Punk attitude though. The whole of the first Vanilla Fudge album (it’s all covers of pop classics if you are unfamiliar with it) is proto-punk of the first order. Proto-metal, too. Good stuff for 1967.
Well, when I think of punk, I think of music that was created by people who didn’t like all the slick studio sounding stuff that was being made at the time. A music that was just plain stripped down rock-and-roll.
For that reason, I think “Loudmouth” by the Ramones is a good example. http://youtube.com/watch?v=bc9xhAM8WMU
Real rock-and-roll could easily be played by talented singers and musicians, but punk showed a thousand garage bands that you didn’t have to be able to sing, play an instrument well or compose witty lyrics to rock.
Wow. Nostalgia rush. I’m only the third to mention the Vandals, but Anarchy Burger, from the Peace through Firepower album does it for me, when I want “Punk” “Anarchy Burger, hold the government! America stands for freedom, but if you think your Freee, try walking into a deli, and urinating on the cheeeese!” I still have Social Distortion and Dead Kennedys on my playlist. How could I move to california without ‘Moon over Marin’ on my playlist?
Oh, and for Suicidal Tendencies, my fav. Track is ‘Suicide’s an Alternative’ “Sick of you, you’re too hip, sick of life IT SUCKS” - Unabashedly incoherent.
I’ve also been known to shout, when I see a teen-or tween-ager in retro punk gear:
“Hey! You! Punk is dead, we killed in 1988, and you missed it!!!”
I’m Thinking Punk rock jumped the shark with the Dead Kennedys ‘FrankenChrist’. I had the version with the H.R. Giger penis landscape poster. Wish I still did.
Oh, and The Cramps. I Love the Cramps. ‘Can’t find my mind’ ‘People ain’t no good’.
Oh oh, and Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper. - redneck punk, if you can believe that.
3 5 4 1 2 5 GO! (That just reminded me of the best opening in postpunk is all.)
Oh goodie, I get to be the first to mention Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers. I love the New York Dolls, but not quite punk. But Johnny on his own - no question about it. This one is from one of the many revivals of the band, but I think it will get the point across. Stay tuned for the chatter after the song for the full punk effect.
Nah, just showin’ that we know a lot more than “Am I a racist,” etc. 
Yeah, it’s cracking, innit?
That reminds me of the intro to “Warsaw” by Joy Division as well.
Oh, and a true punk classic: “Fuck Off” by Wayne County and the Electric Chairs.
First, I love that Husker Du song. I can’t name five songs by them, but that one’s in my MP3 collection.
Second, have you ever heard Nouvelle Vague’s cover of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”? If not, give it a listen 
I’d agree with HoboStew; Minor Threat’s “Filler” was my first thought.
One night, a while back, Rage the twice weekly all night music video show on ABC TV (Australia) played an all punk homage. I was sitting at my computer working while it played in the background. Many of the songs mentioned in this thread were played. And there I was tapping my foot to things that sounded, now, as safe and familiar as old Chuck Berry stuff.
I lived in London in 1976 and 77 and saw lots of these acts and they didn’t feel safe and familiar at the time. The best reminder I have of how it all felt, the distilled essence of live punk is not one song but a short, shitty movie:
The Cramps Live at Napa State Mental Hospital. That’s punk.
That was awesome. I love Nouvelle Vague. Speaking of punk, their cover of “Too Drunk to Fuck” is tons of fun.
Mr. Bunny would like to cast his vote for Minor Threat - Good Guys Don’t Wear White, as his favourite punk song.
Forgive me if I seem a bit outdated, but making videos for MTV is not punk rock.
(Begging one’s pardon before saying anything isn’t punk either, but not caring anyways certainly is)
No kidding. Jello Biafra is probably the only punk rocker to walk the walk.
That might have been true until he started employing what we might charitably call creative accounting when it came to paying the other guys in the band their royalties. Fuck Jello, he’s as dirty as all the major label bosses he used to rail against.
