a hole in it with a pin. One of the first songs to capture the teenage angst that punk would become well known for would be the Who's My Generation, a rebellious blast of energy full of anger and frustration. The song still to this day is considered to be one of the best examples of youthful rebellion in music. MC5's Kick Out The Jams is another song that had a huge influence on punk music.
The aggressive rawness would be a huge influence. Rob Tyner screaming out Kick Out The Jams motherfucker would influence the crude lyrics that many punk bands would adopt. Another musician who would be a massive Influence on Punk would be David- Bowie surprisingly.
Although music wise he didn't really have much of an impact on punk except for maybe a few songs here and there, he definitely did have an impact when it came down to the image of punks though. Bowie's Ziggy Stardust persona had a very exaggerated style and look, this is something that bands such as Sex Pistols would take massive inspiration from. Punk started as a term used to describe a young hooligan or hoodlum, but it was first used to describe music by Dave Marsh in 1971 when he described the band Question Mark and the Mysterians as giving a land- landmark exposition of punk rock.
One of the most innovative and popular scenes in punk was the scene in New York in the club CBGB's. The bar was originally created for country bluegrass and blues music, the name being an anagram of theirs. In 1974, owner Hilly Crystal booked band Squeeze as a residency which started a trend of rock bands playing there. One of the early punk bands to play regularly at CBGB would be Television. Although Though not fully punk, their music had a huge impact on the music industry.
influence on punk especially the subgenres of post-punk and art-punk. The band's debut album Marquee Moon was listed on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In the audience to one of their CBGB performances would be Patti Smith, another huge staple in the genre of punk. She would soon become a big name in the scene.
Another band to emerge from the scene would be The Ramones, considered by many to be one of the greatest and most influential bands in not just punk, but also rock in general. Lex McNeil their CBGB debut by saying they were all wearing these black leather jackets and they counted off this song and it was just this wall of noise. They looked so striking, these guys were not hippies, this was something completely new. In contrast to televisions long songs that even range 10 minutes sometimes, Ramones kept things short and sweet. Not a single track on their debut album lasts over two and a half minutes.
Ramones fast and catchy style would have become a huge influence that pretty much every single band in the genre. Guitar parts were simple and almost all consisted of down-strummed power chords, and the rest of the instrumentation was also very simple. The melodic vocal melodies drew influence from pop music such as the Beatles, and would go on to have a huge influence on the sub-genre of pop-punk. In fact, many believe Ramones to be one of the first pop-punk bands. At this point, the term punk was just used to describe the scene rather than the actual genre.
Although the footsteps have been put in place and the sound of punk pretty much fully develop some defining qualities of the genre are yet to be made, this all changed in 1975 London. The punk scene in London was fully established and ever growing. After witnessing the CBGB scene, artist Malcolm McLaren renamed the boutique he co-owned to Sex and built a reputation in its clothes branded as anti-fashion.
Someone who was a regular customer at the time, at Sex would become the frontman of, once again, not only one of the most influential punk bands ever, but also one of the most influential rock bands ever. That man was John Lydon, better known as Johnny Rotto. The band he joined was the Sex Pistols. The band started after Steve Jobs, who was the first to join the band, and then the band Jones and Paul Cook stole instruments from the stage of a concert and then taught themselves how to play them. John Lydon was found simply by chance after a friend of Malcolm McLaren who had taken interest in the Sex Pistols saw him wearing a shirt that said I hate Pink Floyd on it.
They all met up at a pub and although John was a terrible singer who they even laughed at, they felt he was perfect for the band. The Sex Pistols would then take Britain and the world by storm. Their lyrics had an angst filled quality that at that point punk music land. Although Ramones lyrics were about violence, drug use and relationship problems, they also seemed to not really have any power. Whereas Sex Pistols wrote Anakix songs about the government and the royal family, but at the same time their lyrics had a comedic quality to them.
Sex Pistols weren't a band that took themselves 100% seriously, this was a quality that attracted many people to them. The band became incredibly controversial the more and more they became successful, from swearing on live TV to rent renting a boat and going underneath Tower Bridge during the Silver Jubilee performing their song God Save the Queen. The band sparked a revolution.
They were anarchic and dangerous. Parents feared them, kids loved them. To talk about the band's history and impact would take up its own episode, so maybe we'll talk about them in depth another time.
In 1976 they played a show at Manchester's lesser Free Trade Hall. Only 40 people were in attendance, but it's considered to be one of the most influential and important concerts in rock history. The audience were Pete Shelly and Howard Devoto who had formed Buzzcocks, Morrissey who of course was the frontman of the Smiths, and Ian Curtis, the frontman of Joy Division.
