Rise of Punk, New Wave

Link to Spotify playlist: Mus115 - 16. Punk, New Wave

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Punk

Punk rock can be considered as the ultimate rebellion of most forms of post-1960s mainstream rock and society in general, and as the ultimate extension of the harder side of blues rock started by the Stones, other blues bands, and mainstream rock.

Punk, in a simple description, is louder, faster, simpler, and more repetitive. Punk rockers eschewed technically demanding instrumental solos, and took lyrics that become more directly gross and shocking, along with stage antics that echoed the lyrics.

NOTE - the following is a very very very short and incomplete section about punk.

Sex Pistols - the first major punk band out of Britain was the Sex Pistols. The lead singer had never actually sung before, but that was kind of the point. Their first major hit was "Anarchy in the UK".

• Anarchy in the UK

They only released one studio album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, and in 1978 bassist Sid Vicious was charged with murdering his girlfriend. He died of a drug overdose in 1979 before he could stand trial.

The Clash - a much more refined and less aggressive version of British Punk, they had various hits in the late 70s and early 80s, but their biggest hit was "Rock the Casbah".

• Rock the Casbah

New Wave

Based upon the raw, unrefined, gruesome image that punk had achieved in the late 70s with the Sex Pistols and others, a lot of punk bands toned it down just a little and fit into the "new wave" category to make the music more palatable to a wider audience (see the Clash hit above, that is really "new wave punk").

American Punk

Even though the British get the credit for punk (mostly because of the Sex Pistols), artists such as Velvet Underground and Iggy Pop were doing "punk like" things since the 1960s:

• I'm Waiting for the Man - Velvet Underground

But it's really New York that lead the American punk movement in the late 1970s with Patti Smith, and also The Ramones (below).

• Because the Night - Patti Smith Group - probably their most recognizable hit from the 1970s, one that also got the band 10,000 Maniacs a lot of airplay when they did a cover for MTV's "unplugged" series in the 1990s.

• 25th Floor - Patti Smith Group - more in the standard punk style with distorted guitars and such.

• The Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop - this is the quintessential punk tune, one that every book or course of study detailing punk has to include. It's hard to overstate how popular The Ramones were at the time. Their t-shirts made it into movies back when people wore them un-ironically, and were just a pop culture phenomenon for a short while.

Another set of groups that get honorable mention: Talking Heads, The Police (who really walked all sorts of styles from rock with "Syncronicity", to punk influence with Mother, and soft rock with "Every Breath You Take").

• The Police - Mother

And then there's Devo:

• Whip It

• Uncontrolable Urge