Old style punk

How many people here remember the punk scene from the early to mid 70's that led groups/artists like The Ramones, The Clash,The Sex Pistols, The Police, Billy Idol, Wendy O Williams, and others to break into the mainstream? IMHO, it was the golden age of punk. Not that there haven't been good punk bands since. I'd like to here from others on what old or new school punk groups/artists they like to listen to.

Big time Ramones, Sex Pistols, Clash, The Jam and several others fan here. Punx not dead!

I grew up with 90s punk. NOFX, No Use for a Name, MxPx, SNAFU, TSOL, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Rancid, Pennywise, Mellincolin, Bad Religion, Dwarves, Bouncing Souls.

Have been listening to punk since the 70's.
Every era has had their fair share of good bands but I must say my personal favourite's come from the 70's and the Oi / Street punk of the early 80's.

Recently watched a Stiff Little Fingers 30th Anniversary DVD, (I thoroughly rcommend it), during which Jake Burns talks about how punk changed between the 70's and the mid80's and how by then punks had become uniformed into wearing studded bike jackets and mohicans.

Punk was, and still is in my book, not just about the music, it is a state of mind and attitude that questions everything and rejects conformity.
Unfortunately it became so regimented that the vast majority of people who were initially attracted to it became quite disillusioned with it.

My personal favourite punk bands:
Sex Pistols
The Clash
Cock SParrer
Cockney Rejects
Angelic Upstarts
Stiff Little Fingers
The 4-Skins
Rancid
The Exploited
And of course my mates Major Accident.

Also worth a mention are 2 bands who have definately maintained the punk ethos whilst maybe not being "punk" are definately punk influenced and have maintained an incredible amount of integrity over the years:
The Levellers
New Model Army

[edit on 26/3/08 by Freeborn]

kinda young missed the whole 70's punk scene by about 15 years give or take

i grew up listening to NOFX, lagwagon, good riddance, pennywise, millincolin, bad religion and the bouncing souls

i listened to some anti-flag as well as some tiger army, operation ivy, no use for a name and mxpx

I not only remember being a part of the punk scene, having been in a band at the time and promoting a number of gig`s, but I still have all of my record collection. Sorry to say that today my listening of punk is normally restricted to my ironing duties, but I still mini pogo and sing along while I do so. I attended many gigs and met a lot of the big stars of the time, including Joe Strummer, who must have been about three feet tall ( O.K. slightly taller ), the Pistols, Blondie, The Rezillos, The Cure, Human League, Crass, Stiff Little Fingers, The Lurkers, Devil Doll, Sham 69, The Voices, The Doll, X.T.C., Suicide, Nicky and the Dots, The Skids, The Poison Girls, 999, Chaos, Peter and the Test Tube Babies, The Kemp Town Rockers, The Stranglers, The Chefs, Umpty`s Balcony, The Civil Servants, Smeggy and the Cheesybits ( who became King Kurt ), The Amazing Gerbil Heads, Dick Damage, Captain Sensible ( who I was often mistaken for ),The Electric Babies, No Exit, Midnight and the Lemon Boys, The Molestors, The Wall, The Same, and many others who I have left out. Deep regards to John Peel as well he was a part of my whole experience, a strange guy to talk to, but very quiet. It was truly a time to be proud of, I must admit though, I DEEPLY REGRET not having the balls to get involved with the project started by Luke and Addy Creswell at the time, I would have been a Multi Millionaire by now! Perhaps you would like to look that up! 1977 is still in my heart and in my head. At 50 I can still annoy the neighbours with my loud music. The Brighton Punks still have it.

[edit on 26-3-2008 by Qwenn]

reply to post by Qwenn


I have seen so many punk bands that I really do struggle remembering them all.
Unfortunately I never got to see The Clash but I did see Joe with The Mescalero's a couple of times and got backstage to meet Mick Jones at a B.A.D. concert. Had a few can's of Red Stripe, (I hate the stuff!), with him and a bit of a chat. Top man.

I remember once having a good session with Dru Stix, original drummer of The Exploited and Decca Wade of The Angelic Upstarts. Ended up on stage that night singing Anarchy with Watty and Decca in front of an audience full of Punks and Skins. :shk:

Don't listen to many new punk bands except some new Oi bands and I think Rancid and The Dropkick Murphy's are good.
It's good to see Cock SParrer recording again and The Rejects seem to be coming out of their metal era.