But other musicians not in attendance to this gig cited the band as a huge influence. These include Motorhead, NoFX, The Stone Roses, Nirvana, Social Distortion, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Bad Religion, The Germs, Green Day and even Oasis. Similar to Malcolm McLaren trying to create stars of the Sex Pistols, an associate of Burn the road was trying to create stars of a band called London SS. However, before doing a public performance, the band broke up.
Members of the band spun off to create two new bands, The Damned and The Clash. The Clash would become gigantic and similar to the Sex Pistols, they would become one of the most influential rock bands of all time. Although the band found success with their first two albums, it was their third album, London Calling, that broke the band into worldwide success. the album fully transformed the clash from punk to post-punk this new sub-genre genres took influence from different genres and was a much more experimental genre than punk.
Other post-punk bands include Tsioksi and the Banshees, WIRE, Johnny Rotten's post-Sex Pistols band Public Image Limited, Joy Division, Devo, Talking Heads, The Cure and also early releases from U2. Punk had become huge across the UK as well as the world. It became so controversial that many shows on the Anarchy tour, which comprised of the Pistols, The Clash, The Damned and The Heartbreakers was cancelled.
so punk had fully formed itself. There was also a lot of room for change and as a new wave of bands started, as did a whole range of different subgenres. Although being a huge phenomenon in the UK, punk was still very much an underground thing in the rest of the world. Back in the US a new scene emerged in California. Here's some subgenres in punk were being created, most notably hardcore punk.
Hardcore punk intended to be as far away from commercialism as possible, songs were much heavier, louder and faster than normal punk bands. More of an emphasis was put on rhythm than music, and the music One of the most influential hardcore punk bands of all time was Black Flag. The band mixed the raw simplicity of bands like Ramones along with atonal guitar solos.
They explored themes of anti-authority and non-conformity. Their debut album Damage is considered one of the most influential punk records ever recorded. Bands like Black Flag along with other hardcore punk bands such as TSOL, Fear, The Adolescents and suicidal tendencies would not only influence other punk bands but also future pioneers in the genre of thrash metal including Amtrak, Slayer and Metallica.
The hardcore scene in LA would become known for how dangerous it was. There were many cases of violent battles between the police and concertgoers happening after Punk showed. Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins claimed that the police caused more trouble than they solved there.
Black Flag were even put under heavy surveillance because police believed them to be simply a cover for a drug ring. Punk started to fade away from popularity as subgenres emerged pretty must complete dominating the genre. Hardcore punk was the most popular in the underground subgenre. It was pretty much the only one keeping the danger and excitement in the genre alive.
Subgenres such as ska-punk, two-tone, emo and post-hardcore would become where the genre would pretty much remain for a while, at least except for possibly the biggest subgenre in punk, one that completely grew and became its own separate genre. New Wave originally started because people were afraid that the word punk would turn people away from many bands. So record labels in the US started to coin the term New Wave. wave, but then slowly the genre would actually become something of its own.
The meaning of new wave is stylistic diversity according to all music. New wave bands would keep some of the elements that punk had but blend it in with elements of multiple different genres including pop, Pop, Disco, Electronic and many others. New Wave songs were either really catchy pop songs or really strange experimental songs.
New Wave pretty much had no rules, artists could experiment however they wanted. In fact that is something that Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was a huge fan of and took a lot of influence from. Many punk bands experimented with or evolved into New Wave sound. Bands like Talking Heads, The Cure, The Jam and even Ramones would have New Wave-esque sounds in their music. New Wave would even influence slash create its own new genres including synth-pop, gothic rock, mod revival and more electronic genres such as darkwave and chillwave.
New Wave became one of the most definitive genres of the 80s. New Wave band Bugles would also become the first band to ever have their music video played on MTV for their song Video Killed the Radio Star. However throughout the 1980s there weren't many big developments in the genre, at least not in the mainstream.
However a couple of subgenres would later be developed, two subgenres that in modern day are two of the biggest in the genre. In the late 1980s a lot of the California punk bands that kept the scene going had broken up but a new generation would then emerge. Returning to the scene after a long hiatus Bad Religion released their third album Suffer, an album cited to be one of the best punk records of the decade a similar scene to the cbgb scene in the 70s with den star it would happen at a club in california known as 924 gilman street bands who would emerge in this scene included the offspring rancid afi and green Day.
These bands would have a huge hand in bringing interest back to punk and also finally give the genre mainstream attention. In 1994, Green Day's third album Dookie was released. This album was a huge success and finally brought punk to the mainstream worldwide.
The album sold over 20 million records worldwide and even won a Grammy for best alternative album. The same year, the Offspring smash lost similar success, although maybe not to than a huge amount that Green Day had. The subgenre of pop-punk would blend the simplicity and energy of punk with more pop-laced melodies. Bands who would have a huge influence on the genre included Ramones, Buzzcocks, The Jam and The Undertones. Throughout the mid to late 90s, pop-punk would carry on to receive success in the rock world.
