I realized early on that keeping this list to five records was going to require some boundaries. The punk universe is huge. Once it hit commercially in the U.S. and the U.K. in the late 70s, the sound and look spread like wildfire and copulated with just about every other style of popular music. It still roars along to this day, mostly away from sales charts.
I was the right age and had the right frame of mind when punk hit in the late 70s. Mainstream stuff had gone a bit stale for me, especially radio, I was ready for some new ideas. It's not a coincidence that my first dabbling in jazz happened around the same time. Punk sounded like some kind of revolution to me, at least musically, with an aggressive style of creativity I latched onto then and still informs the music I look for all these decades later.
But there was a schism in punk’s early days. The idea and possibilities the raw new music opened up quickly drew more virtuosic, creatively ambitious musicians and writers. They used the punk palette, but they opened it up in countless creative ways, leading the way to what quickly became called post-punk, still thriving as well. That’s the direction I followed, I became more obsessed with bands that were rapidly expanding the punk language, less so with bands that were carrying on with the purer, cruder sound.
So that became my rule for these selections - this would be a punk, not post-punk, list. That means a lot of albums punk fans would insist should be here aren’t. London Calling, for example. By the time they hit their third, legendary, album, The Clash were punk musicians playing something else, so not on this list. Television’s Marquee Moon, Patti Smith’s Horses - it’s hard to leave those two off any list I create, but to me they were expanders, not practitioners, of punk music. Some would make the case for Gang of Four's Entertainment and Wire's Pink Flag, too, but not here, same reason.
Ultimately, this list recognizes that I may never had gotten on the post-punk train, changing my taste in music from then on, if it weren’t for my love for the first aggressive smack of punk. These five are the ones that first brought the smack. Records that still sound fresh to me, exciting even, and are never out of my personal rotation. They're in order of release date (because a ranking would be a whole other topic) starting off with my first awakening.
• Iggy and the Stooges, Raw Power (1973) - Before there was a style, a movement, or even a name for the genre, Iggy dropped one of the greatest punk albums of all time. Hopelessly addicted, his new pal David Bowie doing his best to keep him alive and in drug money, there's a strong feeling on Raw Power that Iggy’s life is dangerously out of control. What would become a template for the punk stance and attitude a few years down the road feels shockingly real here, with Bowie’s willfully shitty mix adding to the feeling of desperation. And yet somehow, rising from the opioid and cocaine fog, Iggy and his new fretboard-strangling guitarist James Williamson (Dave, too?) came up with the greatest batch of songs of his career. “Search and Destroy,” the title song, “Gimme Danger,” hell, every one of 'em are stone classics. Iggy screeches and wails at the mic, pulling out a cracked falsetto here, a guttural growl there, sounding like he’s personally paving the highway to hell. To live to his current status as punk elder statesman (oxymoron alert), Iggy had to turn his life around and find another way of making hard, fast music. He did it, bless him, but on Raw Power his survival sounded anything but guaranteed. A perfect record, as punk as it gets.
EARWORM: "Search and Destroy" - The greatest punk song of all time? Gets my vote.
• The Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977) - Where Raw Power sounded dangerous to its out of control creator, the Pistols sounded dangerous to society. It’s hard to imagine it happening now, it’s a more jaded consumer world for sure, but Johnny Rotten actually scared the U.K. moms and dads. The nearly instant rise of young Pistols followers and imitators was the 70s punk “explosion” you still hear about. Their influence would be an impressive historical footnote on its own, but they also left behind one undeniably brilliant album.
As much as the band and label wanted you to believe the recording sessions were, in authentic punk style, haphazard and outrageous, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, was labored over for almost a year. Their bassist and co-songwriter Glen Matlock quit or was fired during the recording and replaced by Sid Vicious, who couldn’t play an instrument but looked right for the stage. What they produced is an album of undeniable punk anthems. The songs are all fire and fury – loud, fast, harsh, hooky, memorable and, thanks to John Lydon’s superb acting, the righteous anger of the lyrics is 100% convincing. It even felt a little dangerous to play it on my parent’s living room stereo. “God Save the Queen,” “Anarchy in the U.K.,” and “Bodies” are still the songs that come to fan’s minds when they remember what early punk sounded like. For one brief, late 70s incandescent musical moment, this was punk’s purest expression.
