Talk:Punk rock

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/Archive1 - May-November 2004

Contents

1 More dubious additions 2 Too drunk... 3 1976-1980 4 Newschool/Oldschool 5 Dancepunk addition 6 Malcolm Maclaren and all that 7 Punk Site... 8 Inspirations and fatuous acts 9 24 Hour Party People 10 Mixed bag of additions 11 Does this belong? 12 Power Chord? 13 Additions to 90's punk 14 Anonymous comment 15 on the origin of the phrase "punk rock"

More dubious additions

Because knowledge on this topic is so diffuse, I continue to hesitate to delete without discussion, but here are two more recent additions that I think are probably wrong:

1) In the list of U.S. punk magazines "Search and Destroy" (no link, I've never heard of it, I can't say it doesn't exist). Can someone weigh in and give us a clue on where it is/was from, whether it was actually significant, etc. In any case, I'd be really surprised if it merits listing before Maximum RocknRoll, Profane Existence and Flipside. 2) Post-1970s punk: someone added "Ism" to the list. The link is irrelevant and just goes to our article -ism. I've never heard of them. Can someone vouch for them belonging here?

If no one makes a case for these, I will delete. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:28, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

"Search and Destroy" is legit. It was the predecessor of the REsearch publications out of San Francisco, and has been reprinted as a prime punk document (you can probably find details about the reprint at online booksellers). Unlike some of the other titles mentioned, it was actually active during the late 70s. Other zine titles that might be worth adding are the LA-based "Slash" and "NO".

"Ism" makes no sense to me. --BTfromLA 20:59, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think the title should read "Search & Destroy," with an ampersand. --BTfromLA 21:02, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, I know REsearch, just didn't know their earlier incarnation. Let's link it to the better-known still-existing publication and make sure the article on that mentions the earlier one. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:41, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

Too drunk...

A recent anon edit turned 'the Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk to Fuck"' into 'the Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk to F**k"'. Is there any basis for this being the official title or was this just censorship of Wikipedia? -- Jmabel | Talk 02:52, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

Um, not that I learned this on the way to my music Ph.D., but I'm pretty sure the official title is "Too Drunk to Fuck." LOL. Antandrus 02:55, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think this has happened before, as I'm pretty sure I've reverted it previously. In any case, I've reverted it now. We should use the correct title in all cases. Tuf-Kat 05:33, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

1976-1980

Although the 1976 date is important, the 1980 one is completely arbitrary - we might want to say punk began in 1976 (though I think even that is probably papering over the ambiguity), but to say it, or even the 'first wave' ended in 1980 is really not NPOV--XmarkX 06:39, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Concur. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:21, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the dates are a bit arbitrary, as is almost universally the case when describing an artistic movement, but I think "beginning around 1976" is an invitation for endless additions and a generally less useful article. Unless you are arguing that the historical claim for this movement that the article is staking out is incorrect, I vote for specifying dates;75 or 76-80 seems right. If we want to qualify it with an "approximately," that's fine with me. --BTfromLA 07:58, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK, I'll just put my cards on the table and say that I don't think we can say that punk has had an end point. No-one specifies an end-point for musical movements like jazz or blues, so why punk? Punk has been around continuously at least since 1976, and not just in small enclaves - there have been massive punk scenes going on continuously, involving millions of people around the world. My problem with this article is that it considers the phrase 'punk-rock' to cover a four-year period. I don't doubt that people do think this, but it is not the only view about punk, so not NPOV. An article about punk-rock ought to trace out its entire history, indicate the existence of off-shoots like New Wave, Grunge, Crossover up to the present day, when punk is still huge. The major inaccuracy in this article is an inaccuracy by omission.--XmarkX 01:37, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for exposing your hand. So is "Punk Rock" an influential episode in the history of "Rock" (or even "Pop") music, as "Bebop" is to "Jazz," or is it a distinct category of music, like "Jazz" itself? Certainly there is a case to be made that, as you say, "punk is still huge." I come down on the side of preserving the article's focus on the original punk scene, with brief descriptions of ongoing manifestations of punk and the many punk-influenced movements, including links to more extensive articles on those. I think a narrower focus makes for a clearer article and better history. Declaring punk to have defined itself in that late-70s period does not invalidate the subsequent "punks" at all (nor does it imply that the Ramones weren't playing Punk Rock in the 90s), it just helps to place them historically. There are still Rockabilly bands, and good ones. But there was a time at which rockabilly defined itself, emerged as a force, then began to become absorbed into a variety of musical forms. Just as I think that period in the 50s should be the focus of the entry on Rockabilly, so I agree with focusing on the late seventies as the primary "Punk Rock" period. --BTfromLA 02:40, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, but if that's your crierion, it still doesn't work: what punk is today is still pretty dynamic and in flux. It is not true that what punk rock is was defined by 1980 - what punk rock is today is not what it is then. Although there are bands who are influenced by the Ramones, there are also plenty of punk bands who are uninfluenced by early punk, except insofar as it has influenced bands, who have influenced bands, who have influenced them.--XmarkX 04:34, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm willing to allow that my claim may be the result of a generational bias, and I won't put up much of a fight if there's a consensus to welcome an open-ended definition of Punk Rock. But please take a look at such entries as Hardcore punk, Grunge, the punk timeline, and some of the other linked articles, and ask yourself whether the encyclopedia will really be improved by the change. --BTfromLA 05:09, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What need to be done in the article is describe the various opinions on this issue (per: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view), many of which are expressed above. Howevever, the best way to describe this is through citations (Wikipedia:Cite sources).

