Everything about Punk Music totally explained
Punk rock is an
anti-establishment rock music genre and movement that emerged in the mid-1970s. Preceded by a variety of
protopunk music of the 1960s and early 1970s, punk rock developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Groups such as the
Ramones, in New York City, and the
Sex Pistols and
The Clash, in London, were recognized as the vanguard of a new musical movement. By 1977, punk was spreading around the world.
Punk rock bands eschewed the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock, and created fast, hard music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political or
nihilistic lyrics. The associated
punk subculture expresses youthful rebellion and is characterized by distinctive
clothing styles, a variety of
anti-authoritarian ideologies, and a
DIY (do it yourself) attitude.
Punk rock 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. 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 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. 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 couldn't hold a candle to the likes of
Hendrix started noodling away. Soon you'd endless solos that went nowhere. By 1973, I knew that what was needed was some pure, stripped down, no bullshit rock 'n' roll."
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." 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."
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.
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. 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". 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.
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". The previous year, when the punk rock revolution began in Great Britain, was to be both a musical and a cultural "Year Zero". Even as nostalgia was discarded, many in the scene adopted a nihilistic attitude summed up by the
Sex Pistols slogan "No Future".
Musical and lyrical elements
Punk rock bands often emulate the bare musical structures and arrangements of 1960s
garage rock. 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."
Punk rock vocals sometimes sound nasal, and lyrics are often shouted instead of sung in a conventional sense, particularly in hardcore styles. 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. Complicated guitar solos are considered self-indulgent and unnecessary, although basic guitar breaks are common. Guitar parts tend to include highly distorted
power chords or
barre chords, creating a characteristic sound described by Christgau as a "buzzsaw drone". Some punk rock bands take a
surf rock approach with a lighter,
twangier guitar tone. A wild, "
gonzo" attack is sometimes employed, a style that stretches from
Robert Quine, lead guitarist of seminal punk rock band
The Voidoids, back through
The Velvet Underground to the 1950s recordings of
Ike Turner. Bass guitar lines are often uncomplicated; the quintessential approach is a relentless, repetitive "forced rhythm". Some punk rock bass players such as
Mike Watt emphasize more technical bass lines. Bassists often use a
plectrum rather than
fingerpicking 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. Hardcore drumming tends to be especially fast. The typical objective is to have the recording sound unmanipulated, "real", reflecting the commitment and "authenticity" of a live performance.
Punk rock lyrics are typically frank and confrontational; compared to other popular music genres, they frequently comment on social and political issues. 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. Especially in early British punk, a central goal was to outrage and shock the mainstream. 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." 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" to the more unambiguously sincere style of many later pop punk groups.
Visual and other elements
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. 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. Early female punk musicians displayed styles ranging from
Siouxsie Sioux's bondage gear to Patti Smith's "straight-from-the-gutter androgyny". The former proved much more influential on female fan styles. 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. Those in hardcore scenes often adopt a
skinhead look.
The characteristic stage performance style of male punk musicians doesn't deviate significantly from the macho postures classically associated with rock music. 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." 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.
The lack of emphatic syncopation led
punk dance to "deviant" forms: The characteristic style was originally the
pogo.
Sid Vicious, before he became the Sex Pistols' bassist, is credited as initiating the pogo in Britain as an attendee at one of their concerts.
Moshing is typical at hardcore shows. The lack of conventional dance rhythms was a central factor in limiting punk's mainstream commercial impact.
Breaking down the distance, and even the distinction, between performer and audience is central to the punk ethic. 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". 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."
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." 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." 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." The Who and fellow mods
The Small Faces were among the few rock elders acknowledged by the Sex Pistols. 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
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"?)
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". 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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. In 1970, the act evolved into the
Pink Fairies, which carried on in a similar vein. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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
Preceding the mid-1970s,, a centuries-old word of obscure
etymology, was commonly used to describe "a young male hustler, a gangster, a hoodlum, or a ruffian". 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." 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." In the December 1970 issue of
Creem, Lester Bangs, mocking more mainstream rock musicians, made ironic reference to Iggy Pop as "that Stooge punk". 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.
