20 pulverizing punk essentials from the 1970s
By Jonathan Eig
“Sheena is a Punk Rocker” by Ramones (1977)
Meanwhile, on the left side of the Atlantic, punk bands were playing the same handful of chords but with a different effect. The Ramones had released their first album a year earlier so by the time of Rocket to Russia, the band’s third studio release, Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy were a more polished product than the Sex Pistols.
Within the punk universe, they served up a slightly wider range of songs. Most importantly, despite the punk image, they were as goofy as they were scary. Many of their best songs celebrated the chosen lifestyle of punks who were not necessarily for a violent overthrow of the establishment but for something different and more exciting than what mainstream music and culture was offering. Which is precisely why “Sheena is a punk rocker … now.”
“Blank Generation” by Richard Hell and the Voidoids (1977)
Richard Hell tried playing in collaborative efforts. He was with Tom Verlaine in the Television and then with Johnny Thunders in the Heartbreakers. Nothing lasted. So he took his bass and joined up with a couple of guitarists and a drummer (who would soon replace Tommy Ramone in the Ramones), and released a couple of albums as Richard Hell and the Voidoids. That band didn’t last very long either, but they did produce two cutting-edge punk albums. “Blank Generation,” a reworking of Rod McKuen’s “The Beat Generation,” established a new anthem for the punks of the late ‘70s.
“Orgasm Addict” by the Buzzcocks (1977)
What it must have been like in Manchester in the mid-‘70s. The Buzzcocks and Joy Division and the Fall. The first gig ever played by the Sex Pistols. Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto, who founded the Buzzcocks, were at the center of it all.
Though their first studio album wouldn’t be released for another year, “Orgasm Addict” kicked off a run of singles that laid the foundation of what would one day be called pop punk. More attention to tight melodies and a bit more musical variety, but with the same irreverent and in-your-face lyrical attack. Devoto would soon leave and form a band that we may be hearing from a bit later.