Once this is done it should be much easier to determine which dates are appropriate for related articles such as Timeline of punk rock (which, by the way, indicates the punk did not end in 1980). Hyacinth 18:22, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Newschool/Oldschool

Firstly how can you have a punk rcok article without mentioning NOFX? The most influential and successfull of the "new school" punk rock bands. Also there should be greater detail on the new punk rock of the 90's. (anon, unsigned, 30 Jan 2005)

• Well add it then!!!!! quercus robur 18:11, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Dancepunk addition

Hi, just a passerby and I'm not familiar with the layout of this whole topic. But I saw "dancepunk" as a dead link in the article for the band "!!!". I Googled a little and it seems to be a real subgenre, and I found a description or two and some representative bands, but as a beginner I'm not up to the task of categorizing this properly in the punk universe. FYI. (anon, unsigned, 30 Jan 2005)

Malcolm Maclaren and all that

Recently added material, which I've wikified:

"In New York Malcolm Maclaren was managing the New York Dolls, whose style was a hybrid between garage rock and glam, when he saw the Neon Boys perform. The Neon Boys included Tom Verlaine and [[Richard Hell], who went on to form Television. Hell's torn clothing, studded dog collars and leather jackets appealed to Maclaren as much as his dissolute attitude and indifference toward playing the bass. According to Hell, Maclaren approached Hell and Verlaine about being their manager, but they were not interested. When Maclaren returned to London in 1975 he assembled the Sex Pistols in Hell's image."

This certainly belongs in Wikipedia somewhere — certainly in the article on Maclaren, and possibly in those on other parties involved, but does it really belong in this article? Yes, more than a typical random anecdote; I'm just not sure it quite rises to the importance of something about an entire genre. In particular, it's not like the punk idea originated entirely in NYC and Maclaren was the unique route by which it reached the UK: this is more an anecdote about particular (important) bands than about the genre. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:50, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with your assessment. It makes sense for the Sex Pistols article, as well as the McLaren one, but it isn't needed here. -- BTfromLA 19:44, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Just quickly: submission was a piss-take song that the Sex Pistols wrote because Malcolm Maclaren kept bugging them to do a song about S&M (Malcolm Maclaren owned a shop that sold S&M gear). It's about a submarine mission. (Just search for submission in the main article to see why this is a little silly.)

