My favorite subgenres of punk are generally 80's Hardcore/American Underground and post-punk.

I saw Cheap Sex in Corona, CA 3.5 years ago with Lower Class Brats. I'd only heard one of their songs before the show, but a friend needed someone to go with her so I went. They weren't bad, but I never got around to listening to more of their music.
Have you seen American Hardcore? It was a pretty cool documentary about the Hardcore Punk scene from 1980-86. They talked to a bunch of the musicians from those bands. It wasn't widely released, but it did play in some small theaters.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this guy lives near me. My uncle has talked to him at both bars and AA meetings.

The DVD of this just came out. Really, the film is worth purchasing just for the archival footage. The interviews aren't really anything groundbreaking if you've kept up with the scene.

Apparently being punk is very serious business. It's like a job, almost.

Yeah I've already been voted out.

One thing I would like to say is that I think in the United States we don't really have "punk," it's a brit thing.

We have hardcore, such as: Bad brains, Bad Religion, Reagan Youth, Black Flag, Fugazi, The Misfits, Naked Raygun, Anti-Flag (circa '88), et al.

The distinction is mainly semantic, but there's a distinct divergence in sound between the Sex Pistols/early Clash and those listed above. The only real exception I could think of would be The Heartbreakers, who developed their sound while touring in the UK with the Sex Pistols.

Fuck this elitism shit. This isn't what punk is about.

All i know is that Frenzal Rhomb released the best punk album of last year (Rise Against fan sit down) and that I'm really fucking excited about the imminent NoFX show in Perth. And next month, the DROPKICK MURPHYS. Gunna be insane.

You're obviously not looking deep enough if you think punk music is exclusive to Britain.

being punk goes by the simple D.I.Y ethos. The fact that you cite the sex pistols as an actual punk band, shows you don't know much of what your talking about. I recommend you look up vivian westwood and Malcom Mclearen. The sex pistols were the Fallout boy of the 70's and nearly every interview i've read with people who were part of the punk rock scene attest to this.

let's not forget that such punk bands like the Stooges, Television, Swell maps, and the ramones to name a few started as a band playing punk music 2 to 3 years before the Sex pistols or the clash even formed.

The reason people consider Britain to be the home of punk music is because of the mainstream press hyping up these two bands as an innovator of this genre of music. The only reason they are considered by many uninformed people as the founders of punk is because they " brought" it to the mainstream.

hell, even bands like Black flag, the Minutemen/reactionarys, Angry Samoans, Crime, etc started playing punk music at the exact same time that the clash and the pistols did. Thinking that punk originated in Britain is completely asinine.

British punk may be the most well known in the world due to mainstream exposure, but it is by no means the original or birthplace of punk rock. Sorta how people think Black sabbath are the first metal band in the world when if you take the time to digg, it is very evident that they were not.

I don't know why everyone likes the Ramones so much. They were all right, but in comparison to other bands in the same vein, I don't think they're really that noteworthy.

If they're not punk, then what are they? Oh, wait, I forgot, you're probably thinking because they gained popularity with God Save The Queen, they're not punk.

I'm surprised you didn't bother to take the New York Dolls route, they started in the early, early 70s. Before most of the other bands you mentioned.

So, maybe it was a bit of misnomer, but most people I know, who are also fans of the genre, refer to british groups as "punk" and americans as "hardcore." Even if you visit the major epicenters of the American scene, they labeled themselves as such: LA, D.C., New York, Chicago...

I wouldn't go so far as to compare them to Fall Out Boy, but they were definitely more of a caricature than they were an actual anti-establishment entity. The reason why I couldn't ever get into the Pistols was because of their whole musical demeanor. What were they talking about half of the time? They didn't know eachother when they got together and the fact that they fell apart because they never had any true stage chemistry was a testament to that.

It always just seemed to me that they were put together for the sole purpose of selling a false punk image that was built upon the paving of bands like MC5, The New York Dolls, The Stooges and Velvet Underground, to name a few.

Where they were from doesn't matter to me as long as it was good music; but, to me, the Pistols definitely didn't fit this bill. :/

Xtian punk bands: Slick Shoes(first 2 albums), MxPx (old stuff), Craig's Brother (1st Disc) Dogwood, The Undecided, Ace Troubleshooter.

I also like some new school bands: No Use For A Name, NOFX, Bad Religion.


Even though I've listened to a lot of punk, I have to say that my music tastes have broadened significantly since then. Funny how that goes, huh?

The Pistols aren't punk based on the sole fact that they were a 1970's boy band essentially and instead of selling their abs and looks, they were sold with their " fuck society" and " outsider" look. It was basically 4 guys who hung out at a store that were thrown into a band to help sell the stores goods.

