Before Punk

Punk’s Unruly Antecedents

“1969,” Iggy sings, “it’s another year for me and you / another year with nothing to do,” thus voicing his boredom with what rock music and youth culture had become by that year: the hippie pablum of Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” the self-indulgent artiness of the Beatles, the self-righteous earnestness of folky protest music, and the narcissism of Mick Jagger. Iggy’s heroes were the antithesis of peace and love: the wildly unpredictable Jim Morrison of the Doors, baiting the audience with insults; the MC5’s radical left activism and “total assault” rock; and the Velvet Underground with Lou Reed singing through a low-fi haze of distorted riffs and drones about the street life of the urban demimonde—the grind of hard drugs, hustling, rough trade, and marginal identities.

Pre-1976: Punk’s Visual Antecedents

Punk graphic design had multiple precedents. Some, but not all of the first punks were aware of Dada collage, Situationist detournement, the proto-pop mail art movement, counter-culture protest graphics and the chiaro-scuro of the underground press of the 1960’s. Examples of pre-punk graphics foreshadow the image explosion of 1976-77, alongside direct sources of inspiration such as Jamie Reid’s work with the Suburban Press, the underground graphics of San Francisco’s Diggers, or New York’s Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers.

The trickle-down influence of punk’s graphic style now infuses everything from street art to corporate advertising. The punk DIY ethos impregnates blogs, literary salons, the curatorial slant of major cultural institutions and, less fortunately perhaps, mall shops and youth-targeted branding. Graphic design choices that once originated out of necessity—borrowed, cut out and pasted, photocopied, silk-screened, improvised and executed cheaply —nowadays provides an immediacy and energy that art directors and ad agencies constantly reach for, seldom realizing that imitating grassroots culture will forever remove them from it.

Items:

Punk design elements are featured on this flyer for a performance by singer-songwriter Lee Mallory at the University of California, Irvine, January 1967. _100

Peace Eye Bookstore. Flyer featuring imagery from the cover of the paperback that gave the Velvet Underground their name, 1967. _099

Peace Eye Bookstore. Flyer for the mock exorcism of the Pentagon held on October 13, 1967 at the Village Theatre. _096

Ed Sanders. Fuck You – A Magazine of the Arts. Number 5, Volume 8 (1965)—Mad Motherfucker Issue. Cover image by Andy Warhol. _103, _104

Text: New York Rock – 1973-75

New York Rock 1973-75

Before the music of the downtown scene was collectively labelled “Punk Rock,” journalists referred to it simply as “New York Rock,” promoting the city itself as a partner in the creative explosion taking place between 1973 and 1977. Those were dark years for the city, however—bankrupt, forsaken by President Ford, pock-marked with abandoned buildings and empty lots. But the dilapidation meant cheap rents, especially in the Lower East Side, which had a neighborhood bar whose owner, Hilly Kristal, opened to all kinds of music. Originally called Hilly’s, the name was eventually changed to CBGB-OMFUG (Country, Blue Grass, Blues, and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers), but mostly CBGB regularly host new eclectic and experimental rock bands, such as the arty Television, and two campy girl-group revival bands featuring Chris Stein and Debbie Harry--the Stillettoes, and Blondie and the Bonzai Babies.

Item:

New York Dolls, 1973. Photograph by John McKenzie. _108

New York Dolls

Perhaps more than any other group in the city, the New York Dolls forecast the revivalist musical revolution that would coalesce at a Bowery club called CBGB-OMFUG. Less experimental than the Velvets-inspired Iggy Pop, the New York Dolls fashioned themselves as a street version of the Rolling Stones, exchanging the Stones’ high-gloss glam for trashy drag, and injecting the same Chuck Berry-inspired rock ‘n’ roll with new wild energy, camp humor, and poignancy for the post-1960s youth culture: “Personality crisis you got it while it was hot, but now frustration and heartache is what you got.” Soon after the release of “Personality Crisis,” Richard Hell of the band Television (and later the Heartbreakers, and the Voidoids) wrote a song modeled on a 1959 novelty record called “The Beat Generation.” Hell’s “(I Belong to the) Blank Generation,” unveiled in March 1974 during Television’s early residency at CBGB, became punk rock’s first anthem.

Queen Elizabeth (band) (w/ text) _163

Queen Elizabeth

CBGB wasn’t the only place these bands played; another important venue was the Mercer Arts Center at 240 Mercer Street, which included a small venue called “The Kitchen.” Until its physical collapse on August 3, 1973, the Mercer Arts Center was home to street-glam bands such as the New York Dolls, and glam/cabaret/punk mash-up Queen Elizabeth, featuring Wayne (later Jayne) County. Wayne/Jane County was another important evolutionary step in the formation of the punk aesthetic, bridging the gap between the theater of the ridiculous, the outsider drag scene centered in venues like Club 82, and the proto-punk sounds heard at Mercer Art Center and CBGB.

Text: CBGBs

CBGB

CBGBs made history in the summer of 1975 with a month-long rock festival that featured 40 bands, most unrecorded and unsigned, landing the scene and the club a feature article in Village Voice. Record executives, especially Seymour Stein of Sire Records, began to sign bands in earnest, sensing that the “next big thing” in rock was happening in the Bowery. The bands that played CBGB were eclectic, unified only by a bohemian spirit. The literary-minded punks, such as Patti Smith and Television (after Richard Hell left), aligned themselves with French symbolist and Beat poets, while the Pop Art punks, such as Blondie and the Ramones, made twisted versions of early ‘60s surf music, girl group, and bubble gum. Then there was the odd electronica of Suicide, the nervous funky grooves of Talking Heads, and the dissonant noise “no-wave” of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.

Items:

Bonzai Babies flyer (Debbie Harry pre Blondie) _098

Television and Stillettoes flyer _120,

Television performs at CBGB. January-February, 1974. _121

Punk’s Antecedents in the UK

With the passing of Glam Rock as a pop style during 1974, the slack was taken up by the back-to-basics, grassroots movement called Pub Rock. With their sharp, mid ‘60s clothes and mid ‘70s aggression, Dr. Feelgood emerged as the stars of this movement in 1975 with their debut album Down By The Jetty: their terse, clipped style and urban lyrics had a huge influence on the punks to come. After them came other, younger ‘street rock’ groups like the Count Bishops and Eddie and the Hot Rods, playing tough 60s R&B with a contemporary twist. It was these groups that the Sex Pistols shared a stage with in their early days.

Another powerful force was Kilburn and the High Roads, whose singer and writer Ian Dury had a menacing stage presence. Their 1975 song “Rough Kids” captured the inner city decay that would fuel British Punk in 1976-77. The mood of the time was also caught by veteran hippie squatters Hawkwind - then featuring Lemmy - who moved from psychedelia and science fiction to hard realities in songs like “Urban Guerrilla,” “Motorhead” and “Kings of Speed.” Squatting - breaking and entering into deserted properties: a do-it-yourself response to the housing problem - was a major facilitator of UK punk as young people could live cheaply near the center of the city.

Item:

Poster for Joe Strummer’s pre-Clash pub-rock band, the 101’ers. _188

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