Just stopping by for the moment, but I think I disagree pretty strongly with the general trend of some of the remarks here: my impression is that it's *extremely* difficult to get away from the notion that punk started in New York. The New York Dolls. Television. The Ramones. The idea that the Sex Pistols deserves to be credited as a serious contender as "First Punks" is pretty revisionist -- cutting this story about Malcolm McClauren, and replacing it with this business about punk spontaneously emerging around in different corners of the world is a falsification (though I admit to not knowing much about the Saints in the Brisbane scene). Malcolm McClauren managed the New York Dolls before the Sex Pistols, correct? That's a point of historical fact, right? So how do you come up with this:

In the mid-1970s, influential punk bands emerged in three different corners of the world: The Ramones in New York, The Saints in Brisbane, Australia, and the Sex Pistols, The Damned (the first band to market an album as "punk"), and The Clash in London. Early punk bands were operating within small "scenes" that included other bands and solo performers as well as enthusiastic impresarios who operated small nightclubs that provided a showcase and meeting place for the emerging musicians (the 100 Club in London, CBGB's in New York, and The Masque in Hollywood are among the best known early punk clubs).

Doom 04:20, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

It's really tricky. I can't speak of Australia, but New York probably had an identifiably "punk" scene before London did (and the Ramones' July 4, 1976 concert at the Roundhouse in London is often considered the start of the London punk scene) but (1) the Dolls were more proto-punk than punk (a lot of glam trappings), (2) at that July 4 concert one of the warm-up bands was London's Stranglers (already certainly a punk band, in fact more so than they were later) and (3) punk in New York at that time was a very local phenonmenon, whereas London-based punks soon topped the UK charts and, arguably, had more influence even in most parts of the U.S. than did the NYC scene. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:55, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

I'll argue that punk rock congealed as a movement in the UK in 1976. The Stranglers and Sex Pistols already existed at the time of that Ramones gig, and the Clash, Damned, Siouxsie, etc., appeared very soon after. Press reports of the "punk rock" phenomena, including the fashion, the fighting, and the politics, began in the UK, I think. Best that I can piece it together, the New York scene in 75-76 wasn't a punk scene--it was an art-influenced rock scene, probably better understood as being identified with the Bowery club CBGB than with a "punk" or "new wave" movement. Television, Blondie, Talking Heads, and the Ramones were the leading lights there, and the same audiences also embraced the roots-rock of Mink Deville and the broadway-style Orchestra Luna.

The New York Dolls clearly came and went before the punk movement arrived. One might be able to make a case that the UK punk scene was largely an interpretation of what the Ramones meant, perhaps in part including McClaren's politicized interpretation of the Dolls. But that sort of speculative thesis isn't appropriate for an encyclopedia. I, too, can't really speak to the situation of the Saints; while I know they released some of the earliest records that are labeled "punk," as far as I know they had little impact in either the UK or the US. BTfromLA 01:24, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'd tend to agree with that, although I think the Ramones (unlike the other NYC acts of '75-'76) were not particularly an "art-influenced" band. It is possible that we could bring more precision to the article about just who did what and in what order. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:44, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

This is another problem: Best that I can piece it together, the New York scene in 75-76 wasn't a punk scene--it was an art-influenced rock scene, probably better understood as being identified with the Bowery club CBGB than with a "punk" or "new wave" movement. Television, Blondie, Talking Heads, and the Ramones were the leading lights there ... Originally punk was a much broader, more diverse scene than it became in the 1990s: this is part of the revisionism I'm complaining about. All of a sudden "Television" ain't punk enough (because the lyrics weren't stupid enough? Punk has to be low-brow in order to be populist? ). This article presents a "history" of punk, but it's just a record of one particular point of view, and the real history is that the meaning of the term shifted in subtle (and not so subtle) ways over the years. It seems really weird to me that the party line on the True Meaning of Punk excludes a bunch of the bands that I was reading about in Punk surveys in the Village Voice in the late 70s. And you know, when I was listening to the Good City Rock Show on WBAI in the late 70s, the New York Dolls fit right into the mix with the Ramones... Doom 05:04, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

Punk Site...

Jmabel you keep deleting the link I added for punkomatik.com. This site is new but its goal is to unite local punk scenes. The point of wiki is that no one decision is made by one person, Why not let the rest of the punk community have a chance to decide. (User:Sschopp, unsigned, March 17, 2005)

I see nothing encyclopedic about this link. Last I looked, the calendar showed no punk shows happening in Seattle, LA, or San Fransicco in March; it looks like little more than the framework for a site. Also, last I checked Sschopp's sole contributions to Wikpedia have consisted of efforts to add this site. This looks like self-interested linkspam.

