The origins of New York’s punk rock scene can be traced back to such sources as late 1960s trash culture and an early 1970s underground rock movement centered on the Mercer Arts Center in Greenwich Village, where the New York Dolls performed. In early 1974, a new scene began to develop around the CBGB club, also in lower Manhattan. At its core was Television, described by critic John Walker as “the ultimate garage band with pretensions”. Their influences ranged from the Velvet Underground to the staccato guitar work of Dr. Feelgood’s Wilko Johnson. The band’s bassist/singer, Richard Hell, created a look with cropped, ragged hair, ripped T-shirts, and black leather jackets credited as the basis for punk rock visual style.
Out in Forest Hills, Queens, several miles from lower Manhattan, the members of a newly formed band adopted a common surname. Drawing on sources ranging from the Stooges to the Beatles and the Beach Boys to Herman’s Hermits and 1960s girl groups, the Ramones condensed rock ‘n’ roll to its primal level: “‘1-2-3-4!’ bass-player Dee Dee Ramone shouted at the start of every song, as if the group could barely master the rudiments of rhythm.” The band played its first show at CBGB on August 16, 1974.
Chickasha, Oklahoma gave birth to avant garde, glam-punk bands Victoria Vein and the Thunderpunks in 1974 and Debris’ in 1975 whose self-released underground classic Static Disposal was released in 1976. The album has been touted as an inspiration by numerous bands including Scream, Nurse With Wound, the Melvins and Sonic Youth. In 1975, the Suicide Commandos formed in Minneapolis. They were one of the first U.S. bands outside of New York to play in the Ramones-style harder-louder-faster mode that would define punk rock. Detroit’s Death self-released one of their 1974 recordings, “Politicians in My Eyes”, in 1976. As the punk movement expanded rapidly in the United Kingdom that year, a few bands with similar tastes and attitude appeared around the United States. The first West Coast punk scenes emerged in San Francisco, with the bands Crime and the Nuns, and Seattle, where the Telepaths, Meyce, and the Tupperwares played a groundbreaking show on May 1. Rock critic
Richard Meltzer cofounded VOM (short for “vomit”) in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, performer Alice Bag formed the punk music group the Bags in 1977. Alice influenced the Hollywood punk scene by incorporating Mexican and Chicano musical culture into her music through canción ranchera—which translates to “country song” and is associated with mariachi ensembles—as well as estilo bravío, a wild style of performance often seen in punk. In Washington, D.C., raucous roots-rockers the Razz helped along a nascent punk scene featuring Overkill, the Slickee Boys, and the Look. Around the turn of the year, White Boy began giving notoriously crazed performances. In Boston, the scene at the Rathskeller—affectionately known as the Rat—was also turning toward punk, though the defining sound retained a distinct garage rock orientation. Among the city’s first new acts to be identified with punk rock was DMZ. In Bloomington, Indiana, the Gizmos played in a jokey, raunchy, Dictators-inspired style later
referred to as “frat punk”.
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