Soundcheck
Bold Beginnings: Punk at 30
Doug Brod, editor-in-chief of Spin Magazine, shares the magazine's list of the 30 greatest punk albums, and he looks back at the seminal artists from 1977, the year the musical style exploded on the scene.
I disagree. Punk started in the late 60's in Detroit with the MC5 and the Stooges.
Please make a note of it!
Bollocks to the Sex Pistols... the Damned LP came out first!
What about Iggy, I have heard and read that he is the G-d father of punk. Not true???
Duly noted, Rick!
Punk is such a multi-faceted history -- it can't be distilled into a brief summary without leaving out many wonderful elements. Lenny Kaye used the term "punk rock" in his liner notes to the first Nuggets collection of 1960s garage rock when it was released on vinyl in 1972 on Electra records. Punk certainly includes garage rockers like the Sonics and more famous 60s rockers such as the MC5, The Stooges, etc. The Damned are recognized for the first single, beating out the Sex Pistols with New Rose in 1976. But as far as punk goes, the Damned are a psychedelic punk band by their own description (although others would pin both punk and goth labels on them). You can follow punk rock history into every corner of obscure pop culture and politics, following band and lyrical references into the world of horror movies, fringe literature, situationist ideas...it's an unholy nexus that leads to all sorts of wonderful discoveries. Listen to Nuggets, read books like "England's Dreaming", tune into WNYU's New Afternoon Show every day at 4 pm at 89.1 FM, spend hours poring over the "Establishment" record section in the basement at Kim's on St. Marks Place --- years of joy and discovery will follow. If only I could have seen some of this stuff the first time around...but then again, the New York Dolls were great at this summer's Siren Festival at Coney Island, and the double header of Television/Patti Smith that I saw at Roseland a couple of years ago couldn't be beat!
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John Schaefer goes to North Korea; Soundcheck goes to Austin and to Berlin.
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