Still, I have now reverted it several times; I won't be the next to do so, but if others agree with me, they should. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:31, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)

I concur with Jmabel ; please do not restore that link. If at some point in the future it becomes an encylopedic source of info about punk rock activity, we can reconsider it. BTfromLA 18:36, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Inspirations and fatuous acts

I'm interested in opinions on contemporary (70s) acts that the first punks were inspired by, and those they were acting against. David Bowie has recently been moved from the former category to the latter. (We can also consider the extent to which the same acts may fall into both categories). Whatever one says about the punk's relation to him, I don't think Bowie can be fairly characterized as a "sixties" act, which is how it reads now. Also, the reference to the influence of "art" or "glam" rock bands has been totally taken over by the "glam,"—Sweet , Bolan and Gary Glitter. There's a mention of a film that I'm not familiar with to support the Bowie-was-fatuous claim... I'd appreciate some more description of how that was shown to be the case.

My recollection, which I think would be bourne out by an examination of the music press at the time, is that the more self-consciously art-oriented pop acts: Roxy Music and Eno in particular, but also Sparks, solo Lou Reed and others, were an important part of the milieu in which punk emerged--while the punk bands may have reacted against those acts in some respects, the early fans and critical admirers of punk (and early new wave acts like Televison and Talking Heads that were part of the same US movement as the Ramones) were largely drawn from the fans of Roxy, etc. At least that seemed true on the US side of the pond. I guess my own tendency would be to weight Roxy's influence, say. much more heavily than that of Gary Glitter. But influence and affinity is a tough thing to parse, and I don't want to inappropriately impose my own anecdotal experience on the whole history. Thoughts? BTfromLA 18:39, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I certainly agree on the importance of Roxy (especially the first 2 albums) and Reed, and think that punks mostly tended to have mixed feelings on Bowie. Gary Glitter, though, rides high. I was in London a lot during the 70s, and I think almost every punk band I knew pointed to Gary as part of what made them see again what 3-chord rock could be. In the U.S., he was nothing, the only things of his most Americans know are "Rock'n'Roll, Part 2" (and most don't even know the name of that) and maybe some covers of his stuff by Joan Jett, but in the UK he had about a dozen chart-topping hits. "Do You Want to Touch Me", "My Gang", things like that, were a major part of the musical formation of punk. Ironic that an old, stage-savvy pro in a sequined suit influenced punk, but he really did. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:05, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

Very informative response, thanks. Anyone else? (And although I haven't seen the film in question, I concur wih the sense of your assessment of the "Party People" remarks, below). BTfromLA 04:50, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

24 Hour Party People

"...as displayed in the film on the subject 24 Hour Party People..." Huh? It's a fiction film, very specific to the Manchester scene in the post-punk era. If there was a point here it's unclear, please rewrite. If not, I will delete. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:38, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

Mixed bag of additions

There were several recent mostly anonymous additions, some of them good, some probably not. It's too complicated to sort out by just editing, so I'm bringing it here.

The term "punk rock" &hellip was originally used to describe &hellip U.S. bands of the mid-1960s such as The Seeds and The Standells, who now are more often categorized as "garage rock".

became

The term "punk rock" &hellip was originally used to describe &hellip U.S. bands of the mid-1960s such as The Seeds, The Sonics, Pink Fairies, The Dinosaurs from Saint Louis, Missouri 1960's-1980's, Hawkwind, MC5, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Witches' Brew, and The Standells, who now are more often categorized as "the founding members of the punk rock genre of music".

• I have no problem adding The Sonics (although I will point out that with The Seeds that means we are listing two Seattle-area bands).
• MC5 are already mentioned below. I seen no need to add them here.
• Pink Fairies and Hawkwind probably deserve mention in the article, but I think not in this context. They are UK, not U.S. bands. They aren't who the term originally referred to (they were called "Peoples’ Bands"). Can we put in a separate sentence about them instead?
• The Dinosaurs from Saint Louis, Missouri 1960's-1980's: What the heck kind of link is that? If they merit an article, write it (under a better name than that), demonstrate their notability, but until I see it I say they don't belong here. Similarly Witches' Brew (who?).
• the founding members of the punk rock genre of music: just silly, especially as a link. Revert to garage rock

Including "The Sex Pistols, Billy Idol and Generation X, The Clash" in the British Invasion is so wrong I've simply reverted it.

