Oooh, and you were doing so well.....

Absolutely The Ramones, streets ahead of the Sex Pistols. The Clash were also brilliant, as were Siouxsie and the Banshees but the ultimate for me were The Damned.
Their New Rose is officially recognised as the first punk release after all.
I also listened extensively to The Velvet Underground, Nico, Joy Division, Bauhaus, Dead Kennedys, Sham 69, the Anti-Knowhere League, UK Subs, The Stranglers, Nina Hagen, Stiff Little Fingers, Ultravox, early Adam and the Ants, The Cramps, Buzzcocks. Elvis Costello, Generation X etc.
I was six when The Damned released New Rose in 1976. I bought my first album of theirs when I was about 11 and have everything they've ever released and a crush on Dave Vanian which has not faded with time

The only thing close to a real punk band is Milk Music who are very good at it if you like that Husker Du SST thing.And Kicking spit and there kind of the same mixin a mide 80's U.S Underground sound.

Also check out there music if you have the time.

http://pitchfork.com/features/rising/8704-milk-music/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1190Cq3PHvQ

it was more about putting the expression ahead of the craft, and finding out if you had talent for it by giving it a go...you could hone your playing ability as you went.

Of course those that really had no talent soon fell away, the good bands moved on rapidly

I meant people in general looking back at punk with rose-tinted spectacles, a lot of people do.


And yet you would be amazed at how many members of Punk bands were Prog Rock fans...

My dad was a plumber all his working life and my mum worked in a Video rental shop, so hardly "well off". when I left school at 16 in 1979 there were 3 million unemployed and the Winter of Discontent was just around the corner so most of us faced the same option many school-leavers face today - the Dole queue.


I like everything from Prog Rock to Punk, Thrash metal to Folk Rock and a lot of everything in between so I find plenty of new music to interest me every day within the Rock spectrum. I'm not adverse to other genres of music, far from it, like many Prog rock fans I like classical as well but something like modern pop music I find to be superficial and lacking emotion of any description. But that is purely my musical taste.

i liked the noise that these made

sham 69
angelic upstarts


was jon bentley of The Gadget Show in a punk band? I thought i had read somewhere he was in the Skids, but I can't find any links. Have I been misinformed?

[edit
yes - it's Richard jobson I was thinking of.]


i would have thought the pistols were the top punk band.

stranglers or clash maybe. jam don't count as punk, do they?

death disco (swan lake) was one of my favourites

Only really appreciated Crust Punk and Oi Punk stuff.

Since about 1980 always thought of Roxy Music as a fusion between Progressive Rock & Disco (as well as other lesser influences).It's ironic that Punk 'initially' was supposedly most opposed to those 2 genres at the time.Think most punks 'at the time' were most opposed to the 'Arena' rock bands more than anything, who generally had a more hard rock, stripped down bias to their sound.Progressive Rock was generally lumped in with 'Arena' rock by the mainstream media just before Punk was 'marketed' as a new form of rock from the small street rock / pub rock London scene though.These combined / parallel scenes were far more diverse than Punk became.The initial Punk bands stripped out the more dubious influences.The Banshees put all those influences back in though, as well as their D.I.Y. (in punk speak) Progressive rock influences.PiL tried to do the same as well.John Lydon said that PiL was all about creating his version of progressive rock (or something like that http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.230...id=55857244773 - couldn't find a direct reference, but this article is on similar lines).John Lydon was a big fan of artists that are considered part of the Prog rock family now & German Prog rock (which was part of Krautrock) of course.

Interesting article written by Simon Frith about a Disco in 1978 http://www.djhistory.com/features/th...-of-disco-1978

It's interesting that the general Punk movement (formed from the initial rock sphere of music) has absorbed Disco influences the most.Some Progressive rock bands did absorb disco elements to their sounds soon after disco formed - Roxy Music, ELO, Genesis (Abacab (1981)) etc., but it's not generally associated with dance music at all these days.Perhaps the only other major rock genres that has Disco (& it's offshoots New wave, synthpop, Rave, Hip-hop etc.) associations are Madchester & Nu-Metal which are associated much more with Punk or Hardcore than Progressive rock is.Not to mention the more obvious Disco-punk sub-genre.

