wHEN DID pUNK sTART?

Depends (obviously) Is it a musical style or an attitude?

Velevet underground? Stooges, MC5, New York Dolls (Mclaren tried to manage them and based much of the early Pistols image on them).
Pere Ubu? ("Data Panik in the Year Zero" predates Joy Division by ~5 years).
Neu?? "After Eight" is a good punk track.
Or, as you say, some of the early R&B stuff - listen to the Pretty Things first album for example.

Take your pick.

Simon

It's like Simon wrote:

"Depends (obviously) Is it a musical style or an attitude?"

If we start with the attitude. Tubes first LP came out in 1975, if I remember it correctly. It had on it the song 'White Punks On Dope'. It did then NOT refer to an attitude connected to a musical style. Just stupid young pricks that was to spoiled to take care of themselves. So the name must have come up after this.

Musical style. Benny Andersson (of ABBA fame) was in the 1960:s in a group called 'Hep Stars', they made a live album in around 1965 that has been considered as punk! There was probably some crap band even in the 1950:s that no one heard of that would be considered punk today.

The simple answer. It did start when Malcolm McLaren thought 'Aha, I make up a group and call it Punk!'. Or maybe not.

JohanR

Thanks, so far. This is what I also feel, as I like alot of the american things in the late 60s The Pretty Things, Stooges, MC5 and then the New York Dolls. You probable right that the movement gained momentum when Malcolm Mclaren "naimed" it Punk and told the band how to behave and perform.
But to me there are different styles of it which fall generally under the same banner which are as different from eachother as blues to jazz.
I think of "Pop" Punk as The Rezillos, The Members etc
"Thrash" Punk - The Sex Pistols,The Damned, MC5 etc
"R+B" Punk early Dr Feelgood and The Replacements
and "New wave" Television, and things like the early Jam although I do find this the hardest to actaully call Punk atall.
I dont know where I put alot of stuff though, what are the early Stranglers as its so melodic? Thanks and reply as its a good debate.

In the UK at least, the first 'Punk' album was "Nadir's Big Chance" by Rikki Nadir released in early 1975.

To quote the lyrics from the title track...


I've been hanging around, waiting for my chance
to tell you what I think about the music that's gone down
to which you madly danced - frankly, you know that it stinks.
I'm gonna scream, gonna shout, gonna play my guitar
until your body's rigid and you see stars.

Look at all the jerks in their tinsel glitter suits,
pansying around; look at all the nerks
in their leather platform boots, making with the heavy sound...
I'm gonna stamp on the stardust and scream till I'm ill -
if the guitar don't get ya, the drums will.

Now's my big break - let me up on the stage,
I'll show you what it's all about; enough of the fake,
bang your feet in a rage, tear down the walls and let us out!
We're more than mere morons, perpetually conned,
so come on everybody, smash the system with the song.

Smash the system with the song!


The was acknowledged by John Lydon as a major influence on him.

Who was Rikki Nadir? Why Peter Hammill of course!

If you're talking about late 70s UK rather than late-60s US garage punk (see the Nuggets albums), then I think the musical/style turning point was Dr Feelgood in 1974, as they were the first to wear suits and ties, cut their hair and play 3-minute fast RnB songs (mostly old ones). Then came Eddie and the Hotrods etc, followed by the safety-pin mob in 1976 and the rest is geography.

The Ramones are often said to be the first band with the punk aesthetic, although I don't agree.

It seems to me that the Stooges, MC5, and NY Dolls were all pretty much punk, in sound, style, and attitude. Aggressive, fast, loud and simple songs, parody of other bands and trends, intentionally outrageous behavior and dress, etc.

So the answer is 1969. (Year of the Stooges and MC5s first albums.)

Safety Pin Punk...

The first 'Punk' records was "New Rose" by the Damned, on Stiff records.

Of course there were groups with punk 'attitiude' and punk 'sound', but were they 'punks'? No.

They were pre-punk.

DS

OTD - Ilsa Gold - Up

If the idea of Punk is about doing exactly the opposite from what the current standards are - then Elvis Presley gets my vote for being a white guy in black man's music of the era.

Now there's controversy !!

Eric's correct. Punk was born in Michigan in the mid to late 1960's. MC5 started up in 1966; The Stooges formed in 1967. Both were aggressive, anti-establishment rock acts later to be called punk. MC5's behavior definitely sparked the "punk attitude". It all caught on in New York in the early 1970's, and of course eventually in London after The Ramones and New York Dolls toured the UK and McLaren spent some time in New York.

In purely personal terms Punk for me started when i saw The Pistols on So It Goes. I was knocked out and immediately drew up a list of my old Led Zepp, Deep Purple etc albums to sell at school. Then it was:-
New Rose - The Damned
I'm Stranded - The Saints
Spiral Scratch - Buzzcocks
Orgasm Addict - Buzzcocks
Siouxsie & The Banshees' sessions for Peely
A compilation called New Wave that was mainly US Punk - Televison, Talking Heads, Patti Smith (Piss Factory)
Then The Clash and The Fall came along....
There's never been a more creative period in music as far I'm concerned...........apart from The Drones!

Rich

You are all wrong -- Punk started with The Situationists in Paris '68. It was actually a general politics and art movement and music was only part of it. Purists will have you beleive it was all over by the time "New Rose" was released.

The Stooges, MC5, New York Dolls, etc. shared some obvious musical similarities and were clearly a big influence on a particular style of music that lately became associated with Punk. But they were not Punk (big P) they just happened to be playng music that sounded like Punk would be.