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." In June 1972, the fanzine
Flash included a "Punk Top Ten" of 1960s albums. That year,
Lenny Kaye used the term in the liner notes of the anthology album to refer to 1960s garage rock bands such as
The Standells,
The Sonics, and The Seeds.
Bomp! maintained this usage through the early 1970s, also applying it to some of the darker, more primitive practitioners of 1960s
psychedelic rock. In May 1973,
Billy Altman launched the short-lived
punk magazine. 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?'"
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. Holmstrom, McNeil, and Ged Dunn's magazine
Punk, which debuted at the end of 1975, was crucial in codifying the term. "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." 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". 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. 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. 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. By August, Smith and Television were gigging together at another downtown New York club,
Max's Kansas City. 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. "When I first saw the Ramones," critic Mary Harron later remembered, "I couldn't believe people were doing this. The dumb brattiness." 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".
That spring, Smith and Television shared a two-month-long weekend residency at CBGB that brought major attention to the club. During this time, Richard Hell wrote "Blank Generation", which would become the scene's emblematic anthem of escape. 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". The inaugural issue of
Punk appeared in December. 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. That winter, Pere Ubu came in from Cleveland and played at both spots.
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. 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." 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. In August, Ork put out an
EP recorded by Hell with his new band that included the first released version of "Blank Generation".
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, hadn't yet come to define punk rock.
Australia
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. 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 [in1976], 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.
On the other side of Australia, in
Perth, germinal punk rock act the
Cheap Nasties, featuring singer-guitarist
Kim Salmon, formed in August. 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. "(I'm) Stranded" had limited impact at home, but the British music press recognized it as a groundbreaking record. 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.
Trouser Press critic Ian McCaleb later described the record as the "archetype for the musical explosion that was about to occur."
The UK
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'd witnessed at CBGB. He opened
Sex, a clothing store specializing in outrageous "anti-fashion". 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 and soon attracted a small but ardent following. 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." 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!" McClaren envisioned the Pistols as central players in a new youth movement, "hard and tough". As described by critic Jon Savage, the band members "embodied an attitude into which McClaren fed a new set of references: late-sixties radical politics, sexual fetish material, pop history,...youth sociology."
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. 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.
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. On
July 4, they played with the
Flamin' Groovies and
The Stranglers before a crowd of 2,000 at the
Roundhouse. 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. 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." The Damned built a reputation as "punk's party boys." 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!"
Another Sex Pistols gig in Manchester on July 20, with the Buzzcocks debuting in support, gave further impetus to the scene there. 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.
Over the next several months, many new punk rock bands formed, often directly inspired by the Pistols. 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.
Some new bands, such as London's
Alternative TV and Edinburgh's
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. 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." One of the groups openly acknowledging that influence were
The Undertones, from Derry in Northern Ireland. Another punk band formed to the south, Dublin's
The Radiators From Space.
In October, The Damned became the first UK punk rock band to release a single, the romance-themed "
New Rose". 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".
Jamie Reid's "anarchy flag" poster and his other design work for the Pistols helped establish a distinctive
punk visual aesthetic. 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. 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.
Other U.S. cities
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. 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, and Seattle, where the
Telepaths,
Meyce, and
The Tupperwares played a groundbreaking show on
May 1. 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. 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. In Bloomington, Indiana,
The Gizmos played in a jokey, raunchy, Dictators-inspired style later referred to as "frat punk".
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. 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.
The 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. 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.
North America
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. San Francisco's second wave included
The Avengers,
Negative Trend,
The Mutants, and
The Sleepers.
The Dils, from
Carlsbad, moved between the two major cities. The
Wipers formed in Portland, Oregon. In Seattle, there was
The Lewd. 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.
In eastern Canada, the Toronto protopunk band
Dishes had laid the groundwork for another sizable scene, 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. 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. 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. The
Misfits formed in nearby New Jersey; by 1978, they'd developed a style known as
horror punk.
The Ohio protopunk bands were joined by Cleveland's
The Pagans, 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. 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. In Boston, the scene at the Rat was joined by the
Nervous Eaters,
Thrills, and
Human Sexual Response. 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.
