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New York Punk

Overview Artists Albums Songs

While bands like the Stooges, the MC5, and the Velvet Underground laid the initial groundwork for punk, New York was home to the first punk scene, and was the location from which punk rock spread to later hotbeds like London and Southern California. New York punk didn't have the immediate revolutionary impact on its homeland that British punk had, but its lasting influence is incalculable. The initial spark for New York punk came from the New York Dolls, whose crude Stones riffs and trashy, cross-dressing glam image caused a minor (if mostly local) sensation. The Dolls helped open the doors for a raft of musical misfits, most importantly the Ramones, a quartet from Queens clad in jeans and leather who appropriated catchy hooks from early-'60s bubblegum, surf, and girl-group pop, but played them as loud, fast, and raw as possible. Their sound was basic (two-minute, three-chord rockers) and stripped-down (just guitar, bass, and drums), and their attitude -- bringing a sense of dumb fun back to rock & roll -- stood in sharp contrast to nearly every prevailing musical trend of the '70s. The Ramones became regulars at CBGB's, a dive bar on Manhattan's Lower East Side that became, along with Max's Kansas City, the epicenter for the developing punk scene around 1975-76. Although the Ramones still epitomize the sound most listeners (especially Americans) think of as "punk rock," the New York scene was in actuality much more diverse, united by a common spirit of reinventing and reinvigorating rock & roll than by any one sound. Television, for example, stretched their songs into ambitiously intricate, epic-length twin-guitar duels; lead singer Tom Verlaine's literary bent was echoed in the work of his ex-bandmate Richard Hell and singer/poet Patti Smith. Meanwhile, Blondie's subversions of girl-group pop and the Talking Heads' quirky art-school guitar-pop were some of the first ventures into what would eventually be called new wave, but their attitudes placed them squarely in the punk camp at the time. Also on the dividing line was synth-pop duo Suicide, whose incendiary performances and edgy subject matter made them perhaps the most confrontational band on the scene. There was no formula, but there was no lasting scene either - by the early '80s, much of the activity had died down, as the original bands began to hit the mainstream, fade away, or settle into cult roles.