I don't mind Green Day, at least they have something to say.
I went to see them on their last tour and they were very tight, unfortunately they spoilt the whole gig when they asked the audience to get their lighters out and then sang "We Are The Champions"!
WTF, they are supposed to be a punk band and there they were doing the whole Queen cabaret act.
Lost quite a bit of credability in my eyes then. :shk:

I love my punk, but only being 18 I'm a bit late to see a lot of really good bands.
That being said I've also seen some really good ones. D.O.A came out a few months ago and put on a hell of a show i ended up at the after party with the band and they are really cool guys. also saw The Adicts about 2 weeks ago and lordy do they put on a show but i didn't get a chance to meet the band unfortunately.

Brisbane (where i come from) has a strong underground scene to it with alot of really good bands so i feel kind privileged to come from a city with such a good scene so i help out with shows when ever i can (working the door and such) heres the myspace for punkfest (they put on most of the brisbane shows) checkout some of the bands
have a listen to some of the bands and enjoy.
If your particularly a fan of old style hardcore checkout Mouthguard.

Just to stir the memories, some golden oldies from the first and second wave:

The first punk single

The Damned - New Rose
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Penetration - Don't Dictate
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Saw them a couple of years ago, still brilliant.
Pauline Murray has certainly wore better than most of us.

Angelic Upstarts - Teenage Warning
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Still do the odd gig, great live, fantastic catalogue of songs.
Shame Mensi is such a tosser. LOL.

The Clash - White Riot
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What should have been one of Punks great moments is marred by Jimmy Pursey trying to steal the limelight.
Joe's now a legend, Pursey's flipping burgers for McDonalds, just about says it all!

The first punk single in the UK, however Punk appeared over a few years earlier in America, although it was not labeled as such at the time. Yes I agree with you wholeheartedly about Penetration ( and later Pauline Murrey and the invisible girls ) they had it in bucketsfull and have never lost it. I was never that taken by the Damned at the time, it was only years later that I took to them. For me it was The Clash who were the far better band around at the time, although the constant fights at their gigs, started to get tiresome, they looked very agitated by the constant need to call for the fighting to stop. Stiff little fingers were brilliant live and are still going strong, even if they to have gone down the road of singing some rubbish songs and claiming that the fans would be upset if they left them out. Where has the OP gone to, starting a thread, then vanishing, come back and tell us your angle on the golden oldie era that was PUNK.

reply to post by Qwenn


Yeah, Punk had appeared in the US before but I was never a fan of The New York Dolls and all that nonsense.
Only American bands I ever really warmed to were The Ramones, of course, Dead Kennedy's and some Black Flag.
Devo for novelty value.
Could never see how Television were classed Punk? :shk:
As said before, don't mind Rancid, Dropkick Murphy's etc from current bands.

Great to see Ali McMordie playing again with SLF.
They now resemble more than just a Jake Burns tribute band.
Have seen SLF on numerous occassions and they never let anyone down and they have at least attempted to be honest and true to their original values.
The 30th Anniversay DVD is well worth a viewing, especially the interviews.

Didn't get to see The Damned until the Strawberry tour in 83 I think.
By then they'd become a bit of a proto-Goth band.
Still very good though.

I agree, The Clash were THE band.
They had everything and Joe Strummer still is to this day my one hero.
Everyone I know who had the pleasure to meet him have said that for all his honesty and natural empathy he had an aura about him that just oozed class.
It was good that he and Mick made up and played together again before he died.

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reply to post by Freeborn


In regards to Television... They definitely count as a punk band, though they were more on the fringe and more artsy than your average punk band. But give credit where credit is due... They built the stage at CBGB's and showed that you don't have to complete a set in 20 minutes to be a punk band.