Australia
In February 1977, EMI released The Saints' debut album,
(I'm) Stranded, which the band recorded in two days. The Saints had relocated to Sydney; in April, they and Radio Birdman united for a major gig at
Paddington Town Hall.
Last Words had also formed in the city. The following month, The Saints relocated again, to Great Britain. In June, Radio Birdman released the album
Radios Appear on its own Trafalgar label.
The Leftovers,
The Survivors, and
Razar in Brisbane; and
La Femme,
The Negatives, and
The Babeez (later known as The News) in
Melbourne were among the other bands constituting Australia's second wave. Melbourne's
art rock–influenced
Boys Next Door featured singer
Nick Cave, who would become one of the world's most celebrated
post-punk artists.
The UK
January 4,
1977, the
Evening News of London ran a front-page story on how the Sex Pistols "vomited and spat their way to an Amsterdam flight." In February 1977, the first album by a British punk band appeared:
Damned Damned Damned reached number 36 on the UK charts. The EP
Spiral Scratch, self-released by Manchester's Buzzcocks, was a benchmark for both the DIY ethic and regionalism in the country's punk movement. The Clash's
self-titled debut album came out two months later and rose to number 12; the single "
White Riot" entered the top 40. In May, the Sex Pistols achieved new heights of controversy (and number 2 on the singles chart) with "
God Save the Queen". The band had recently acquired a new bassist,
Sid Vicious, who was seen as exemplifying the punk persona.
New groups continued to form around the country:
Crass, from
Essex, merged a vehement, straight-ahead punk rock style with a committed anarchist mission. Sham 69, London's
Menace, and the
Angelic Upstarts from
South Shields in the Northeast combined a similarly stripped-down sound with populist lyrics, a style that became known as
streetpunk. These expressly working-class bands contrasted with others in the second wave that presaged the
post-punk phenomenon. Such groups expressed punk rock's energy and aggression, while expanding its musical range with a wider variety of tempos and often more complex instrumentation. London's
Wire took minimalism and brevity to an extreme. London's
Tubeway Army,
Belfast's
Stiff Little Fingers, and
Dunfermline,
Scotland's
The Skids infused punk rock with elements of
synth and
noise music. Liverpool's first punk group, the theatrical
Big in Japan, didn't last long, but it spun off several well-known post-punk acts.
Alongside thirteen original songs that would define classic punk rock, The Clash's debut had included a cover of the recent Jamaican
reggae hit "
Police and Thieves". Other first wave bands such as The Slits and new entrants to the scene like
The Ruts and
The Police interacted with the reggae and
ska subcultures, incorporating their rhythms and production styles. The punk rock phenomenon helped spark a full-fledged ska revival movement known as
2 Tone, centered around bands such as
The Specials,
The Beat,
Madness, and
The Selecter.
June 1977 saw the release of two more charting punk records: The Vibrators'
Pure Mania and the Sex Pistols' third single, "
Pretty Vacant", which reached number 6. In July, The Saints had a top 40 hit with "
This Perfect Day". Recently arrived from Australia, the band was now considered insufficiently "cool" to qualify as punk by much of the British media, though they'd been playing a similar brand of music for years. In August, The Adverts entered the top 20 with "Gary Gilmore's Eyes". The following month, the Pistols hit number 8 with "
Holidays in the Sun", while Generation X and The Clash reached the top 40 with, respectively, "Your Generation" and "
Complete Control". In October, the Sex Pistols released their first and only "official" album,
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. Inspiring yet another round of controversy, it topped the British charts. In December, one of the first books about punk rock was published:
The Boy Looked at Johnny, by
Julie Burchill and
Tony Parsons. Declaring the punk rock movement to be already over, it was subtitled
The Obituary of Rock and Roll. In January 1978, the Sex Pistols broke up while on American tour.
Rest of the world
Meanwhile, punk rock scenes were emerging around the globe. In France,
les punks, a Parisian subculture of Lou Reed fans, had already been around for years. Following the lead set by
Stinky Toys,
Métal Urbain played its first concert in December 1976. The new punk band's brief set included a cover of the Stooges' "No Fun", also a staple of the Sex Pistols' live show. Other French punk acts such as
Oberkampf and
Starshooter soon formed. In West Germany, bands primarily inspired by British punk came together in the
Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW) movement.