Dance music

that happens with every genre though...

furthering my suggestion that punk doesnt get its true recognition...
the greatest thing punk did was spark an interest in making music, (and fashion). punk mobilised a nation into having an interest in new music. punk was id suggest, directly responsible for the most diverse period in music we have ever seen. it encouraged people to experiment. the charts in 76 were piss poor, many would say the music scene was (at that time) the worst it had been. punk destroyed that appathetic view.

ok not all music was touched by punk... disco, abba, kate bush.. but punk was directly responsible for new wave, two tone, new romantics, rockabilly, indie (which wasnt a musical style, even pete waterman was 'indie' ), goth, and get this... even the resurgence in rock which gave kids OF YOUR AGE! LOL.. a more musical alternative to the harsher more political punk.

if you want to know what our charts would have been like without punk... just view the american charts 1977-82...



as i understand it, many dropped prog rock when punk arrived!

ahhh... you were one of the kids at the youth club i assisted ! lol.. 1977-79 'da kidz' (of your age) were into punk... 1980-82 they were more into rock as a new generation came to the club and the older ones left. rock was huge in 1980 onwards.. gillan, rainbow, whitesnake, judas preist, iron maiden, saxon.... succeded on the back on punk making rock popular!

if you left school in 79, the winter of discontent was just gone!

i can understand your view on punk, tbh you were just a little too young in 77, 14, i was 20, a 14 year old schoolboy could hardly understand the political reason that punk resonated with us young adults who were in the workplace and whos career was bleak... in the same way we could.


i hate prog rock... not as much as i hate philly though!

i like good music that appeals to me from any genre.. world, classical, folk, my long term fav was always guitar based pop.. kinks, yardbirds, small faces..jam.. but now its TRANCE!

I've tried to break down the musical landscape of the '70's below to get it into context.

1970's Adult-Contemporary / MOR
(Easy Listening, Blue-eyed soul, Smooth Soul, Latin American pop, Country pop, Musical Theatre)

Singer-Songwriter 1965 - 1982? (from then on merged with other pop-rock);
Folk Rock 1965 - ?
Soft Rock 1969 - 1980

Progressive Rock 1967 - 1981
(inc. Canterbury scene, German Prog (part of Krautrock), Jazz Fusion, Progressive Electronic etc.)

Hard Rock 1967 - 1980
Early Heavy Metal 1967 - 1980 (Heavy Rock, Blues Rock, Country Rock)

Glam Rock 1971 - 1976

Bubblegum Pop (inc. Teen Idol) 1967 - 1972 & 1974 - 1977

Metro Detroit/Garage Rock 1968 - 1976;
Pub Rock 1971 - 1976;
Punk Rock 1976 - 1979

New Wave 1976 - 1985 (inc.Synthpop);
Post-Punk (inc. No Wave, Goth rock) 1977 - 1984;
Power pop 1978 - 1985;
Mod Revival 1978 - 1984?
2 Tone / Ska revival 1977 -

Reggae (inc. Lovers rock) 1968 - ?
Dub 1973 - ?

Northern Soul 1963 - 1971/1981?;
Funk 1967 - 1971;
Disco 1971 - 1980 (inc.Disco rap/early hip-hop)
Quiet Storm 1976 - ?

I wonder which genres so called Punks dislike / don't mind & like - Punk tastes seem to be a little inconsistant to me & seem to been influenced by very diverse genres. Of course as long as it's D.I.Y. it's Punk isn't it

Punk had the biggest effect on pop music of the time. In 1977 I was already in to the likes of Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, etc., so the influence from Punk was less pronounced for me for that reason, especially as there were already bands like Iron Maiden, Saxon, Motorhead, coming through to spearhead the resurgence of Heavy Metal. Whether Punk had any direct influence on that, who knows. If you look at the sales of HM bands during the Punk period of 77 - 79 their sales remain strong so, because it was always essentially an underground movement, it is less affected by popular trends. The same holds true today.


Those bands would have gone on to commercial success anyway, whether they would have had the impact they did in the singles chart, who knows? But Whitesnake and Rainbow were selling out venues in 77 - 78 and Gillan was always guaranteed an audience purely from being in Deep Purple.


To use a terrible pun Prog has, well, progressed!

Prog has enjoyed a real upsurge in the last few years and there are some great bands young coming along who bare no resemblance to the bands of the 1970s.

some glaring omissions there dude... funk died in 71?.. funk was huge in the late 70's.... chic anyone?

why inconsistent? punk broke down the barriers that existed before when music was polarised...you were supposed to like one style. the point of punk was that it gave you the right to like anything you wanted to. pre punk music was tribal... you dressed the part and liked that style only, post punk you could like any music and that was cool.

yes punk was diy, diy for people who wanted to try it but didnt fit the corporate image /style of what was expected... nowt wrong with that... it lead to the greatest variety chartwise we have ever seen.


fair play


of course we will never know for sure... but as punk brought rock styles back to the fans, then died down by 80, i dont think its any coincidence that commercial rock in 80/81 peaked in popularity.

