What was the first Punk Rock-type song? "Louie, Louie"? "96 Tears"? "Talk Talk"?

Hey, that would eliminate, what, 50% of posts on the forum?

 

Boss/Don't Need You No More (Downey 103) 1962
Boss/Don't Need You No More (Dot 16421) 1963

available on this comp

http://www.soybomb.com/BorderlineBooks/us6070s/

 

I would not completely dismiss the "getting laid" part (or any of the others, in GENERAL terms). However...
Their were/are Punk bands that form too offend (your "acting rebellious"). Now, after fame & fortune roll in, things may indeed change. Yet, I don't believe you should complete dismiss that some of these Punk bands are quite anti-social, and looking just to infuriate, as opposed too turn on, as many people as possible. If your synopsis follows... so be it. If not... screw everybody!!!

 

Hey, so does this mean my "Little Sister", wins??? ;-)

 

I don't thing a Punk Rock Band covering a song, makes the song "Punk". Using that logic, "The Star Spangled Banner" is psychedelic, cuz Hendrix played it (did he EVER!!!).

Perfect! Johnny wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

Yeah, your point? Pat Boone did a Punk song. Is Pat Boone now & forever Punk? The Ramones wanted Wall of Sound Phil, as a producer, would you say that makes "The Wall of Sound" production "Punk"?. The Ramones LOVED Pop. They did some 'poppy' songs. It was fun for everyone.

Too badd. That's were Punk thrives, in "the darker side of love". A Punk Band, putting out a silly love song, again, doesn't cut it. David Bowie sang Little Drummer Boy, with Bing Crosby, wearing a cross around his neck. Does that make Bowie a Christian MOR singer. Does it make Little Drummer Boy, a R&R tune? Of coarse not.
A friends band, The Point (not Punk as much as "Power Pop/New Wave"), had a song "She's Gone To Far", about a dead girlfriend. Now necrophilia, THAT'S "the dark side of love"!

 

Jimmy Hendrix completely retooled the song to the point of offending plenty of traditionalists at the time, The Rezillos played Glad All Over straight up. The song as written works naturally as a punk song. That was half of The Rezillos' act, playing these sugary 60s songs without straying far from the source. They weren't doing what Sid Vicious did to My Way or anything close. And nobody is trying to pass My Way off as a punk song on this thread.

The topic of the thread is "What was the first Punk Rock-type song?" and songs like Glad All Over while not a "punk" song fits into that structure which doesn't require a complete re-working of the song to fit the genre. And note that I never claimed it was a punk song, just that it works as one in the hands of a punk act playing it straight up.

My point is that contrary to what John Lydon has to say is that there are plenty of punk rock love songs. The major acts did them to varying degrees of success and many of the greatest punk songs ever written were love songs: Teenage Kicks, Get Over You, Barbed Wire Love, Ever Fallen in Love..., What do I Get?, while Stiff Little Finger's material was otherwise politically charged The Undertones and The Buzzcocks wrote the book on this kind of stuff.

I'm not sure what the obsession is with pointing out these instances of artists making singular forrays into different musical genres. MY point is that punk music is littered with schmaltzy pop love songs and that they are a large part of what punk music is and has always been about. It isn't some one off gimmick for a punk band to do a love song, some of the seminal punk acts entire catalogs are based around love as a recurring theme. It only seems natural when you consider the one thing most every major punk act has had in common is a shared sense of separation and alienation from mainstream society, love songs have as much place in this shared identity as politically charged music and blatantly offensive material written expressly to get a rise out of sensitive people.

 

I think a good example of early 70s punk (even though it wasn't really called that) was Mott The Hoople's "Violence."

 

On a related note, check out Greg Shaw's earliest print work: http://www.rockmine.music.co.uk/Archive/Library/Mojo.html

 

I'd say Link Wray's sound was pretty punk rock: You Really Got Me and My Generation were certainly.

Cliff Richard

 

Hi Corey.
Nothing personal about my quoting you again & again, in my post. Everyone gets their two cents, just your two cents motivated me more than others to put in my two cents. If that makes any 'cents'!
To answer;

I LOVE The Rezillo's. Whom I consider Power Pop (coming in a fast second wave to The Pistols and all). I believe Sid was making a mockery of MW. The Rez's had greater respect for their punker renditions of pop songs. Power Pop always fallows Punk. It doesn't make it Punk. Blondle started out Punk, however quickly turned PP. And they were out of the "original" scene. At least I hope CBGB's & Max's, are considered the "original" Punk Rock "Scene". I just don't think of "Hanging on the Telephone" as Punk. Maybe you do. It doesn't bother me, unless someone had "HotT" as the best Punk song ever, as much as I do like the song, I just think that would be wrong.

Again, I don't think of "GAO" or The Rez's, as a PUNK song or a Punk band. Fantastic Power Pop, YES! The Punk bands too me, were the bands you spat (glob) on, while their were singing about alienation.

When "paraphrasing" JL, I was ONLY talking about his song titled "This is not a Love Song". By PiL, with I don't consider Punk, either ;-).

There are "plenty of punk rock love songs", they just don't have that 'I want to hold your hand' mentality. Like you said; "The Dark Side".

I just can not get behind this. "Sugary" and "Punk", just can not be the same thing, too me.

It's FUN!
It also proves that Punks don't ALWAYS sing "PUNK Songs". And a song is not "PUNK", just because a Punk sang it.

MY point is that a "schmaltzy pop love song" is a "pop love song".

