most influential punk song

[MSB ROYS]

My favourite 3 songs from my favourite punk bands:

"Holiday in Cambodia", "Too Drunk to F@ck", "I fought the law and I won" - Dead Kennedys
"Institutionalised", "I saw your mummy...", "Possessed to skate" - Suicidal Tendencies
"Anarchy in the UK", "No feelings", "God save the queen" - Sex Pistols
"Dead Cities", "U.S.A.", "Daily News" - The Exploited
"Lead me astray", "Pub", "Can't come in"- Cosmic Pyschos

other argument ... sex pistols

 

[Dipper]

Originally posted by Leaping Lindner
Welcome back DK it's been a while since we've seen you on the music board.
Also an interesting one this...........the first punk single?????? I'm naturally aware that "Stranded" pre dates "God Save the Queen" but I've got a feeling that "Anarchy in the UK" pre dates "Stranded" (only just) and that was the reason the Saints were signed to EMI (unseen) as EMI had 'flirted' with punk with "Anarchy". EMI UK sent an exec out to Brisbane to sign the band after the review of the Fatal label "Stranded" appeared in "Sounds" or so the story goes.
The accepted mythology(if you like) in punk circles is the Damned were the first punk band to release a single ("New Rose"),an album("Damned Damned Damned"), tour the US and to split (albeit breifly before reforming).

Many critics think punk music as we know it owes its life and soul to IGGY and THE STOOGES (as mentioned by many posters above)and when you consider that these guys were doing what they did in 1969(!!!)it's hard to argue against that........although...... you could mention The Seeds, Electric Prunes and even The Missing Links.......but that's a whole other thread

Hey DB you still need me to chase up a copy of "Do the Pop" for you??? If so drop me a PM.

I'm no expert on punk unlike you blokes I'd read an article recently that claimed that The Damned had the first punk single & album but DK disproves that, I'm currently reading a book about the music critic Lester Bangs & it mentions the article where it claims that the term punk is first used in relation to a genre of rock music but I also recently bought Suicide's eponymous first album & they claim in the notes that they were the first group to apply the term punk to their music so who knows if you fix a date for it.

Added to the above article I read they gave away a 'punk CD' with the magazine in question & one of the songs-Ambition (Vic Goddard)-they say was voted the greatest punk single ever by the readers of NME.

 

[Angus1]

There have been a lot of Punk songs that have influenced other punk bands but Sex Pistols were getting into the main stream. They weren't your usual underground punk band.
Anarchy in the UK changed music forever.
Never Mind the Bollocks still is a classic album.

If the average Jo Blo can't name one punk band he is sure to know who the Sex Pistols are.

 

[fitzmantle]

I reckon these are the songs that made punk apart from the Sex Pistols.
"I wanna be your dog" Stooges
"Marquee Moon" Television
Sex pistols were the first punk band that made it comercially?

 

[Dipper]

I've got the Marque Moon album, I was surprised really at how different some of that New York punk was to the British stuff.

For me the New Yorks Dolls is a great album I read soemone say that they were the bridge between the Stones & the Sex Pistols & I reckon that's a pretty good call.

 

[Rusty Brookes]

Originally posted by DIPPER
I've got the Marque Moon album, I was surprised really at how different some of that New York punk was to the British stuff.

For me the New Yorks Dolls is a great album I read soemone say that they were the bridge between the Stones & the Sex Pistols & I reckon that's a pretty good call.

Very good call on both accounts. The New York punk scene had acts as diverse as the Dictators, Television, Patti Smith, the Ramones and Talking Heads. There were some very different (and interesting) variations on a theme in New York.

If anyone has seen the Filth and the Fury, Steve Jones basically notes that Johnny Thunders (guitarist for the New York Dolls) was his major influence.

 

[Lockyer24]

All of Avrils, cos shes so punk, man.

 

[dreamkillers]

For those interested in looking back on the London Punk scene the following DVD sounds like it could be a good pick up when it is released next month.......

PUNK IN LONDON - DVD
Re-mastered from the original negative and featuring The Clash and some of punks most important bands, including The Adverts, X-Ray Spex, Subway Sect, The Boomtown Rats, The Jam, Chelsea and the outrageous Wayne County and the Electric Chairs.

Directed by German Filmmaker Wolfgang B*ld this is a unique visual record of London punk life in the late seventies. Filled with the unseen live footage and some incredibly naïve comments. Punk In London is so loaded with history and brilliance that you can almost smell the energy!


It includes live footage of The Clash performing in Munich during 1977.

A review of the DVD from overseas...........