EARWORM: "Bodies" - The Pistols, searching and destroying.
• The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope (1978) - As great, and as punk, as the Clash’s debut record is, the U.S. version - the only one I heard for many years - had its tight focus blurred by the tacking on of some key U.K. non-LP singles for the American market. When I finally heard the U.K. version years later I found I really missed the punch of those singles, so neither version has ever felt 100% satisfying to me. Their second, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, is my Clash sweet spot.
The band took some crap at the time for hiring a big-name traditional rock producer in Sandy Pearlman (Blue Oyster Cult). Some fans saw his involvement as a commercial sell-out, a betrayal of the pure punk ethos. I hear his production as exactly what they needed to grow their vision. Give ‘Em Enough Rope is more “professional” sounding than the debut, no doubt, but it’s also punchier and more explosive. The songs jump out of the speakers like a loud, unstoppable train. Pearlman was able to add satisfying width and depth to their sound without diminishing the punk rawness. The balance between Joe Strummer- and Mick Jones-sung songs is perfect, the songs are all top shelf, and overall the album has an impressive flow and texture. “Safe European Home” is one of the greatest album openers of all time in any genre, “English Civil War” is a powerhouse statement of intent, and Jones’ “Stay Free” might be the first pop-punk song, kicking off yet another genre. The Clash would make their move to a much larger music universe on their next album. To me, Give ‘Em Enough Rope was their final and best pure punk record.
EARWORM: "Safe European Home" - They were pissed off after a troublesome visit to Jamaica and spilled their anger onto vinyl.
• X, Under the Big Black Sun (1982) - That early punk schism I talked about earlier is why I didn’t follow where punk went next as closely. By the time it hit the U.S. west coast my attention was drifting elsewhere. I only dipped a toe into the L.A. punk scene. Except for X, I dove in completely with X. Their debut, Los Angeles, was wildly creative and unhinged, utterly unique in a genre with a limited palette by definition. John and Exene’s vocals weaving around and sparring with each other was a new and compelling sound to me, and I couldn’t get enough of Billy Zoom’s fractured-funhouse-mirror rockabilly guitar. Their songwriting improved on album #2, Wild Gift, and they became masters of the form on Under the Big Black Sun.
Their third album is another step more sophisticated than the first two. They were quickly adding levels of expertise to their playing and lyrics, showing bigger flashes of their music roots, and focusing the production and arrangements to a greater degree. Ray Manzarek of the Doors produced X’s first four albums and understood their music and sound deeply. He helped fuel their growth as a band without polishing up their raw sound. Los Angeles had an unforgettable careening-toward-the-guardrails vibe to it. By the time X made Under the Big Black Sun they were in full command of their wild gift.
There was no question, even in 1982, that this was a punk record to the core. The instrumentation and vocals may have more artful textures than previous, but the loud tribal stomp of opener “The Hungry Wolf” leaves no doubt they weren't lightening things up for public consumption. Under the Big Black Sun is aggressive, brash, creative, and confident, start to finish. Exene’s vocals on “Motel Room in My Bed” and the title song are two of her finest-ever moments. Even the bouncy, poppy "Dancing With Tears in My Eyes" near the end of the record is sufficiently sour and edgy enough to sound like punk. There was a lot of great music still to come from the band, but this is my perfect X record.
EARWORM: "Under the Big Black Sun" - Some say Exene's voice is an acquired taste. I definitely acquired it.
