70s punk

A greasy R&B riff rips from the speakers, coated in more fuzz than a peach orchard wearing a 50-year-old wool sweater. A singer with a sneer that could wilt Elvis’ upper lip indicates he’s gonna tell you a story about his town. He snarls about hanging out by the notoriously polluted Charles River, “along with […]

Since the world first became aware that there is such a thing as punk, there’s been a nonstop argument about its birthplace. The clueless mainstream media reported for years that it began in England, simply because the Sex Pistols’ snarl was more extreme. Which royally pissed off New York City, the first place to essentially […]

Kid Congo Powers has been one of punk rock’s most valuable players since 1979. That was the moment when boho poet/Slash journalist/Blondie fan club president Jeffrey Lee Pierce handed an open-tuned electric guitar to the Ramones fan club president, who’d previously been one of the suburban teenage habitues of influential local DJ Rodney Bingenheimer’s storefront […]

Punk has a million precedents—musical, spiritual. The basic sound and attitude can be traced back to the wildest, most primitive rockabilly records of the ’50s and the most fuzzed-out garage bands of the ’60s, plus the racket the New York Dolls and Iggy and the Stooges raised in the early ’70s. You see it in […]

Record collectors of any sort can be a persnickety bunch. But few can be worse than punk-rock record collectors with titles spanning from the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and beyond. They can make Simpsons character Jeffrey “Jeff” Albertson (aka “Comic Book Guy”) look positively well-adjusted. Come on: In a world in chaos, much like the lyrics […]

For many, first-wave punk was the sound of liberation. Chainsaw guitars, locomotive drums and screaming singers delivered brutal street poetry about the times. It saved us from a lifetime of dull progressive rock, snooze-worthy singer-songwriters and six-string heavy metal. For certain die-hards, ’70s punk is the only punk. For them, both the music and the […]