SUPERB

It is around noon on Monday, December 23, 2002, 48 hours to Christmas, and I've just read the news on the Internet that Joe Strummer, former singer/songwriter with London punk band The Clash, has died. He was 50.

Punk in London is a DVD that has been out for a while, but an apt tribute to one of rock's dynamic frontmen. Check out the bonus footage of The Clash playing in Munich, Germany, in the glory days of 1977. The young 4-piece rampage through a set of raw, politically-charged 3-minute songs - adrenaline rushes set to music - as if they are possessed. At times the snarling, manically-gyrating Strummer is so volatile he resembles some kind of human incendiary device. The guitars pummel the somewhat bemused audience, the ragged English slogans winning them over by the sheer commitment and passion of their delivery.

Compared to witnessing the punk revolution at full throttle, an evening spent at Supertramp or Springsteen or Genesis must have been like watching paint dry.

The Clash feature heavily on this DVD, culled from contemporary 16 mm footage and spliced together a quarter of a century later to reveal an often shambolic but always riveting vision: the moment rock music became relevant again, after years of criminally anal progressive 'supergroups'.

25-year-old German filmmaker Wolfgang B*ld gives the protagonists carte blanche to explain their motivations. From Chelsea's Gene October to X-Ray Spex's Poly Styrere, they seem more bemused than anything else by the hysterical tabloid reaction their rock n' roll instigates. Others, such as Vic Goddard of Subway Sect, are clearly relishing punk's non-conformist manifesto, stating they hardly seem themselves as punk rockers at all, preferring experimentation to rehashing third rate Heavy Metal on speed.

Like any other youth movement, punk's original ideals became jaded. Camp followers are interviewed at length about their despondency with the way high-spirited anarchic revelry quickly transformed to choreographed outrage once record company executives realised how lurid newspaper tales could boost sales.

But the music speaks the loudest volumes. The Adverts but particularly The Clash storm their respective stages with all the vitriol of a late 70's UK immersed in unemployment, National Front marches, reactionary authorities, teddy boy bullies, and where humourless MOR bands dominated the airwaves. There is another classic live appearance, by Fulham's answer to The Ramones, The Lurkers. Light years distant from the poseurs in their Sex-shop bondage gear, or Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's platitudes about punk being another 'fashion movement', the teenage band inflict 'Shadow' on a hearty crowd down at some local pub. Within 5 seconds they are lost beneath a pogoing multitude of their fans. These gleeful working class kids are too happy to be hooligans, too angry to listen to the corporate Abbas or Elton Johns, too young and disenfranchised to be Yes fans.

At the core of all the rabble-rousing three chord pop, or The Clash's more layered polemic, something beautiful lurked. Underlying all the passionate anger of titles like 'Hate and War' and 'White Riot', Joe Strummer and many of his contemporaries, like Howard Devoto, Pete Shelley, Paul Weller, Johnny Rotten and Siouxsie Sioux, instinctively understood the primal roots of rock n'roll, and were brilliant and original songwriters. The cover of Punk in London might bear the hollow-eyed stare of Gaye Advert (one of the rare occasions punk deigned to offer the rock audience someone it could label a 'sex symbol'), but it reveals a motley collaboration of disparate souls who share a vision that, like the Advert's bassist, is paradoxically utterly focussed.

When Joe Strummer first clambered aboard a stage with a guitar as a 101'er (named after the street number of the band's London squat), he probably little suspected the international acclaim awaiting his next band. The Clash are rightly regarded as one of the greatest rock n' roll bands of all time. Together with the Sex Pistols, The Jam, The Ramones, and others too numerous to mention, they created a blue print that remains crucial to emotive rock music today. The fact Strummer's band quit two decades ago, as opposed to joining the self-parody circus still enjoyed by all their nemeses - Rolling Stones, Eagles et al - is ample evidence of their unique stature. After recent tragic events, you'll never ever see them again. But check out 'Garageland' on this DVD. Watch Joe Strummer staggering off the stage, drenched with sweat, axe slung over his shoulder like a soldier returning from a victorious battle. As one who was a teenage punk himself in the late 70's, it still sent shivers up my spine.

Joe Strummer, 1952-2002

A snapshot of the glorious anarchy that punk stood for; and which Joe Strummer championed his whole, tragically short, life.


MARK FLEMING (Scotland)

 

[Dipper]

Originally posted by Rusty Brookes
Very good call on both accounts. The New York punk scene had acts as diverse as the Dictators, Television, Patti Smith, the Ramones and Talking Heads. There were some very different (and interesting) variations on a theme in New York.

If anyone has seen the Filth and the Fury, Steve Jones basically notes that Johnny Thunders (guitarist for the New York Dolls) was his major influence.

