Punk rock has never really had much patience with musical virtuosity.
Actually, it’d be more accurate to say that for most of its history, punk has been actively hostile to virtuosity.
James Surowiecki
For nearly two years, readers of The Number Ones Comment Section were treated to a daily music history lesson from Bill “Virgindog” Bois.
V-dog marked the passage of time by noting significant milestones in the essential later-’70’s and early-’80s genre known as “Punk Rock.”
He was there in real time, performing as a working musician and absorbing all that the nascent culture entailed. All of us at tnocs.com are grateful that he’s dug into the vault, as he re-shares the chronicling of the names, dates and artists who were part of a truly unique period in 20th century popular music.
So, join Bill as he visits the tail end of 1975, and into January of 1976, On The Punk Side of Town.
The Sex Pistols play their first show on November 6, 1975 as the warm up act for a band called Bazooka Joe.
The Pistols were, of course, terrible and too loud, and someone pulls the plug on them after only five songs.
However, Bazooka Joe’s bass player, Stuart Goddard, is impressed enough with their style and energy that he soon leaves the band to start his own act under the stage name Adam Ant. He had seven top ten singles in the UK and hits #1 twice, with “Prince Charming” and “Goody Two Shoes.”
Bazooka Joe had no success beyond the pub circuit, but another member, Daniel Kleinman, went on to design the title sequences for seven James Bond films.
It’s the holidays, 1975.
The punks are home trying to explain their haircuts to their aunties.
Happy 1976! The first issue of Punk Magazine came out on New Year’s Day of this year.
It had a drawing of Lou Reed on the cover. To be honest, though, it doesn’t really look much like him.
Anyway, it was started by artist John Holmstrom, and writers Legs McNeil and Ged Dunn, Jr. with the idea of being Creem with cartoons.
Issue 1 had interviews with Lou Reed and Sluggo (the character from the Nancy comic strip), a feature on Marlon Brando (“The Original Punk”), a Ramones centerfold, and a sort of editorial declaring “Death to Disco Shit.” Though the editorial was pretty negative about disco, it had the effect of pulling together the punk scene. You can’t have an “us” without a “them,” I guess.
To avoid typesetting costs, everything was handwritten or drawn,. And to avoid folding costs, all five thousand copies were folded by hand.
This low budget ingenuity reflected the low budget bands that Punk covered and helped start the DIY attitude that became part of punk/new wave culture.
Can you sing?
Doesn’t matter. Start a band!
No clubs will book you?
Doesn’t matter. Rent a VFW hall.
Wanna write but Rolling Stone isn’t returning your calls?
Doesn’t matter, publish your own ‘zine. Do it yourself.
The DIY spirit defines punk as much as any 16th note power chord:
I know a few people who would go to Patti Smith NYC shows in the 70’s, but only because they hoped that her pal Bruce Springsteen would get up and do a couple songs. Sometimes he did. He would become a superstar. She would become merely an inspiration to thousands.
Her debut album Horses was produced by John Cale of the Velvet Underground, and was released in December 1975. She was starting to get a following outside of New York City, and one of the first places was Cleveland, Ohio.
Cleveland was home to Peter Laughner, one of the original members of Pere Ubu. He would make frequent trips to New York and bring back cool records. He gave a copy of Horses to the program director at WMMS. When Smith played two shows at the Cleveland Agora on January 26, 1976, this virtual week, the place was packed. Both shows were recorded.
Cale was in attendance and played bass on Smith’s cover of The Who’s My Generation. It was the B-side of the Gloria single.
During the second show, Smith hit Cale in the face with a cream pie.
And Cale ended up wrestling with guitarist Lenny Kaye.
I don’t know whether it’s the first show or the second that became the B-side.
But it sure sounds raucous.
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On punk vs. disco, it’s unfortunate that those became the dividing sides since there would seem to be things in common (opportunities for previous unknowns to make it through their musicianship, a set of clubs willing to embrace folks shunned by the mainstream, etc.). I do understand how, post-Saturday Night Fever, disco had become such a behemoth that it would earn the enmity, but early ’76 didn’t seem to suggest that yet. (Of course, this is in hindsight.) If anything, it would seem to me that the more logical antithesis of punk would be corporate/arena rock and the Clive Davises of the world.
I think generally the happy vibe of disco just went against the frustrations that punks were trying to express. And I don’t doubt that the worst of it was fueled by some prejudices against its gay and black audience.
But still, the hatred wasn’t absolute. Talking Heads were clearly fans from early on, and even John Lydon from the Sex Pistols later recorded some disco-indebted music.
Also, according to stories from Siouxsie Sioux and Cosi Fanni Tutti, some of that anti-disco vibe was just empty posturing, as a lot of punks would apparently go to disco nights. So at least in the UK, there seems to have been some grudging respect for that driving disco rhythm. Or maybe it was the girls dancing to the rhythm…
Agreed. Plus, the anti-disco thing wasn’t limited to punks. People from all genres hated disco, but a lot of it was blown out of proportion. Most of the punks I knew didn’t hate disco. How can you hate something you never think about?
There are several bona fide explanations for the disproportional hate by some against disco. One of them had to do with fashion. I’ll go to my grave with this theory, because I saw it first-hand:
I tried to look my best when headed out for a night of {my version of} dancing. But there were those in my circle who vehemently opposed “dressing up” and “looking good.” They viewed disco as commercial regimentation, and were not going to be told by anyone that they needed to present any sort of a conformist appearance. They had a knee-jerk negative reaction to fancy hairstyles and slit skirts. More often than not, there was no middle ground.