Ätzttussis, the
Nina Hagen Band, and
S.Y.P.H. featured "raucous vocals and militant posturing", according to writer Rob Burns. Before turning in a mainstream direction in the 1980s, NDW attracted a politically conscious and diverse audience, including both participants of the left-wing alternative scene and
neo-Nazi skinheads. These opposing factions were mutually attracted by a view of punk rock as "'against the system' politically as well as musically." other early Finnish punk acts included
Eppu Normaali and singer
Pelle Miljoona. In Yugoslavia, punk rock acts emerged in Croatia (
Paraf), Slovenia (
Pankrti), and Serbia (
Pekinška patka). In Japan, a punk movement developed around bands playing in an art/noise style such as
Friction, and "psych punk" acts like
Gaseneta and
Kadotani Michio. In New Zealand, Auckland's
Scavengers and
Suburban Reptiles were followed by
The Enemy of Dunedin. the Netherlands (
The Suzannes,
The Ex), Sweden (
Ebba Grön,
KSMB), and Switzerland (
Nasal Boys,
Kleenex).
Punk transforms
By late 1978, the
hardcore punk movement was emerging in
southern California. A rivalry developed between adherents of the new sound and the older punk rock crowd. Hardcore, appealing to a younger, more suburban audience, was perceived by some as anti-intellectual, overly violent, and musically limited. In Los Angeles, the opposing factions were often described as "Hollywood punks" and "beach punks", referring to Hollywood's central position in the original L.A. punk rock scene and to hardcore's popularity in the shoreline communities of
South Bay and
Orange County.
As hardcore became the dominant punk rock style, many bands of the older California punk rock movement split up, although X went on to mainstream success and
The Go-Go's, part of the L.A. punk scene when they formed in 1978, adopted a pop sound and became major stars. Across North America, many other first and second wave punk bands also dissolved, while younger musicians inspired by the movement explored new variations on punk. Some early punk bands transformed into hardcore acts. A few, most notably the Ramones, Richard Hell and The Voidoids, and Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers, continued to pursue the style they'd helped create. Crossing the lines between "classic" punk,
post-punk, and hardcore, San Francisco's
Flipper was founded in 1979 by former members of Negative Trend and The Sleepers. They became "the reigning kings of American underground rock, for a few years."
Radio Birdman broke up in June 1978 while touring the UK, In contrast to North America, more of the bands from the country's original punk movement remained active, sustaining extended careers even as their styles evolved and diverged. Meanwhile, the
Oi! and
anarcho-punk movements were emerging. Musically in the same aggressive vein as American hardcore, they addressed different constituencies with overlapping but distinct anti-establishment messages. As described by Dave Laing, "The model for self-proclaimed punk after 1978 derived from the Ramones via the eight-to-the-bar rhythms most characteristic of The Vibrators and Clash.... It became essential to sound one particular way to be recognized as a 'punk band' now." In February 1979, former Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose in New York. If the Pistols' breakup the previous year had marked the end of the original UK punk scene and its promise of cultural transformation, for many the death of Vicious signified that it had been doomed from the start.
By the turn of the decade, the punk rock movement had split deeply along cultural and musical lines, leaving a variety of derivative scenes and forms. On one side were
New Wave and post-punk artists; some adopted more accessible musical styles and gained broad popularity, while some turned in more experimental, less commercial directions. On the other side, hardcore punk, Oi!, and anarcho-punk bands became closely linked with
underground cultures and spun off an array of
subgenres. Somewhere in between,
pop punk groups created blends like that of the ideal record, as defined by
Mekons cofounder Kevin Lycett: "a cross between
Abba and the Sex Pistols". A range of other styles emerged, many of them
fusions with long-established genres. Exemplifying the breadth of classic punk's legacy was The Clash album
London Calling, released in December 1979. Combining punk rock with reggae, ska, R&B, and rockabilly, it went on to be acclaimed as one of the best rock records ever. At the same time, as observed by Flipper singer Bruce Loose, the relatively restrictive hardcore scenes diminished the variety of music that could once be heard at many punk gigs.
