I need your help. I’m writing a report for my final in my fine arts class on the punk music era. I’d like to know who the best punk bands are and what there best songs are. I know a few bands I’m going to mention: The Ramones, Bad Religion, The Offspring. Any others I should mention and where I could get more info on them. I’d also like to know where I could find the history of punk. You know where it started and who started it. I’m not doing this at the last minute I have a whole month I just want to get started and I do NOT want anyone to write this report for em I just would like some info if it’s not too much to ask?
Well, for the origins you already have the Ramones, also look into The Velvet Underground, The Sex Pistols, Iggy and the Stooges, and The Clash.
As far as history of punk/punk info - I believe Greg Graffin of Bad Religion fame has written a few articles on just that. It might take a little bit of searching but they shouldn’t be too hard to find.
Sex Pistols? Cramps? Sham 69 (snort)?
The Dead Boys, Dead Kennedy’s, Generation X, Plasmatics, Clash.
I believe these all warrant a mention in any punk article.
fear, flipper, circle jerks, ramones, black flag. damned, stranglers, clash, sex pistols.
do yourself a favor and get a mod to erase bad religion and the offspring from your list.
Griel Marcus - Lipstick Traces. A good book on the era from the perspective of Sex Pistols, a bit far reaching but very readable and a good start.
If you’re going to mention offspring, you’re venturing out of the 70’s era into the 90’s… you should probably consider Minor Threat and Fugazi, heck, even Nirvana; who are all more influential, stylistically, than offspring. I suppose Offspring have moved more units…
Punk also had roots in regae and ska, so consider the aforementioned Clash, also Operation Ivy, and good old Bob Marley. Oh, and Bad Brains, supposedly the inventors of hardcore.
Agent Orange, Black Flag, Dead Boys
the Lookout/Alternative Tentacles south California scene, the DC scene with Dischord, the midwest with Touch and Go/Amphetamine Reptile, the Pacific Northwest scene, the Chapel Hill Scene…
Damn. I just threw away seven years worth of Maximum Rocknroll magazines; I would have given them to you.
Best punk band? Refused, with “the Shape of Punk to Come”. Just my opinion today, it will change sometime this evening. Fugazi have been doing it longer, better, and with more integrity than anyone else I can think of. Go read the Cafe society post about Steve Albini and follow the links…
Try renting Decline of Western Civilization. Great documentary about the early days of the U.S punk scene (Black Flag, X, Fear, the Germs, etc). Might also want to mention New York Dolls, The Stooges (already mentioned), and the MC5 for proto-punk roots.
I’d recommend looking at Minor Threat/Fugazi. Ian Mackaye’s career spans pretty much the while history of punk, both as a musician and as the founder of his own record company (Discord).
Rats, everyone else beat me to it.
Can’t believe I forgot the Damned
You’ve got your Brits - Clash, the Damned, Sex Pistols, but don’t forget GBH
Bad Brains kicked some serious ass.
Also, since someone has represent Minnesota - check out Replacements and Hüsker Dü.
Also, check out the Minutemen, who play some old-school Orange County punk.
Also, SPIN magazine had an article last year about the “Top 100” punk albums. Check their site online to see if you can find the list. there were also good articles.
also, rent the movie, SLC Punk. It provides an interesting prerspective, in my opinion.
Personally, I wonder if it would be possible to trace the roots of punk back to skiffle, in that they both incorporate the idea that any bloke can go and start his own band and play super-easy three-chord songs. Then again, I seem to recall that this was one of those ideas I came up with while sitting on the toilet.
Not much to add, except to me, The Dead Kenedys and The Exploited pretty much define punk, although they are definately opposites in most ways…in fact they hated each other.
Also, the Ramones, BAD BRAINS (they never get mentioned enough), COC, and the Circle Jerks.
If you ever write a report about great civil rights leaders, mentioning James Earl Ray and Jesse Helms will have about the same effect as mentioning Bad Religion and the Offspring in a paper about punk rock.
NOFX or Pennywise would both be better examples of modern punk than would the Offspring. Other than that, I will just 2nd the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, the Ramones and pretty much everything else thats been mentioned.
dead0man
Rather than naming my favourite 437 punk bands (available upon request ;)), it might be worth noting some of the following:
the term ‘Punk’ was first applied to music by writers like Lester Bangs (Rolling Stone; Creem Magazine; etc) and Greg Shaw (Who Put the Bomp etc), to the ‘garage rock’ of the sixties, exemplified by a compilation record put out in 1972 called Nuggets by another journalist who was soon to be a musician, Lenny Kaye (of Patti Smith’s band).