This distain for disco’s pre-defined style was such that some of the haters carried it to another level, and blamed the genre itself. Which I never understood.
I just didn’t get it. I had always believed that a person’s character was the important thing to consider, and not their Qiana shirt, or ripped and pinned-up “anarchy” tee. I would try to defend the music and sing the praises of Chic and The Damned in the same sentence. During such debates, I usually just gave up.
Ironically, one of the things that punk and disco had in common was that both aspired to a particular look and style. For every Travolta-style coif, there was an alternate-universe haircut statement that the punks would sport. At the time, I thought both sides of this follicular spectrum were inventive, and looked pretty cool.
During my disco phase, I received plenty of passive digs from the punk crowd. I just never saw the logic in reciprocating. I liked both genres and deeply respected their evolution into major pop-culture milestones.
(Sorry, V-Dog and everyone. I hijacked your punk bit to talk about… disco. Carry on, all.)
Hijack away! That’s what this place is for.
i don’t think most of the punks hated disco as much as the world of riches that disco personafied, at least in the u.s.; they really hated more corporate rock and stadium rock and smilar, while those that listened to that kind of music (journey, REO) were the really disco haters.
in the UK all the punks loved to dance, but they went to palces were reggae and dub was played.
Guess the discos were too expensive.
And the discos probably wouldn’t let them in dressed like that.
I won’t post any possible spoilers this time.
…Except to say that Pere Ubu eventually became The Best Band In the World, Ever. 😃
That Lou Reed drawing looks more like a cross between Elvis Costello and Achtung Baby era Bono with wraparound shades.
Adam Ant did even better than that. His discography is a bit confused in that upto ’81 he was Adam Ant in the band; Adam and the Ants, then went solo. As Adam and the Ants they had #1s with Stand and Deliver and Prince Charming along with another seven top 10s. Once he went solo he got another #1 with Goody Two Shoes and three more top 10s. His impact was massive, I reckon in 1981 he was the biggest pop star in Britain, taking advantage of the video age. I was only 5 but I’ve vivid memories of his highwayman image and the videos. And then the new romantics took note and took over. By the mid 80s he was a minor figure, notably he was the only performer at the London end of Live Aid whose single and sales figures went down the following week.
Now there’s an interesting bit of trivia. Ouch.
There’s also the weird story of “The Ants.”
Adam went to Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McClaren for musical advice. McClaren gave him the excellent tip to borrow some musical cues from Burundi drumming.
..and then he proceeded to take Adam’s bandmates as his own, and form his own Burundi-styled pop band! This band was going to be called the Sex Gang Children, and featured Boy George, as well as a gifted 13 year-old girl, Annabella Lwin. The name was a William Burroughs reference, but almost certainly also a creepy nod to Annabella’s age. Eventually George was dropped, and the group was renamed Bow Wow Wow.
Meanwhile, Adam had to reform his Ants, and ended up with guitarist Marco Pirroni, who had debuted along with Sid Vicious, Steve Severin, and Siouxsie Sioux as the first iteration of Siouxsie and the Banshees.
And Boy George was going to use the name Sex Gang Children for his own band, but settled on Culture Club. And he gave that other name to his friend Andreas McElligott, later redubbed Andi Sex Gang.
The End.
This is one of the reasons that I created this place:
Good on you, and everyone who brings the knowledge.
Yes! I covered a lot of that later in the series but I didn’t know about the connection to Andi Sex Gang.
Dammit, I said no spoilers. Sorry!
We were in the last throws of the disco craze, and radio was looking for a newer sound. There was a lot of trial and error among the programmers to try and find out what was going to be the next big thing.
I remember hearing the single Ant Music for the first time. I was baffled; what in the world was this? The weird clicking spoon drum thing was off-putting, after having spent the past three or four years nodding along to the study thump of a bass kick drum.
But like most new musical frontiers: while they may be jarring at first, you eventually come around. I look back on that record with admiration.
The simple and slightly smarmy guitar solo is always fun to look forward to.
I was a kid in the 80s, so my first exposure to Adam Ant was “Goody Two Shoes.” But I had a crush on this older hipster girl in high school; she turned me onto all kinds of stuff, from Anti-Nowhere League to Rollerskate Skinny. Yet weirdly enough she also recommended Adam and the Ants. So I checked them out.
When I first heard Kings of the Wild Frontier, I really didn’t know how to process the opener. “Dog Eat Dog.” Like you said, the rhythms were just a bit too weird at first. In comparison, “Antmusic” was actually a bit more accessible, but in general it took a while to really dig into the album. Now it remains one of my very favorite pop albums of all time. So imaginative, and so fun.
Bob Geldof only gave him one song. And he didn’t make the American broadcast. I heard “Vive le Rock” on the FM radio simulcast. I thought he was singing people love rock. Michael Jackson must have been a fan. That can be the only explanation as to how he ended up on the Motown special. Underrated live act. Nobody dances like that.
All sorts of fun tidbits, from everyone, this was awesome!
I’m really not trying to be obnoxiously repetitive, but it’s totally relevant to what was mentioned in VDog’s article.
https://www.rockhall.com/duran-duran
That’s how the Duran Boys first summed themselves up to critics – ‘Chic meets the Sex Pistols.’ John got Roger to share a tale about his The Damned encounter during a covid lockdown Instagram Live chat couple years ago. (Basically, teen Rog is front and center at a Damned show. One of the group members says – oy, who here thinks they can play the drums??!! Roger’s hand shot up, they let him sit at Rat Scabies kit, Roger goes all out thrash, and the singer was like, alright, alright, f’in wanker, you’re done… 😆 )
Heh! Hadn’t heard that one before.