However, it truly found its mainstream peak in 1999 when Californian band Blink-182 released their album, Enema of the State. The album sold 15 million copies and catapulted the band to stardom and even made them one of the biggest rock bands at the turn of the century. After this, many pop punk bands would emerge and see huge success. Bands such as Newfound Glory, Good Charlotte, Sum 41 and Simple Plan exploded. In the mid 2000s the genre saw a massive turn as the genre moved more into emo pop territories.
This blended the simpleness and pop melodies of pop punk with the aggressive and at times depressing sounds and lyrics of emo. Bands such as Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco and Paramore would emerge from the subgenre all to see huge success. In fact, all three of them remain among the biggest rock bands in the world even today. However, in the late 2000s and even the 2010s the genre would see a huge decline. Many pop punk bands stopped seeing mainstream success and those who did only saw it because they changed their sound completely into pop rock or even just pop.
Pop punk would remain somewhat successful in the rock world, but would also be the butt of many jokes. Purists would pass the genre off as being simple and lacking character. Just simply being overproduced pieces of pop that completely lacked any of what made Punk exciting to begin with, but there was one more sub-genre that saw great success in the 2000s.
Just like how there was a mod revival in the 80s, in the 2000s a revival of post-punk slash garage rock emerged. These bands aimed to strip things down and take things back to basics. They took influences from everything from blues to grunge.
The genre was seen as kind of people wanting to authenticate rock again after the bands that were popular in rock were incredibly commercialized and considered bland. Four bands would bring the genre to the mainstream. These bands were The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Hives and The Vines. The Strokes debut album Is This It was released in in 2001. The album was praised for its simple rock sound, charisma and pop pop infused melodies. Many people drew comparisons to some of the early CBGB bands of the 1970s, most notably television.
The White Stripes however had a very different sound. The album White Blood Cells also came out in 2001. This album as well as their other albums helped create a small sub-genre known as punk blues. They blended the aggression and dirt of punk with the rhythm of blues. They were incredibly stripped back, in fact the band only featured two members jack white on guitar and vocals and meg white on drums. In the wake of this commercial breakthrough many bands would bring the genre to the forefront of rock.
Bands such as The Killers, Kings of Leon, Franz Ferdinand, Block Party, Maximo Park, Razorlight and Kaiser Cheese were huge names in the genre. One band though that had a significant effect on the genre and even to many punk acts to this day was Arctic Monkeys. Arctic Monkeys began doing small shows in their home city of Sheffield. They gave away demo CDs of their shows which a few fans uploaded to the internet. Going through this many people discovered the band and they quickly became huge.
They are cited as one of if not the first band to use internet technology to help people discover them. Their debut album Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not was a gigantic hit. The band wrote songs that many young people could relate to. Their songs poked fun at the lives of northern clubbers.
Each song was a statement on youth culture. Even after the post-punk revival died off in the wake of indie rock, Arctic Monkeys remained huge. if they did completely change their sound and become a blues rock band. Joe Kors, son of Malcolm McLaren recently said punk has become like a fucking museum piece or a tribute act.
He claims that many people nowadays are unaware of the issues around them and punk acts refuse to write about them. However, I feel like in this first episode we've shown that punk has become a much larger thing than simply people singing about issues in the world. In fact, there's always been a much larger thing than that.
I think people just like to be purists about it, but I think punk even today is still going strong. In fact over the last couple years punk has kind of started to have a bit of a resurgent, maybe not in the mainstream but definitely in the indie rock scene. Although many of the classic punk bands are dead and gone, and many of the pop punk bands that saw success in the 2000s are now making pure pop music, there are many new bands emerging that are bringing back the sound and style of punk and freshening it up a bit.
We have many new new bands coming out that are taking sounds from all different paths of punk and receiving a lot of success through it. There's Catfish and the Bottlemen who take a large influence from the post-punk revival scene. Similarly bands such as Pretty Vicious and Vant who also take influence from this scene but also large influences from other places including grunge, and in the case of Vant influences from Britpop and even classic punk especially in their politically charged lyrics. There's the band Creeper that are blending elements of emo with horror punk. There's Slaves, a the mix is the anarchic anti-government the lyrics of classic punk with a simple two piece sound based around almost punk blues esque riffs.
There's Mooseblood, a modern emo band that are seeing a lot of success, Milkteeth who are very much a modern day grunge band, and that is just to name a few. Sure you can look at how commercialised punk has gotten and say it's dead, you can watch John Lydon and the Butter advert and feel like punk has seriously died, but the groundwork of punk will never die. The attitude of punk will always be there and every new generation will have their own anarchy band to latch onto.
Because no matter what changes, there will always be things to complain about, there will always be people out there who want to play fast, exciting music, and there will always be anarchy in the world. Take the Queen, she ain't no human being. The future, and England's dreaming. It's all of the what you want and it's all, it's all of the what you need.
There's no future.