Excellent New York synthesiser duo Suicide performed a show in December 1970, called ‘Punk Rock Mass’ - possibly the first time a band applied the term ‘Punk’ to themselves.
The Electric Eels are the most punk band ever - end of story :p.
Unfortunately, the best way to get a view of the ‘History of punk’ is to go through hundreds of fanzines from the past 30 years, and decide for yourself what you think is important. The book ‘England’s Dreaming’ by Jon Savage is pretty readable for the academic (read: anal retentive) side of English punk; ‘From the Velvets to the Voidoids’ by Clinton Heylin gives a pretty good version of ‘pre-punk punk’ from America (Velvets, Detroit bands, Pere Ubu, etc).
Best of all, track down people willing to play you the records, and enjoy them :).
There are a couple books & movies that are great guides to the history of punk.
As previously mentioned - rent “The Decline of Western Civilization” and also “UK/DK”.
There are a few other books that are great too:
Dick Hebdige: Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Methuen, London 1979)
Jon Savage: England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock (Faber & Faber, London 1991)
Hans Versluys: London’s Burning: An Exploration of Punk Subculture
And remember that music was not punk culture, it was only a creative outlet of punk culture.
For Research Areas:
Pre Punk - USA: (Velvet Underground, Iggy & the Stooges, MC5 - some bits about this in Subculture: Meaning of Style)
Punk UK: (Pistols, Clash, Vice Squad, Damned, GBH, Anti-Nowhere League, Sham 69 - there were a lot of bands - Watch UK/DK & read England is Dreaming)
Punk USA (NY): (Ramones, Blondie, New York Dolls, Richard Hell - look into CGGB’s http://www.cbgb.com/ & check out the Shrine)
Punk USA (NY, California, Boston, Detriot) (X, Agent Orange, Fear, Germs - watch Decline of the Western Civ.)
Hardcore (Black Flag, DOA, Circle Jerks - Decline covers this too)
Some people throw in New Wave here, and other post punk stuff - (I am partial to Dead Boys and Lords of the New Church - ahhh - Stiv Bators - nothing more beautiful or sorrowful than the song “Ain’t it Fun”).
Also check out this site for a great list of punk bands to check out:
http://hiljaiset.sci.fi/punknet/
If I was to list all my favorite bands this message would be too long - If I was to mention all the albums I have - the same things - so if you need more info - e-mail me.
Specifically, the word “punk” (when pertaining to music) was first coined by the grandfather of punk, Frank Zappa, way back when in 1965.
Zappa was far more ‘punk’ than these other bands.
However, the majors have been included:
Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Ramones are crucial (the Ramones most critical)
Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Minutemen, Minor Threat, Exploited, et al also important.
I would say bands like Circle Jerks, GBH, DOA, Flipper, big black, etc are bands that started the mainstream indie movement more than they are punk bands.
DC checking in. We were proud to have our own unique offshoot of the punk scene which, while probably not as well remembered as others, did play an important role in music history.
A quick way to see what DC had when is to look at Ian’s, label, Dischord.
Notable among many great DC or surrogate bands not previously mentioned are Government Issue, Black Market Baby, Scream, Marginal Man, Ignition, Void, and the Meatmen.
And on a completely unrelated note, how could we possibly omit Joey Shithead and DOA?
Oops, we didn’t forget Joey.
Lumberjack city, babe!
Oh, and if you want to know more about DCHC and the like, you might want to check out a book called Dance of Days by a guy named Mark Andersen.
The Buzzcocks deserve mention, even if their biggest “hit” is all-but-unmentionable in polite society.
And I’d definitely classify Roky Erickson & the 13th Floor Elevators as an Ur-punk band. Most musos classified them as “psychedelic” back in the day, but I suspect that was because that was a prevailing style (and vocabulary word) then. The Elevators were into drugs, Satanism, belting out lyrics in full-scream mode, sheer noise, and weird water jug sounds – all in Texas in the mid-60’s. Just as their popularity was taking off in '66, the law clamped down, hard. Drug busts and various incarcerations, some in state insane asylums, followed. You could say that they fought the law & the law won… Their minor hit “You’re Gonna Miss Me” kicks off the movie “High Fidelity” in grand style.