New Wave
» For more details on this topic, see New Wave (music).
In 1976—first in London, then in the United States—"New Wave" was introduced as a complementary label for the formative scenes and groups also known as "punk"; the two terms were essentially interchangeable. Over time, "New Wave" acquired a distinct meaning: Bands such as Blondie and Talking Heads from the CBGB scene;
The Cars, who emerged from the Rat in Boston; The Go-Go's in Los Angeles; and The Police in London that were broadening their instrumental palette, incorporating dance-oriented rhythms, and working with more polished production were specifically designated "New Wave" and no longer called "punk". Dave Laing suggests that some punk-identified British acts pursued the New Wave label in order to avoid radio censorship and make themselves more palatable to concert bookers.
Bringing elements of punk rock music and fashion into more pop-oriented, less "dangerous" styles, New Wave artists became very popular on both sides of the Atlantic. New Wave became a catch-all term, encompassing disparate styles such as
2 Tone ska, the
mod revival based around
The Jam, the sophisticated pop-rock of
Elvis Costello and
XTC, the
New Romantic phenomenon typified by
Duran Duran,
synthpop groups like
Human League and
Depeche Mode, and the sui generis subversions of Devo, who had gone "beyond punk before punk even properly existed." New Wave became a pop culture sensation with the debut of the cable television network
MTV in 1981, which put many New Wave videos into regular rotation. However, the music was often derided at the time as being silly and disposable.
Post-punk
» For more details on this topic, see Post-punk.
During 1976–77, in the midst of the original UK punk movement, bands emerged such as Manchester's
Joy Division,
The Fall, and
Magazine, Leeds'
Gang of Four, and London's
The Raincoats that became central post-punk figures. Some bands classified as post-punk, such as
Throbbing Gristle and
Cabaret Voltaire, had been active well before the punk scene coalesced; others, such as The Slits and Siouxsie & The Banshees, transitioned from punk rock into post-punk. A few months after the Sex Pistols' breakup,
John Lydon (no longer "Rotten") cofounded
Public Image Ltd. Lora Logic, formerly of X-Ray Spex, founded
Essential Logic.
Killing Joke formed in 1979. These bands were often musically experimental, like certain New Wave acts; defining them as "post-punk" was a sound that tended to be less pop and more dark and abrasive—sometimes verging on the
atonal, as with Subway Sect and Wire—and an anti-establishment posture directly related to punk's. Post-punk reflected a range of
art rock influences from
Captain Beefheart to
David Bowie and
Roxy Music to
Krautrock and, once again, the Velvet Underground.]]
Post-punk brought together a new fraternity of musicians, journalists, managers, and entrepreneurs; the latter, notably
Geoff Travis of
Rough Trade and
Tony Wilson of
Factory, helped to develop the production and distribution infrastructure of the
indie music scene that blossomed in the mid-1980s. Smoothing the edges of their style in the direction of New Wave, several post-punk bands such as
New Order (descended from Joy Division),
The Cure, and
U2 crossed over to a mainstream U.S. audience.
Bauhaus was one of the formative
gothic rock bands. Others, like Gang of Four, The Raincoats and Throbbing Gristle, who had little more than cult followings at the time, are seen in retrospect as significant influences on modern popular culture.
A number of U.S. artists were retrospectively defined as post-punk; Television's debut record
Marquee Moon, released in 1977, is frequently cited as a seminal album in the field. The
No Wave movement that developed in New York in the late 1970s, with artists like
Lydia Lunch, is often treated as the phenomenon's U.S. parallel. The later work of Ohio protopunk pioneers Pere Ubu is also commonly described as post-punk. One of the most influential American post-punk bands was Boston's
Mission of Burma, who brought abrupt rhythmic shifts derived from hardcore into a highly experimental musical context. In 1980, Australia's Boys Next Door moved to London and changed their name to
The Birthday Party, which evolved into
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
King Snake Roost and other Australian bands would further explore the possibilities of post-punk. Later
art punk and
alternative rock musicians found diverse inspiration among these predecessors, New Wave and post-punk alike.
Hardcore
Bad Brains—all of whom were black, a rarity in punk of any era—launched the
D.C. scene.