I love the New York doll's first album, but after that i think they took a horrible nosedive partly due to McLaren. He took the dolls from being Glam rock gods to being a ants about to be squished under Bolan's shoe for ripping him off. I didn't mention the dolls because they've always been far more of a glam rock band then a punk band.


I think most people get confused with the hardcore label. Hardcore back in the 80's was basically the same as the word " kvlt" that is used by people in the metal scene. It was a title moreso given to the genre by the fan's then the actual artists in an attempt to be more underground because punk was becoming mainstream.

Bands like the Meat puppets, Minutemen, Husker Du, Saccharine Trust, Replacements, etc were all classified as hardcore bands, but alot of their input didn't fit the hardcore classification, yet still was considered hardcore because they were apart of the american underground scene and sounded punk and that was all that mattered to be classified as hardcore.

Although, i guess your right in the sense that the hardcore punk label is used by americans to help defferentiate themselves from their british counterparts. When it comes down to it IMO, Hardcore was more an era of punk rock then an actual style.

That is exactly what happened. they were put together by westwood and Mclaren to help sell their stores good. The only good thing to ever come out of that scene was Siouxsie Sioux.

I totally agree, the Pistols were as manufactured as the monkees, but they did get punk to a wider audience than they would have otherwise and influence countless better bands. Taken from Cock Sparrer's wikipedia article.

I agree, punk isn't about christianity, racism, selling out or skateboarding.

I never really got into Sioxsie, though the Banshees were O.K. You seemed to forget that the Clash also came out of it though.

And The Who started playing before them, but Link Wray started playing before them. The problem with identifying when punk started is that you just end up going further back and back. Punk had a variety of influences, from protopunk, blues and pub rock. I suppose if you wanted to be pedantic you could say ? & the Mysterians were the first band to be described as punk but does it really fucking matter where and when it started?

Let's try not to turn this into a pissing contest.

HAY GUYZ IM LISTENING TO MCR - I'm Not k (I Promise) and enjoying it! Shit shit am i doing this rite?

If London Calling came out today, it would be called a low fi I Am The Movie without keyboards.

Seek help, don't turn to the dark side.

Get out.

Haha, no, no, before they were emo the big fad was punk.

Then they went on to emo and all that bullshit. It's embarassing.

What sort of punk? Could you describe their clothes/habits please

Edit: Just found this on wikipedia.

Just when the patriotism in me starts to wane, I read something like this and my faith in my brothers in restored.

Double Edit: It gets better, have a look at this and this.

I've always found the who to be standard blues rock. I think they're very far from the punk spectrum. Link wray really can be connected to punk rock, but only in a small way as power chords only make up a small part of the entire punk spectrum. He was influental to a select few, but nowhere enough to be considered a founder. We could like you said keep going back further and further in history to find the supposed origins, but i don't either of us want to do this.

I just think it needs to be noted that the Sex pistols and the clash were not the founders of punk in any way shape or form like so many people belive.

That's pretty much the single greatest moment in the history of music.

As illegitimate as the Sex Pitstols were as a group, I do think that there was a legitimate talent in John Lydon that makes listening to them understandable. You can't deny the genius of a lot of his PiL stuff, and his work with Afrikaa Bambataa was great.

I was just talking to my mate the other day about how intelligent Lydon was, iw would have been interesting to see what he would have done if he had formed his own band instead of being shoe-horned into the pistols.

My Generation and Rumble?

My generation does have some punk elements, but so does stuff released by Love and a bunch of other rock acts in the 60's.

IMO the first true punk rock album to ever be released was in 1970 with the stooges " Fun House ". Loose, Dirt, Down on the street, and T.V Eye were all punk as fuck.

I would like to hear what everyone considers the first punk album?

I don't think there was a "first" punk album, I thought we had established that the music had sort of a parallel evolution.

I would almost say, that in a lot of ways Johnny Cash (although, his influence was later felt in the Grunge era), The Grateful Dead, and other folk artists as well as the movement of the Beat-generation (Allen Ginsberg, et al.) lead up to the anti-authoritarian, do-it-yourself movement that is Punk.

There's always be rebellious anti-authoritan hell-raisers, however if I absolutly had to pick an album that I felt was the first totally legitimate punk album I would probably pick 'Kick Out The Jams' since in the words of Lester Bangs 'they came on like a bunch of sixteen-year-old punks on a meth power trip'.

I'd say that the first record that really sounded something like punk sounded in it's heyday, ignoring mentalities of the artists and anything like that, is The Monks' Black Monk Time. At the beginning of flower power, it stands as a frothing testament to youthful rage. "Oh, I hate you with a passion, baby."