Richard Hell, their bassist, who went on to form Richard Hell and the Voidoids was the chief influence on the image that became linked with punk music. When Malcolm McLaren was advising the Sex Pistols how to dress and what sort of music to play, he was telling them to copy Richard Hell. See Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me: An Uncensored Oral History of Punk if you want a reliable source to back up my claim. Considering that Legs McNeil was one of the founders of Punk magazine (and thus one of the reasons the genre became known as punk), then I'll side with him. It's clear that he classifies Television as punk. After all, that book is named after a shirt that Richard Hell designed and Richard Lloyd (also of Television) infamously wore. It had a graphic of a bulls-eye on it and read "Please Kill Me."

***

For all of you listing pre-1970s bands, those are all proto-punk bands.

For all you listing bands that formed after the 70s, you're talking about post-punk bands. It's not the same thing. Lester Bangs once wrote that Peter Laughner's death in 1977 marks the actual end of punk music. I tend to be slightly more lenient and say that it ends in 1980.

***

Qwenn: I believe the term "punk" as applicable to the genre came about as early as 1971 in Creem magazine (for the record, the first use of the term "heavy metal" as a genre also appeared in Creem). If nothing else, it was definitely established by 1976 when the first issues of Punk magazine hit.

/tn.

Now I am not old enough to remember that time period, I am only 27, but next to Queens of the Stone Age, my all time favorite band is The Exploited. I got the pleasure of seeing The Exploited live once a couple Octobers ago. I was right by the stage in front of Wattie (the singer) and he was letting those of us in front sing in the mic a few times. It was one of the best experiences I have ever had!

It`s a difficult one to perform an autopsy on, if you were there the first time round, it is not so difficult to make sense of. The terms, Proto-Punk, Post-Punk, New Wave, all have very little meaning in the context of the scene at the time, they sound good in a Book or a Thesis, but are the buzz words of someone researching things after years and believing that these divisions actually existed. Even at the time some people were saying to each other " I`m more of a Punk than you are ". Rules were not an issue with the music, the fans, etc, far from it. The live bands, the energy, the group identity and attitude, were the real force. To a researcher, it is easy to identify and report on, facts and more facts, but no real feeling for it, for most people it was more about hanging out, getting drunk and dressing differently, than it was about the politics or social statement. PUNK WAS FUN!

I take your point about Television and what they achieved etc at CBGB's.
I am well aware of the influence and legacy of Richard Hell, maybe it's just that I have never really been able to get into his music.
I could never get into The New York Dolls either, I think they were nothing better than a heroin fuelled Glam band yet they too had an influence on many of the early British Punk bands.
Iggy and The Stooges really cut it though.

The musical definition of Punk was much less restrictive in those days.
Bands as diverse as Devo, The Slits etc were all classified as Punk.
As Qwenn said, it was more about attitude in those days, before the studded leather jacket, mohican uniformed punx took over. (I have nothing against those people, indeed I know many, it's just too regimented for me).

I think it's fair to say that by 79 punk had splintered into many different styles; Street Punk, (which became Oi), hardcore, Goth, New Wave etc.

The Punk ethos manifested itself in numerous bands.
The Coventry based SKA band The Specials were originally a punk band called The Automatics.
They definately had the Do-It-Yourself attitude and spawned the whole 2-Tone movement.
They were free of the rock star aloofness and remained close to their core audience.
They achieved major success whilst remaining independant, anti-establishment with their own unique musical sound.
A band with integrity and true to the original punk ethos, but not punks.

Siouxsie went dark and mysterious, collaborated with The Cure etc and helped pioneer the whole Goth movement.
The Damned and The Stranglers continue to play to both Punk & Goth audiences.

The Angelic Upstarts, Peter & The Test Tube Babies, Cock SParrer and The Cockney Rejects helped front the Oi movement, hell, even Sham 69 ( :shk: ) found an audience there.

Billy Idol became an American Pop Star, (oh the shame of it!).

John Lydon recorded some fantastic material with P.I.L., the vast majority of which can hardly be described as Punk by todays definition.

The Jam became Mods.

We saw the development of Crass and all the other Anarchy and Peace punks which developed into the New Age Travellers etc.

Old School Punks eventually influenced nearly all musical genres and as a result influenced society as a whole to a degree never seen since.
The music industry will never allow a musical genre to have as much influence again.
Look how they took the rave scene of the late 80's and turned it into the insipid dance scene of today.

Unfortunately, many of the old school punks have become the establishment themselves and have forgotten their original motivations of Do-It-Yourself, question everything and have a good ****ing time!