'Although in the 1970's Blondie bridged the gap between disco, punk rock and rap with their song "RAPTURE"' is a sentence fragment hanging out in the middle of nowhere (and there is no reason for the song title to be all caps). The statement may well belong in the article somewhere; any thoughts?

Punk also rejected the remnants of the hippie counterculture of the 1960s Bands such as Jefferson Airplane which had survived the 1960s were regarded by most punks as having become fatuous…

became

Punk also rejected the remnants of the hippie counterculture of the 1960s with band such as the Pink Fairies in the 1960's who were ahead of their times with notions of "sticking it to the man" (oppressive governments and authority figures). The Pink Fairies are just now being appreciated for their contributions to music and society. Bands such as Jefferson Airplane which had survived the 1960s were regarded by most punks as having become fatuous…

Speaking of fatuous… I'm going to just delete "The Pink Fairies are just now being appreciated for their contributions to music and society", and I think that can stay deleted. I don't think "with band such as the Pink Fairies in the 1960's (sic) who were ahead of their times with notions of 'sticking it to the man' (oppressive governments and authority figures)" is much better. Like there is supposed to be something unusual about a late 1960s band having been associated with radical politics? And it doesn't work with what else is being said here. I'm going to delete it from here; if someone can say something substantive about how the Pink Fairies influenced punk, though, as I said above, that would belong in the article. Certainly the spirit was similar. But Jefferson Airplane were also (very) political in their day (and I'd say their work from their first 4 or 5 years stands up beautifully: that isn't what the punks thought was fatuous).

The (new) paragraph beginning "The 1980's were full of underground bands all over the world..." is POV fan writing. It may have something worth keeping. I didn't look closely. Will someone else please look at that one? -- Jmabel | Talk 05:45, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

I cut that paragraph--it really didn't add anything meaningful. I also trimmed the inaccurate "original" punks, restoring the Standells and preserving the Sonics, cutting the others. I don't know if we even need three examples there, but at least those three are correct. (And what's this about the Seeds being from Seattle? They were certainly based in Southern Cal (as were the Standells) during most of their career--did Sky and the boys migrate south?). I'm sorry if wholesale deletions of these contributions seem harsh--I hate to discourage an editor--but those additions really didn't add much of enclopedic value. If the contributors want further clarification (Though JMabel was more than generous in spelling out the reasons these were problematic), please bring it up here, on the talk page. BTfromLA 06:37, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the "the 1980's were full. . . ." cut. While undoubtedly heartfelt, the writing was really bad. There was a good idea buried in there (i.e. that not all punk rock attitudes were negative) which I tried to incorporate in the revision I've just made to that section. Check it out. Soundguy99 15:44, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)Soundguy99

• Not sure of the full history on the Seeds, but they were here in Seattle at least part of their career. Sky himself was around the U. District when I moved here (1977) and still here as late as the late '80s; not sure where he is now or even if he is alive. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:52, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

Sky is still kickin': [1] (http://www.skysunlightsaxon.com/). I don't know the details of the bands' origin, but they were definitely LA-area based in the 60s. ~~

Does this belong?

Recently added external link:

• Revolution Rock: A Punk History Of The Clash (http://www.revolutionrock.co.uk)

This almost certainly doesn't belong as the first external link. I doubt it belongs at all. I didn't get any farther into this Flash-based site than to see that the first thing that came up was a request for money. I figured I'd give someone else a chance to speak up before deleting, but I'm inclined to delete. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:54, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

I'd say it is marginally appropriate link on the Clash page (it actually does address the history of the band, and I poked around a bit without running into solicitations for money). As it isn't primary material and doesn't deal with punk rock as a whole, though, I vote delete here. BTfromLA 18:35, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I think we're in agreeement then, as far as this page goes. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:59, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Power Chord?

I find it hard to believe that throughout the entire article there was no reference to the power chord... All the bits about 'three chords' should give guitarists the general idea, but don't you think that a link to the power chord article would be appropriate in this article? Punk rock basically ruined classic rock (not necessarily a bad thing) because they opened up a gate for people who only needed to memorize three hand positions.