Austin, Texas's
Big Boys, San Francisco's
Dead Kennedys, and
Vancouver's
D.O.A. were among the other initial hardcore groups. They were soon joined by bands such as the
Minutemen,
The Descendents,
Circle Jerks,
The Adolescents, and
TSOL in southern California; D.C.'s
Teen Idles,
Minor Threat, and
State of Alert; and Austin's
MDC and
The Dicks. By 1981, hardcore was the dominant punk rock style not only in California, but much of the rest of North America as well. A
New York hardcore scene grew, including the relocated Bad Brains, New Jersey's
Misfits and
Adrenalin O.D., and local acts such as the
Nihilistics,
The Mob,
Reagan Youth, and
Agnostic Front.
Beastie Boys, who would become famous as a hip-hop group, debuted that year as a hardcore band. They were followed by
The Cro-Mags,
Murphy's Law, and
Leeway. By 1983,
Minneapolis's
Hüsker Dü and Chicago's
Naked Raygun were taking the hardcore sound in experimental and ultimately more melodic directions. Hardcore would constitute the American punk rock standard throughout the decade.
The lyrical content of hardcore songs, typified by Dead Kennedys' "
Holiday in Cambodia", is often critical of commercial culture and middle-class values. In the early 1980s, bands from the American southwest and California such as
JFA,
Agent Orange, and
The Faction helped create a rhythmically distinctive style of hardcore known as
skate punk. Skate punk innovators also pointed in other directions: Big Boys helped establish
funkcore, while
Venice, California's
Suicidal Tendencies had a formative effect on the
heavy metal–influenced
crossover thrash style. Toward the end of the decade, crossover thrash spawned the
metalcore fusion style and the superfast
thrashcore subgenre developed in multiple locations.
Oi!
Cock Sparrer and
Sham 69, in the late 1970s second-wave units like
Cockney Rejects,
Angelic Upstarts,
The Exploited, and
The 4-Skins sought to realign punk rock with a working class, street-level following. Their style was originally called
real punk or
streetpunk;
Sounds journalist
Garry Bushell is credited with labelling the genre
Oi! in 1980. The name is partly derived from the Cockney Rejects' habit of shouting "Oi! Oi! Oi!" before each song, instead of the time-honored "1,2,3,4!" Oi! bands' lyrics sought to reflect the harsh realities of living in
Margaret Thatcher's Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A subgroup of Oi! bands dubbed "
punk pathetique"—including
Splodgenessabounds,
Peter and the Test Tube Babies, and
Toy Dolls—had a more humorous and absurdist bent.
The Oi! movement was fueled by a sense that many participants in the early punk rock scene were, in the words of
The Business guitarist Steve Kent, "trendy university people using long words, trying to be artistic...and losing touch". The Oi! credo held that the music needed to remain unpretentious and accessible.
Although most Oi! bands in the initial wave were apolitical or
left wing, many of them began to attract a
white power skinhead following. Racist skinheads sometimes disrupted Oi! concerts by shouting fascist slogans and starting fights, but some Oi! bands were reluctant to endorse criticism of their fans from what they perceived as the "middle-class establishment". In the popular imagination, the movement thus became linked to the
far right.
Strength Thru Oi!, an album compiled by Bushell and released in May 1981, stirred controversy, especially when it was revealed that the belligerent figure on the cover was a
neo-Nazi jailed for racist violence (Bushell claimed ignorance). Following the Southall riot, press coverage increasingly associated Oi! with the extreme right, and the movement soon began to lose momentum. Their all-black militaristic dress became a staple of the genre.]]
Anarcho-punk developed alongside the Oi! and American hardcore movements. With a primitive, stripped-down musical style and ranting, shouted vocals, British bands such as
Crass,
Subhumans,
Flux of Pink Indians,
Conflict,
Poison Girls, and
The Apostles attempted to transform the punk rock scene into a full-blown anarchist movement. As with straight edge, anarcho-punk is based around a set of principles, including prohibitions on wearing leather, and promoting a vegetarian or vegan diet. Led by Dead Kennedys, a U.S. anarcho-punk scene developed around such bands as Austin's
MDC and southern California's
Another Destructive System.
