Proto-punk
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Proto-punk (or protopunk) is a loosely defined category of music and attitudes that foreshadowed the punk rock genre and movement, particularly between certain rock music artists active between the 1960s and early-to mid 1970s.<ref name="Bangs (RS-2nd ed./Garage)">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Allmusic"/> A retrospective label, the musicians involved were generally not originally associated with each other and came from a variety of backgrounds and styles; together, they anticipated many of punk's musical and thematic attributes.<ref name="Allmusic"/>
The tendency towards aggressive, raw, simplistic rock songs is a trend rooted in the earliest forms of rock and roll. The American garage rock movement of the mid-1960s is a key influence in the development of punk rock. By the late 1960s, Detroit bands the Stooges and MC5 had taken the influence of garage groups to form a distinct prototypical punk sound. In the following years, this sound spread both domestically and internationally, alongside glam rock and pub rock, into several regional early underground punk scenes in New York, Ohio, Australia and England.
Etymology
The AllMusic guide defined it as "never a cohesive movement" but as "a certain provocative sensibility that didn't fit the prevailing counterculture of the time", most of the time combined with a sound which was "primitive and stripped-down, even when it wasn't aggressive, and its production was usually just as unpolished".<ref name="Allmusic">Template:Cite web</ref> In contrast, in the book Screaming for Change (2010), it is defined as a specific sound which included simplistic instrumental work and amateurish compositions. The book cites this style as being pioneered in Detroit by the Stooges and MC5, who were influenced by the Velvet Underground and the earlier garage rock genre, with the sound then spreading to the United Kingdom, New York and Cleveland, Ohio.<ref name="Kristiansen et al, 2010">Template:Cite book</ref>
History
1930s–1950s
Template:See also One of the earliest forerunners to the punk subculture is folk musician Woody Guthrie. Guthrie, whose career began in the 1930s and blossomed in the 1940s, has been called one of the first punks.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In the United Kingdom, the emergence of skiffle in the 1950s as a popular music movement is comparable to punk, in that skiffle similarly "stripped music to its core", with its simplistic instrumental setup that "sent out a clear anyone-can-do-it signal, and as the skiffle explosion proved, anyone could and did", according to PopMatters writer Ian Ellis.<ref name="Ellis">Template:Cite web</ref> According to Aidan Smith in The Scotsman, popular skiffle musician Lonnie Donegan embodied a "dangerous and daring and do-it-yourself" aesthetic that was later adopted by punk; Smith also commented that one of Donegan's combos "attracted a wild following: men so epicly drunk they'd wet themselves and – very proto-punk, this – their duffel-coats were accessorised with alarm clocks hung round necks."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His 1957 British chart-topper "Cumberland Gap" has been referred to as "the first punk No. 1";<ref name="Ewing">Template:Cite web</ref> Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger writes: "Lurching speed-freak skiffle played on Christ knows what which sounds nothing remotely like any previous chart-topper: if punk is anything, it might as well be that."<ref name="Ewing" /> Ellis writes: "Forerunners of punk by 20 years, Donegan and the thousands of other skiffle acts that sprang up after 'Rock Island Line' wrested control from the establishment, democratizing the industry in the process."<ref name="Ellis" />
1960s
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In his essay Protopunk: the Garage Bands, music journalist Lester Bangs traced the origins of punk to Ritchie Valens' 1958 version of the Mexican folk song "La Bamba", due to the song's simplistic three chord song structure and the aggressive vocals relative to the time. He places it first in a lineage of influential tracks, which over time developed punk: the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" (1963); the Kinks "You Really Got Me" (1964) and the Stooges' "No Fun" (1969).<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> By the 1960s, garage rock, a style of raw, loud and energetic rock music, had developed scenes in both the United States and United Kingdom. The Kingsmen and the Kinks came from the UK's garage rock scene; the former's cover of "Louie Louie" was described by academic Aneta Panek as "punk rock's ur-text".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Under the influence of "Louie Louie", the Kinks released "You Really Got Me" the following year; it was one of the earliest songs to use electric guitar distortion and consequently became immediately influential.<ref name="Starkey, 2021">Template:Cite web</ref> In the following years, this raw sound was being adopted by other British Invasion acts including the Who on their single "My Generation" (1965)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and the Rolling Stones on their 1966 live album Got Live If You Want It!.<ref name="Draper">Template:Cite web</ref> In South America, the garage rock band Los Saicos formed in Lima, Peru, in 1964, later being called "the world's first punk band" in Zona de Obras' book Spanish Dictionary of Punk and Hardcore.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
One of the earliest written uses of the term "punk rock" was by critic Dave Marsh who used it in 1970 to describe the garage rock group Question Mark & the Mysterians in the United States, who had scored a major hit with their song "96 Tears" in 1966.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> While garage bands varied in style, the label of garage punk has been attributed by critic Michael Hann to the "toughest, angriest garage rockers" such as the 13th Floor Elevators and the Sonics.<ref name="Hann">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> AllMusic states that bands like the Sonics and the Monks "anticipated" punk;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> they have been cited as examples of proto-punk<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and the Sonics' 1965 debut album Here Are The Sonics as "an early template for punk rock".