Before Punk

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.

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

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.

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.

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