Pop punk
Beach Boys and late 1960s
bubblegum pop, the Ramones paved the way to what became known as pop punk. In the late 1970s, UK bands such as
Buzzcocks and
The Undertones combined
pop-style tunes and lyrical themes with punk's speed and chaotic edge. In the early 1980s, some of the leading bands in southern California's hardcore punk rock scene emphasized a more melodic approach than was typical of their peers. According to music journalist
Ben Myers,
Bad Religion "layered their pissed off, politicized sound with the smoothest of harmonies";
Descendents "wrote almost surfy, Beach Boys–inspired songs about girls and food and being young(ish)."
Epitaph Records, founded by
Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion, was the base for many future pop punk bands, including
NOFX, with their
third wave ska–influenced
skate punk rhythms. Bands that fused punk with light-hearted pop melodies, such as
The Queers and
Screeching Weasel, began appearing around the country, in turn influencing bands like
Green Day, who brought pop punk wide popularity and major record sales. Bands such as
The Vandals and
Guttermouth developed a style blending pop melodies with humorous and offensive lyrics. The mainstream pop punk of latter-day bands such as
Blink-182 is criticized by many punk rock devotees; in critic Christine Di Bella's words, "It's punk taken to its most accessible point, a point where it barely reflects its lineage at all, except in the three-chord song structures."
Other fusions and directions
From 1977 forward, punk rock crossed lines with many other popular music genres. Los Angeles punk rock bands laid the groundwork for a wide variety of styles:
The Flesh Eaters with
deathrock;
The Plugz with
Chicano punk; and
Gun Club with
punk blues.
The Meteors, from
South London, and
The Cramps, who moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1980, were innovators in the
psychobilly fusion style. Milwaukee's
Violent Femmes jumpstarted the American
folk punk scene, while
The Pogues did the same on the other side of the Atlantic, influencing many
Celtic punk bands. The Mekons, from
Leeds, combined their punk rock ethos with country music, greatly influencing the later
alt-country movement. In the United States, varieties of
cowpunk played by bands such as
Nashville's
Jason & the Scorchers and Arizona's
Meat Puppets had a similar effect.
Other bands pointed punk rock toward future rock styles or its own foundations. New York's
Suicide, who had played with the New York Dolls at the Mercer Arts Center, L.A.'s
The Screamers and
Nervous Gender, and Germany's
DAF were pioneers of
synthpunk. Chicago's
Big Black was a major influence on
noise rock,
math rock, and
industrial rock.
Garage punk bands from all over—such as
Medway's
Thee Mighty Caesars, Chicago's
Dwarves, and
Adelaide's
Exploding White Mice—pursued a version of punk rock that was close to its roots in 1960s garage rock. Seattle's
Mudhoney, one of the central bands in the development of
grunge, has been described as "garage punk".
Legacy and later developments
Alternative rock
subcultural identity. In the United States, parallel developments were occurring, though with less impact on the record charts: Critically celebrated but still hitless bands such as Minneapolis's
Hüsker Dü and their protégés
The Replacements bridged the gap between punk rock styles like hardcore and the various nonmainstream sounds collectively referred to as "
college rock" at the time.
A 1985
Rolling Stone feature on the Minneapolis scene and innovative California hardcore acts such as Black Flag and Minutemen declared, "Primal punk is passé. The best of the American punk rockers have moved on. They have learned how to play their instruments. They have discovered melody, guitar solos and lyrics that are more than shouted political slogans. Some of them have even discovered the
Grateful Dead." By the end of the 1980s, such bands were being classified as "alternative rock" in the U.S. media; the analogous term in the UK was "indie". These were broad categories, including groups such as
R.E.M. and XTC whose music had little apparent connection to punk. Even among those bands whose debt to punk was more obvious, the alternative label encompassed styles as diverse as British
gothic rock and the structural experimentalism of New England's
Dinosaur Jr and
Throwing Muses.
As American alternative bands like
Sonic Youth, who had grown out of the No Wave scene, and Boston's
Pixies started to gain larger audiences, major labels sought to capitalize on the underground market that had been sustained b