Have you got any advice on what albums are worth a punt from the NY scene, I'm just kinda feeling my way into some of that stuff I've got Patti Smith-Horses & was wondering what Ramones album to start with but I don't know too much about the Dictators & Talking Heads.

Also does the 2nd New York Dolls album live up to the debut?


BTW I had a bit of a listen to some Love after your other post & whilst I would still argue that they don't reach the extremes of darkness of the Doors it is extremely hard to find too much that exists in the light, so that's why I wasn't able to meet the challenge anymore, so we'll call that one quits shall we?

 

[Rusty Brookes]

With the Ramones stuff, the self-titled album is great as a blue-print but I reckon Road to Ruin is their best (huge sound-sort of like the MC5 banging in the Who at their peak). Either way, you can't go wrong with the Ramones-it's all great.

Patti Smith's best is probably Horses although Easter is great as well. I also really like Radio Ethieopia and Wave but they're probably not as good as the other two.

I'm biased with the Dictators (I reckon all their stuff is great) but their first Go Girl Crazy is an absolute gem. BTW, they played here in Melbourne last year and were brilliant live.

Talking Heads-I'd go for anything with Psycho Killer on it (I love that song).

The second Dolls album is great but not as good as the first.

Some other great New York punk albums:

Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers-LAMF Revisited-a remastered version which shows what a great album the first Heartbreakers album should have been

Blondie-Parallel Lines

Dead Boys-Young, Loud and Snotty. Technically from Cleveland, they became mainstays of the CBGBs scene. Somewhere between the Stooges and the Sex Pistols in sound.

And I'd just about run out of 'dark' Love lyrics. I've been walking around singing 'Orange Skies' to myself which is hardly the darkest song of all time

 

[Leaping Lindner]

Pretty much go along with what Rusty said.
The first Ramones LP is the one to start with (and then why not get them all!! ). My personal fav: from that era is "Rocket To Russia". If you get the remastered CD it has some great bonus tracks which includes "Slug". A song that demands frequent playing!
The first Talking Heads LP is "77" and is the place to start with them I reckon. It contains the original studio version of "Pschyo Killer" which (IMO) shirts all over the live version that pops up on various compile LPs.
The second New York Dolls LP was called "Too much too soon" and critics had a field day with the title at the time. Not a "bad" LP but nowhere near as good as the first.
I have just realized that I have never owned a Dictators CD or LP. How do I miss them? I'm confused !

 

[Dipper]

Thanks for that Rusty I appreciate it & you too LL, it's good of you both to go out of your way to initiate me.

Looks like I'll have to get my pennies together.



On Love it seems like I threw the towel in too soon, but whilst you may have been struggling to find anymore dark lyrics it's almost impossible to find any 'upbeat' ones to compare with some of the really dark Doors lyrics that I was thinking of.

Even the Doors go a bit happy clappy at times but Arthur Lee, the whole cocept of the summer of love must have gone staright over his head

 

[Big Red]

Stranded is a killer song but I doubt Punk would have made it onto the radar without the Pistols.

Seeing Radio Birdman live on ABC -TV was the moment for me. Does anyone know if that live ABC footage is available commercially?

Favourite Punk albums:

Television - Marquee Moon
Saints - I'm Stranded
Radio Birdman - Radio's Appear
Clash - S/T
Stiff Little Fingers - Inflammable Material

 

[Rusty Brookes]

Originally posted by Big Red

Seeing Radio Birdman live on ABC -TV was the moment for me. Does anyone know if that live ABC footage is available commercially?

Big Red, big defining moment for me too. I remember seeing them when I was about 14 and being intrigued by these hairy blokes churning out this incredible noise. I remember some live Celibate Rifles on Beat Box as well-part of their appeal was that the bass player was wearing thongs when they were uncool.

 

[Leaping Lindner]

Originally posted by Big Red
Stranded is a killer song but I doubt Punk would have made it onto the radar without the Pistols.

Seeing Radio Birdman live on ABC -TV was the moment for me. Does anyone know if that live ABC footage is available commercially?

Favourite Punk albums:

Television - Marquee Moon
Saints - I'm Stranded
Radio Birdman - Radio's Appear
Clash - S/T
Stiff Little Fingers - Inflammable Material

That live black and white footage of Birdman that turns up on Rage from time to time is actually filmed at the Marayatville Hotel in Adelaide (before it got yuppiefied). This maybe myth but I think it was their most played venue ever after the Funhouse. The crowd shots are interesting as its like a "whos whos" of the Adelaide Punk scene.
As far as I know there is no footage of Birdman (from this era) available commercially and alas I'm pretty sure they never even did a promo film clip.