Anyway, its all a bit irrelevnt as Punk was such a dead-end musically and very quickly morphed into lots of other things which were much more important and interesting (Post-Punk, US Hardcore, Power-Pop, the various strands of indie rock, etc, etc). At least as important as the 60s US Garage rock bands in this were the New Wave CBGB's crowd (Talking Heads, Blondie, Pere Ubu, Television, etc.), and the Krautrokers.

For the definitive history see Jon Savage's excellent and authorative "England's Dreaming"

Matthew

If you consider Savages book definitive then, like him, you really don't have a clue what you're talking about.

IMHO of course

P

Well, the Situationist International was formed in 1957, and had done most of its important theoretical work long prior to the events of May '68 in Paris (see Ken Knabb's excellent Situationist International Anthology).

As for clothes and style, Richard Hell has as strong a claim as anybody to be the first documented musician to dress in what became UK punk style - in New York from about 1975.

Punk was born in NY in the late 60s and early 70s, with the Stooges and the New York Dolls, there's no doubt about that, but it only became "Punk", the movement, when it hit the UK in 1976. I don't understand how anyone who was around at the time can fail to appreciate its importance and excitement, but maybe I'm just an old fart.

Jon Savage's book is OK, but the definitive history of UK punk remains to be written IMO. Legs McNeil's "Please Kill Me" is a pretty good oral history of the first wave of US punk (Stooges, New York Dolls, Television, Ramones, etc).

Contrary to Matthew, I don't regard Pere Ubu as new wave, their first records under that name were released in 1974. They're brilliant records, too ("30 Seconds Over Tokyo", "Final Solution", "Heart of Darkness" - it doesn't get much better than that).

-- Ian

I guess someone had to bring up the Situationists (thanks Matthew!), but to think that punk was 'actually a general politics and art movement' is just a tad wanky. A lot of this stuff is just post-hoc rationalisation from people who appear to have forgotten entirely what punk was all about in the first place.

There is a distinct risk that some of us could (or already have) turned into the kind of pseudy intellectuals that 17 year olds in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Detroit, NY, etc decided they'd had enough of in 1976.

Hmph.

Tim

quote:

---

Well, the Situationist International was formed in 1957, and had done most of its important theoretical work long prior to the events of May '68 in Paris

---

Ian,

You missed an opportunity to trump everyone and proclaim that Punk started in '57 and was over by '68.

Eric

Tim,

I was deliberately being a "tad wanky" which is usually the general spirit of this debate. We Europeans must reply with an over-intectualised revisionist approach to Punk to counter claims from the likes of Ludwig and ejl that it started with bunch of leather and denim clad Americans in 1965 and ended with a bunch of make-up wearing, cross dressing Americans in 1975.

Matthew

thanks all, now its getting interesting!!!!!
Tad Wanky was american who I would say was more "Country Punk" who introduced this style in 1898 and it was all over by 1903.

I think some trans-Atlantic differences in opinion are based on the fact that the UK sparked and embraced a "Punk Movement", a punk culture, whereas in the US punk was little more than an underground music scene until the late 1970's or even early 1980's (where in LA, NY, Detroit, and very few other cities posers embraced the Punk Movement, i.e.- dressed like London punk kids). Punk was never popular here- "Rock The Casbah" was the only single to get widespread radio play (gag). Oh, and haircuts and clothing do not a music style make. Does all of this make no sense whatsoever? Sorry.

For me, this was the most important comment made- "its all a bit irrelevnt as Punk was such a dead-end musically and very quickly morphed into lots of other things which were much more important and interesting."

Ludwig, Talking Heads fan

If it was a dead end musically how was it capable of morphing into all the other more interesting things? Far from a dead end, it opened popular music up, not least by encouraging the creation of hundreds of independent labels. That wouldn't necessarily have happened otherwise.

Oh, and the Sex Pistols were a major kick up the collective arse. I still remember the first time I heard them, and it's no exaggeration to say they immediately changed my view of music, and what it could achieve. I'm certainly not alone in that. It's very fashionable to decry them nowadays, and very wrong-headed.

-- Ian

"Never Mind the Bollocks" is in my Top 10 albums of All Time. What I meant was that it arrived had a great impact but by their second album any bands who were any good had moved on to something else. In its purest form it was a dead-end and somewhat self-limiting but I don't for one mimunte mean to denigrate its import or how much I enjoy the best it has to offer even now.

Matthew

This is an illuminating thread, helping to delve deep into the roots of a topic that usually gets short, simple answers. I'm learning a lot!

Two mid-sixties bands from the Pacific Northwest (Tacoma, Seattle area) who I heard identified as "proto punk" were the Wailers and the Sonics. I think several of the posts above are fairly well on target, relating punk to the "garage" type bands, as well as closely linking punk to the self-conscious adoption of a specific type of image and style we now identify with Richard Hell, the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. Contrived or not, they crystallized an attitude in a distinct way.

Markus
========

wow, who knew there was something before Green Day?
Dan

Two things strike me here.

1.

'I was a punk before you were a punk' is a very common exchange between folks. (Yes I used to have orange and green hair)

2.

What would have happened WITHOUT Safety Pin punk?

Would we all be listening to corporate Dad Rock? or Classical or Easy?

Perhaps there would be no Indie, no Alternative, no House music, no dance music revolution? Who knows?

Punk was the first thing that really engaged me in a wholeheared way, and started my serious vinyl adddiction... Now, where was that old Drones 45 ?

DS

OTD - Johnny Rubbish - Living in NW3 4JR

For the record, I was never "a punk". Of course, I was barely reading and writing at the time...

Ludwig,

So I can conclusively say "I was a punk before you were a punk" then?

DS

OTD - Jam & Spoon - Tripomatic Fairytales