Agree.
As I posted on this thread as well. Punk is (to paraphrase you); "sense of separation and alienation from mainstream society".
Just to me "separation and alienation", don't have much, if anything, too do with love.
I'm stupid simple, a Love Song is a "Love Song" & a Punk Song is a "Punk Song". I guess I've got very little room for gray when it comes to "Punk"
Forgive me.
Do check out my pick. It's a song about a guy who got 'teased' by the older sister, and now is looking for the younger sister not too do what her big sister done. He wants sex, not to hold her hand.
The Sex Pistols changed my life, so I'm taking this way too personal!!!

 

Some of the early surf stuff I would put into punk-type category.
Maybe
Rumble - Link Wray (1958)
Misirlou - Dick Dale (1962)

 

"Shut Up" by The Monks
"Teenage Head" by The Flamin' Groovies

Did Lenny Kaye coin the term "punk rock" when he compiled the original Nuggets comp (1972, I think)?

 

There are five months of magazine issues on this link. Could you be more precise as to which one we should be looking at?

 

As I said earlier in the thread, I don't think so. I took a cursory look at Kaye's liner notes on the original Elektra LP, and I didn't see it. Didn't read word-for-word, but it didn't pop out anywhere.

 

Indeed, Indy, but...

... The Wailers were doing so much more. When Robin Roberts exited for a more mainstream existence, Kent Morill (jeez, I hope I'm spelling it right) took the band away from surf and standards into the garage with pounders like "Dirty Robber". Saw them do it at an armory show double-billed with the Sonics and they out-pounded the Sonics easily... and the Sonics were great that night.

Frank

 

I think the first punk-rock record was "My Generation"-it has the anti-social tendencies down pat, declaring "Hope I die before I get old!" when old to the average Who fan was probably 25! It has a riotous backing track, a killer bass solo, and ends with Keith Moon whacking his drums like a man possessed. The song brazenly declares itself the mouthpiece of a generation, on one hand bemoaning the fact their elders don't listen, while in the very next telling them to sod off if they don't! This song should be heard and appreciated by every adolescent. It was written for them, by a songwriter barely out of his teens. If you don't hear this song as a kid and think "That's me he's talking about!", you may not be human!

The other I would nominate is "A Legal Matter"-get married? Have babies? Settle down to a boring office job? Nope, don't think so! Let other 20-year-olds sing love's praises. Pete Townshend describes matrimony, child-rearing and a steady job as basically the end of all your hopes and dreams, ending with "Work all day in an office just so I can bring my money home to you?/Sorry, baby!"

 

"Catman" by Gene Vincent. Stripped down sound & mean guitar riffs, plus an amazingly raucous vocal for it's time.

 

I just put up the link as a means to access Shaw's earliest writing - perhaps a reference to punk might turn up in one of them...

 

"Punk Rock" applied to 60s bands -- confirmed!

By chance I was listening to one of my old airchecks just now. (Not a habit of mine, but a friend, a known masochist, has asked to hear them, so I was burning a few to a CD.)

As it turns out, I can date this one definitively to January 1973, as on it I speak of a newly released album I just confirmed was issued on January 15 of that year.

After outroing "Cousin Jane" by The Troggs, I refer to them as "one of England's great punk-rock groups of the 60s."

Since I certainly didn't invent the term myself, that tells me that "punk rock" as applied to 60s bands was in use by at least sometime in 1972!

 

How about Gloria by the Shadows of Knight, the ultimate punk rock/garage band from the Chicago area. Another great early punk rock song was Hey Joe by The Leaves.

 

Sorry Mike, there were so many posts to this thread I didn't read them all.

But an excerpt from the Wikpedia's entry on "punk rock" states:

"The term was coined by rock critic Dave Marsh, who used it to describe the music of ? and the Mysterians in the May 1971 issue of Creem magazine. The term was adopted by many rock music journalists in the early 1970s. For example, in the liner notes of the 1972 anthology album Nuggets, critic and guitarist Lenny Kaye uses the term "punk-rock" to refer to the Sixties "garage rock" groups, as well as some of the darker and more primitive practitioners of 1960s psychedelia. Shortly after the time of those notes, Lenny Kaye formed a band with avant-garde poet Patti Smith. Smith's group, and her first album, Horses, released in 1975, directly inspired many of the mid-1970s punk rockers, so this suggests a path by which the term migrated to the music we now know as punk."

 

LOL! Well, this is why I qualified my earlier statements with the word "cursory." Sure enough, there it is in the fourth paragraph of Kaye's back-cover musings:

"The name that has been unofficially coined for [these groups] -- 'punk rock' -- seems particularly fitting in this case, for if nothing else they exemplified the berserk pleasure that comes with being on-stage outrageous, the relentless middle-finger drive offered only by rock and roll at its finest."


The cite of Marsh, as specific as it is, would seem to be definitive in terms of origin. I would have to see additional evidence to convince me that there's a direct tie-in between Kaye, the Patti Smith Group and the eventual application of the term to 70s punk. I think my proposition that the fanzine writers simply reapplied the term they'd already been using for several years makes just as much sense.

 

The first song recorded that epitomises what I think of as "punk rock" is "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" by the Kinks.

Dave Davies sings this song with real attitude and the lyrics perfectly embody the punk ethic. This all on top of a really angry sounding backing track.

As far as I can tell, Ray Davies not only created the first true "punk rock" recording, he also created the first western music recording to be heavily influenced by Indian music ("See My Friends" predates "Norwegian Wood" by a few months) and also created the first glam-rock recording too ("King Kong"). The man is a f**king genius! .

 

Agreed about "See My Friends." Though "Norwegian Wood" is always cited, in fact it has NOTHING to do with "Indian music" at all beyond the fact that George plays a sitar on it. But he really only uses it as a funny-sounding guitar...neither his part nor the song as a whole is in anything resembling an Indian mode.