Chic were part of Disco culture, Disco evolved from Funk.Chic influenced Hip-hop even which evolved from Disco .That's why I grouped them together.Not that relevent on how Disco influenced the broader Punk movement though, which I have been curious about for years, since Punk was so anti Disco to start with (even more than fans of Prog & Hard rock IMO).

The Punk movement included the most polarised & tribal fans I have ever known in music 'to begin with'.It was almost a fascist campaign to hate on any other genre.What was the year 'zero' nonsense all about otherwise.Punks openly dissed their so called proto-punk bands to start with.It's quite funny really in retrospect.

Think you are a bit confused about being corporate.Isn't pop / chart music all about being corporate (the singles chart anyway).Why would a punk fan worry about chart music when they are so anti-corporate minded.That's exactly the reason why the first wave of Punk collapsed.It was a victim of it's own commercial success & co-oped into Corporate record label culture - Punks (fans, artists) couldn't deal with that.

The variety of music that was present after the first wave of Punk collapsed was much less than in the early '60's / early '70's for good or bad.I'm glad Punk swept away the MOR music that was present in the mid-seventies personally.Disco suffered due to Punk as well (the original orchestrated form anyway).It was replaced with Synth based form nearer to New Wave (a broad genre that borrowed alot from progressive electronic music BTW).

You cannot get more D.I.Y. than present Prog musicians these days as far as a self-producing is concerned.If you are such a D.I.Y. lover you should also love present day Prog if you follow that logic.

Whilst I've never subscribed to the idea that Punk "killed" Prog as most Prog bands were far more commercially successful, in terms of hit singles, in the early 1980s than they ever were in the 1970s, there is a delicious irony in that fact it is the new Prog bands that have adopted the Punk ideal of doing it yourself.....

I know a few of the new Prog bands personally and it really is a self-sufficient cottage industry to a very large extent.

Sorry - can't agree - disco did.

Punk was hugely influential - but not in the way disco was ... not least in the use of tehcnology.

You've got to admit that Prog bands fundamentilly had to change their sound to gain chart / singles success though in the early '80's.In response to a virtual Punk bias take-over of the UK music media (especially the print press).They would have been slaughted if they kept producing a similar brand of music.That's one area that Punk certainly succeeded.Which also ment that the newly formed Neo-prog bands had a more commercial sound that borrowed influences from New Wave (there were common influences in '70's Prog & New wave & post-punk anyway).

It's quite ironic also, that punk rock had the effect of rock music becoming more commercially (in a pop sense) oriented after the collapse of it's first wave.One of it's objectives was to sweep away the commercialisation of rock music, supposedly.It had the opposite effect really.Punk was parcially responsible for the highly commercial Synth pop genre, for example.I hope you are proud of yourselves Punk rock followers

If you take the period between 1977 and 1985 I would have said Punk had a far greater influence.

As Scratchy said:

New Wave 1976 - 1985 (inc.Synthpop);
Post-Punk (inc. No Wave, Goth rock) 1977 - 1984;
Power pop 1978 - 1985;
Mod Revival 1978 - 1984?
2 Tone / Ska revival 1977 -

I would have said they were all directly influenced by Punk.

Disagree sort of, New wave (Synthpop) was the biggest influence on modern pop music, although it is regarded as a derivative form of Disco as well.Disco originally used a string & horn orchastrated / jazz like backing.Synths were used later & were derived from Synthpop.Not sure how much of an influence Punk had on the electronic side of New wave though.It was influenced more from Krautrock (generally regarded as a part of Prog rock), progressive electronic & progressive rocks forerunner Psychedelic rock (i.e. Funkadelic ; the name is self explanatory as far as their influences are concerned).

I wouldn't deny that at all. If anything Punk breathed new life in to Prog and forced it to change, which wasn't a bad thing at all in my opinion!

'Space-disco' had the biggest influence on modern pop imo.
Moroder & Cerrone & also Stevie Wonder's use of synths: arpeggiators, using synths as basslines and for drums beats.

I agree in a way.Was a little disappointed in 'modern' progressive rock from late '70's onwards.At least I had NWOBHM to keep me happy though & heavy prog (& influenced bands) maintained it's relative popularity, although more stripped down also.Not a total fan of Neo-prog either.These developed as a reaction to punk / new wave / post-punk of course.Think these developements helped form the Post-progressive (new prog - horrible tag) sub-genres that are around today though.Which I am a big fan of.So yes, as far as I'm concerned, Punk did 'eventually' breath new life into Prog without question.Although more of a fusion of '90's, '00's alternative rock / metal & newer ways of producing progressive sounds, along with the retro Prog rock elements as well.