• Well, this article has shaped up to be primarily a general origin and history rather than a musical analysis, but if you think that you can create a useful paragraph or two of musical analysis, including a link to power chord, then go for it. Remember, anyone can edit. Soundguy99 18:27, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

P.S. you can sign your name & date to Talk pages postings by typing four tildes, like so: ~~~~

• • Ideally, I think this article should have quite a bit of musical analysis along with history. A more detailed history of punk rock should be spun out when the article gets overlong. Tuf-Kat 21:41, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

Additions to 90's punk

I made some additions to the section on punk of the 90s and today. I added information on the Epitaph Records/Gilman Street-fueled skate-punk craze of the mid-90s, the brief ska-punk revival of the later 90s, how Bush and Blair have become to today's political punks what Reagan and Thatcher were to yesterday's (i.e. PunkVoter and Rock Against Bush), a bit on how the Internet and filesharing have affected the DIY aspect of today's punk, and many of the controversial issues surrounding punk now, ex. whether or not you can sign to a major label and be on MTV while still being considered punk.

I also changed the wording of the last little bit lamenting that punk has become more of a fashion statement than a genuine counterculture, since while that is an unignorable debate in current times, I thought it was phrased a little too overdramatically for an encyclopedia article.

Lastly, regarding the current emo trend: I don't listen to emo, so I could be wrong (hence why this is on the Talk Page) but I'm quite certain that emo has been around since the 80s, albeit in a different form, and isn't just a term conjured up by the media to create another fad. While the emo bands of today are often dismissed as being just a fad for angsty teenagers, I don't think the genre itself was begun as a media-hyped trend. Inanechild 14:59, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Anonymous comment

The following anonymous remark was recently placed at the top of the page. I've moved it down here and added a pseudo-sig. I don't claim to know the point of the remark. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:47, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

NNPOV:

Punk quickly became more accessible to the average person, amid complaints from underground punk fans that, by being signed to major labels and appearing on MTV, these bands were buying into the system that punk was created to rebel against, and as a result, could not be considered true punk. This debate continues with the popularity of pop-punk in the early 2000s, and the emo trend of recent times.

? (anon 3 May 2005)

To the anonymous commenter: I wouldn't consider that not NPOV. It would be ridiculous to pretend as though these debates over what's punk and what's not don't happen. Inanechild 22:14, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

on the origin of the phrase "punk rock"

I was under the impression that the tag "punk rock" originated in a 1969 Rolling Stone review of the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams" written by Lester Bangs. However, I don't have the issue in question, so I really have no way of confirming it. My only source that Lester Bangs and not Dave Marsh coined the term is a short story by Bruce Sterling called "Dori Bangs" which deals with a might-have-been senario involving Lester Bangs and a comic book writer named Dori Senda. This story can be found in the book Globalhead. Since this may not be a 100% reliable source, I'd appreciate any research that could be done by the Wikipedia community.

Remarkably, that Lester Bangs review is online.[2] (http://makemyday.free.fr/reviews2.htm) Bangs doesn't coin the phrase "punk rock." One sentence does include the word "punks": "Never mind that they came on like a bunch of 16 years old punks on a meth power trip - these boys, so the line ran, could play their guitars like John Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders played sax!" He comes much closer to talking about punk rock later in the review—"Musically the group is intentionally crude and aggressively raw. Which can make for powerful music except when it is used to conceal a paucity of ideas, as it is here. Most of the songs are barely distinguishable from each other in their primitive two-chord structures. You've heard all this before from such notables as the Seeds, Blue Cheer, Question Mark and the Mysterians, and the Kingsmen." While he clearly sees a tendency that later was labelled "punk rock," Bangs didn't coin a phrase to describe it. He just says, somewhat dismissively, "you've heard this all before"-- BTfromLA 15:11, 22 May 2005 (UTC).

Still, Bangs was an early user of the term "punk" in the relevant sense. A year ago, the article used to say:

Probably the first use of the term "punk" music was in Lester Bangs' 1971 essay "Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung": "... punk bands started cropping up who were writing their own songs but taking the Yardbirds' sound ..."

until someone found the earlier Dave Marsh usage. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:45, May 28, 2005 (UTC)