• The Pogues, If I Should Fall from Grace with God (1988) - Nothing about The Pogues seemed to fit the U.K. punk scene. Often hailed as Ireland’s greatest punk band, they formed in London in 1982 with only one member from the old sod. Instead of the usual arsenal of electric guitars, bass, and drums, their music leaned heavily on traditional instruments like accordions, tin whistles, banjos, mandolins, a hurdy-gurdy sighting or two. Their songs were built on old Irish styles – jigs, reels, sea shanties, and murder ballads - instead of two or three chord rock and roll. They took some shit during their career for appropriating an Irish culture that wasn’t really theirs, but the music was so original and powerful it didn’t matter. (You may recall the Stones were white suburban Londoners, not actually black American bluesmen, so that ship had already sailed.)
But The Pogues were undeniably a punk band. Despite the quirky trappings, their songs roared, careened, brayed, and slurred as hard as any other band on the scene. Their live shows were loud and shambolic (tin whistler Spider Stacy smashing himself over the head with a beer tray in time to the music became an early crowd favorite spectacle), Shane McGowan became one of the epic frontmen of the genre. Though he was a bona fide drunken lout - onstage, offstage, in the studio, in real life – with shockingly bad dental hygiene, his lyric writing stood firmly in the long tradition of romantic Irish poets.
McGowan’s behavior following the success of their second album became so erratic it’s amazing the band carried on. He was either not showing up for gigs at all or performing them semi-conscious. As importantly, he wasn’t writing enough songs to fill another album. Elvis Costello, who produced the first two Pogue albums, absconded with founding bassist Cait O’Riordan by marrying her. The band hired Steve Lillywhite (XTC, Psychedelic Furs, U2) to produce their third album, plugged a couple of lineup holes, and got songwriting contributions by band members not named McGowan for the first time. That they somehow held their shit together in a London studio and made their masterpiece is a great punk story.
If I Should Fall from Grace with God 's brilliance doesn't even rest on the fact that it contains the genre's only transcendent Christmas song, "Fairytale of New York," although it could. Everything else on the record is as powerful, boozy, passionate, and panoramic as anything that came before. Maybe because McGowan got some help, probably because Lillywhite understood how to record them without taming them, the songs have a drive and focus that never lets up. The opening shotgun blast of the title song, “Turkish Song of the Damned,” and “Bottle of Smoke” removes all doubt that The Pogues were a punk band, despite the quirkiness of their sound. That those three cuts lead into the timeless “Fairytale of New York” removes any remaining hesitation about putting If I Should Fall from Grace with God on this list. And that’s just side one – the flip side has guitarist Phil Chevron’s sweeping, pounding “Thousands Are Sailing,” a manic traditional jig and reel medley, and “The Broad Majestic Shannon,” quite possibly McGowan’s greatest love song to a country that wasn’t his. If I Should Fall from Grace with God closes out this list because I believe it’s the last truly essential record of the original punk explosion.
EARWORM: "Fairytale of New York" - Just because if you've never heard it you should. I play it every year during the holiday season. There's a great video, too.
There were a few more records that flirted with making this list. If somebody wants to tell me that Blank Generation by Richard Hell or the first Damned record (or Devo's debut?) should be here, that's an argument worth making. Hell, this is punk we're talking about here - let's argue.
just discovered that The Clash's first album had two versions. I thought the same thing when I listened to my new copy of the U.S. release. The U.K. version seemed much more focused, but really, the singles added on the U.S. version are amazing. I'd still fight that The Clash's album 'London Calling' should have made this list (Instead of Give Em' Enough Rope), but I understand your reasoning, and also appreciate the different perspective.
Nailed em all with the exception of The Pogues (with whom I have never been personally familiar) - I would substitute Richard Hell. The reappraisal of "Give 'Em Enough Rope" is long overdue. My first by them, I taped Tim's Miller's copies of it (and their debut) on a Maxell XL-90 and played it relentlessly throughout that most desolate Summer of 1979. I recently realized I don't have the American version of "The Clash." The completist in me decided to check eBay where I found them starting at $50 (and getting it). Nevermind. The version of "Give 'Em Enough Rope" with the heavy, Microstyle typeface for THE CLASH (like above) instead of the Chinese looking lettering is also scarce as…