I would have quoted one or two bits from your post, but then I would have had to quote it all. You are right to point out that all of this was going on at the same time, with much overlapping of group members and groups. People would sit drinking with you and then say, "We will be back in a bit" ,then they would go onstage and play a set, it turned out they WERE the band, or one of the bands. The musical range was very diverse back then, with a big crossover of tastes. Peter and the Test Tube Babies were part of the crowd we used to hang about with, the Brighton Punks. I even know who spray painted thier name on the beached tanker The Athena B, but I would not say. A great deal of people had bands back then, it was nothing unusual, just part of the norm.

reply to post by Qwenn


Here's something for you Qwenn:
Only seen them once and whilst they certainly enjoyed themselves they suffered from a really crap sound system.
Still, I just got bladdered and had a giggle.

Peter And The Test Tube Babies - The Jinx



Peter And The Test Tube Babies - Bannned From The Pubs

Freeborn/Qwenn: I can see already that I'm going to like you cats

I agree definitely with you Qwenn that approaching this retroactively and trying to delineate the valid time frames of a genre is not without its inherent problems.

Freeborn: Mmm, the Specials. You mentioned a lot of great bands. Also, I've never been much of a Dolls fan, either. But I do love the Stooges.

One major deficiency of the Legs McNeil/Gillian McCain book is that it is almost completely hinged on the New York scene, with some coverage going towards the London scene. The biggest crime of omission in that book, is that to my recollection, Peter Laughner was not mentioned even once.

That is mainly because there was not much mention in that book of what was going down in Cleveland other than in passing (i.e., mentioning that the Dead Boys were splintered off from Rocket from the Tombs). Other great Brit bands like Wire, Gang of Four, and the like saw very little mention. I understand that Gang of Four's first album didn't hit until 1979 or so, and they are a bit more post-punk than punk, but Wire was active by 1977, I believe.

Don't get me wrong -- it's an amazing book and anyone who is deeply into the roots of punk should read it, but it is not as comprehensive as some critics seemed to believe.

Have any of us mentioned Johnny Thunders yet? We all ought to be hanged .


/tn.


[edit on 1-4-2008 by teleonaut]

reply to post by teleonaut


Good to have your input teleonaut.

I must say that I prefer Jon Savage's book "England's Dreaming", a must read for any Punk fan.

To be honest, coming from deepest, backwater England we were pretty much unaware of any preceeding US Punk scene till much later.
I guess we only listened to The Ramones and a few Iggy And The Stooges tracks.
The New York Dolls were glam as far as we were concerned.
When I first heard MC5, (probably not till mid to late 80's), I was amazed at their sound and energy etc , especially considering when they recorded.

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I merely mentioned The Specials as they were a band who took the Punk ethos of Do-It-Yourself, keep in control, keep in touch with your fans and have a good time into another musical genre.
The Specials supported The Clash in 78, I think, and I think a bit of Joe rubbed off onto them.
They maintained their integrity throughout, the same can't be said for a lot of punk bands!

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After the 2nd wave I eventually got a bit bored with bands like Anti Pasti, Discharge etc and allthough I continued listened to all types of punk and music in general I became very involved in the Street Punk / Oi scene.

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For me it was clear of pretence and we could relate to it easily.
Bands like Cock SParrer, The Rejects and The 4-Skins were free from political bias or agenda's. (Not that the popular press would have you believe that even to this day)

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Punk has a long, varied and complicated history and fortunately bands like Rancid are trying their best to maintain that tradition.

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Edit to add:
Never really listened to Wire or Gang Of Four but really liked The Fall

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[edit on 1/4/08 by Freeborn]

!976, walking Sunset Blvd. going from Gazarri's to the Roxy, Eating pizza, drinking and stuff, Rock and roll, punk rock, disco sucks, hey Iran, Crusing Vanyes, Mulhulland drive, Patty Smith, the bathroom clicks, Dating stars before they rose, living the lyrics of long ago. Turning down fame and surfing instead, malibu Heights and 7 inch heels. Limo's and porches and skate boards too Rams Football camps and schwin crusers, creating styles and talking so fast that the rich valley girls stole it all.

Nah I have NO recall of the punk days, hollywood swingin!