My vote for most punk song ever goes to Blitzkrieg Bop. Yeah, the Ramones may not have had the technical proficiency of Wire, the iconic image of the Sex Pistols, the political radicalism of the Dead Kennedys, or the DIY ethic of Minor Threat, but when I think of punk rock, I always think of Blitzkrieg Bop. Just a simple, bubblegum pop song cranked up to 11. The song’s a brilliant celebration of rock and roll as a violent sublimation of teenage sexual frustration, and basically encapsulates the spirit of punk rock, to my ear anyhow.
All you whippersnappers who weren’t there, you can’t even begin to imagine what Sex Pistols did back in '76.
There seems to be some kind of debate about which is more punk and even if my 2007 ears know that Anarchy in the Uk or God save the Queen aren’t all that hard hitting now, but without context, you might as well think that Lamb of God is the heaviest of heavy metal bands.
But hearing the Pistols in '76 is quite different from hearing them now. At the time, they sucker punched what the public knew as Art Rock or Progressive Rock. Acts that were considered dinosaurs, acts like Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Barclay James Harvest, Mike Oldfield. At 29, *Bryan Ferry ** had covered Smoke gets in your eyes * two years earlier. Gabriel had just left Genesis after doing The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Zep released The song Remains the Same. Critics were raving about how *Springsteen ** was the epitome of the new wave that was gonna save rock’n’roll, based on his Born to Run * album.
Enter a band created by Westwood and McLaren, much in the way boy band like Back Street Boys or **Westlife ** were created to fit a market. Looking at early videos by Sex Pistols miming to the backgorund track show Sid Viceous repeatedly remembering to snarl and **John Lydon ** being as off sync as a telenovela dubbed to English.
None of that matters. Parents were upset, rock’n’roll was back to playing small basement clubs to an audience of 200 drunk teens. the Pistols, as constructred as they were, forced record companies and A&R guys to start looking in different directions and even though *The Clash ** had recorded as The 101’ers and releasead protopunk Five Star Rock’Roll Petrol, no one really cared. After Anarchy in the UK, all the main labels wanted in on this new thing and this opened for a flood of new bands, most of them crappy. The few that survived re-arrranged the landscape of music, much as what Elvis did in '56, the Beatles in '64 and Nirvana in '91.
*Best song title ever.
Well, I’m gonna go with my good Honey’s voice on this , and he’s a good music expert, mainly in blues, country and reggae. Whoa! I was away surprised at his attitude with this question. I was going with Sex Pistols, later Johnny Rotten, Also Iggy Pop, and, then, the Ramones, leading into all other sorts].
He, then said, definitely, in his mind, i[the Bad Brains](t washttp://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/badbrains/paytocum.htm) were the seminal Punk band. This is a guy who, at, sixteen years old, had a blues radio show, and a reggae show, and was kinda a bellweather here, when not so easy to do. Gonnna cut him some slack now…
Ok, he’s playing the 45!, now here, banging the earbones…“Pay to Cum”, supposedly the fastest punk song then, Jeeez it sounds like it now, bt realy not off key at all.
There’s my vote.
Hardcore, again. Fuck, I know I’m a prick, but Bad Brains was one of the first hardcore bands, along with another band that is mentioned a lot here, Minor Threat. I don’t mean that people didn’t consider themselves punk back then who went to Bad Brains shows, but punk are those early punk bands who wanted to make music but would never be allowed on labels. Hardcore came about a little later, where people took this further and just wanted to fuck shit up. I guess it doesn’t matter, whatever you feel is punk is punk, as that’s one of the main points. I’m just bringing it up because the thread would be a different beast to me if the question was “Most harcore song ever?”. That’s all.
And, again, I must ask, where the hell is the love for Richard Hell? And only one vote for Johnny Thunder?
No, with ya there right off, with Johnny Thunder. And, agree with the hardcore definitiion. I was really surprised when my music expert Hon was so hell-bent on Bad Brains as definitive. (Though, “Pay to Cum” is an argument for that) I lean more towards Sex Pistols and Dead Kennedys, the wistful bands of my youth.
Both of us then went on to live in Mississippi to work with blues musicians, and all that punk crap pretty much paled rightly after that proper education. Thanks be.
I think that I’m going to have to go with “U-Stink-But-I-
-U”. Or possibly “Let’s Run Over Lionel Ritchie with a Tank”.