<ref name="treble">Template:Cite web</ref> The raw sound and outsider attitude of psychedelic garage bands like the Seeds also presaged the style of bands that would become known as the archetypal figures of proto-punk;Template:Sfn other examples are the Electric Prunes<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> (whom writer Gath Cartwright states were "embraced by the punks" due to covers by the Damned and Wayne County & the Electric Chairs<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>), Red Crayola,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> the Litter,<ref name=":0" /> the Music Machine,<ref name=":0" /> the Shadows of Knight,<ref name=":0" /> the Castaways,<ref name=":0" /> the Standells,<ref name=":0" /> the Barbarians,<ref name=":0" /> and Chocolate Watchband.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The hit single "Psychotic Reaction" from 1966 by the garage band Count Five featured fuzztone guitars<ref name="Waksman2009">Template:Cite book</ref> and blazed the trail for punk rock.<ref name="Abbey2015">Template:Cite book</ref> Not only did the unconventional sound of proto-punk bands go against what was popular in the mainstream, but the visual styles of many bands were purposely contrasted with more popular, polished aesthetics found in mainstream artists.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
New York's the Velvet Underground were musically distinct from most other punk predecessors. They influenced punk through their avant-garde take on rock, which incorporated dissonance and taboo lyrical topics such as urban decay, drug addiction and sadomasochism.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 2014, the BBC stated, "The roots of underground and experimental music, indie and alternative, punk, post-punk and art-punk all snake back to the four Velvet Underground studio albums".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
1970s
In Japan, the anti-establishment Template:Nihongo, formed in 1969 and disbanded in 1975, mixed garage, psychedelic rock and folk; the band's first two albums were withdrawn from public sale after their lyrics were described in Mark Anderson's book The Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture to violate industry regulations, with their "spirit... [being] taken up again by the punk movement."<ref name=Anderson>Anderson, Mark (2009). "Zuno keisatsu" in Buckley, Sandra (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture. Taylor & Francis. p. 588.</ref>
In the early 1970s, the UK underground counter-cultural scene centred on Ladbroke Grove in West London spawned a number of bands that have been considered proto-punk, including the Deviants, Pink Fairies, Hawkwind, Edgar Broughton Band, Stack Waddy, and Third World War;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> contemporaries Crushed Butler have been called "Britain's first proto-punk band."<ref name=Bovey>Template:Cite book</ref> According to Allmusic, glam rock also "inspired many future punks with its simple, crunchy guitar riffs, its outrageous sense of style, and its artists' willingness to sing with British accents (not to mention the idiosyncratic images of David Bowie and Roxy Music)".<ref name="Allmusic"/> With his Ziggy Stardust persona, David Bowie made artifice and exaggeration central elements, ones that were later picked up by punk acts.Template:Sfn The Doctors of Madness built on Bowie's presentation concepts, while moving conceptually in the direction that would The Guardian writer Simon Reynolds identified as "prophes[ying] punk".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Bands anticipating the forthcoming movement were appearing as far afield as Düsseldorf, West Germany, where "punk before punk" band NEU! formed in 1971, building on the krautrock tradition of groups such as Can.<ref name="trouser2">Template:Cite web</ref> Simply Saucer formed in Hamilton, Canada in 1973<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and have been called "Canada's first proto-punk band",<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> blending garage rock, krautrock, psychedelia and other influences to produce a sound that was later described as having a "frequent punk snarl."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Origins
Template:See alsoTemplate:Multiple image Debut albums by two key US proto-punk bands were released in 1969, both from Metro Detroit in Michigan; Detroit's MC5 released Kick Out the Jams in January, and the Stooges, from Ann Arbor, premiered with their self-titled album in August.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The sound of these albums influenced a wave of subsequent bands in Michigan, which notably included the Dogs, the Punks and Death, the latter a pioneering but commercially unsuccessful African-American proto-punk group.<ref name="MillikenAnderson2021">Template:Cite book</ref> Formed in New York in 1971, the New York Dolls, merged Detroit's specific proto-punk sound with elements of glam rock, pioneering the glam punk genre.<ref name="Sfetcu 2">Template:Cite book</ref> A 2022 article by Alternative Press stated were "the most important of all protopunk bands after the Stooges [sic]".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Their style was adopted by a number of New York bands, including the Stilettos, the Brats<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and Ruby and the Rednecks,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and subsequently was the catalyst for the city's early punk rock scene, which included Television, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, the Ramones, Blondie and Richard Hell and the Voidoids.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Detroit proto-punk sound also spread to Cleveland, Ohio by the middle of the decade, where influential proto-punk bands including Mirrors, Electric Eels, the Styrenes, Rocket from the Tombs, and later Pere Ubu formed.<ref name="Kristiansen et al, 2010" /><ref name=":12">Template:Cite news</ref>
The immediate predecessor to British punk was the early to mid–1970s pub rock scene, which was mostly based around London.<ref name="Bealmear, 2020">Template:Cite web</ref> Influenced by Detroit proto-punk,<ref name="Kristiansen et al, 2010" /> this style made use of stripped down, back to its basics, rock music similar to punk, and was fronted by groups including Dr. Feelgood, Tyla Gang, Eddie and the Hot Rods and Count Bishops.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Many of the early British punk scene's musician began their careers in pub rock acts, including the 101ers (Joe Strummer, Richard Dudanski, Tymon Dogg), Kilburn and the High Roads (Ian Dury, Nick Cash) and Flip City (Elvis Costello).<ref name="Bealmear, 2020" />Template:Sfn By 1976, pub rock had ultimately declined in popularity.<ref name="Bealmear, 2020" /> At the same time as pub rock, the influence of the New York Dolls had spread to London, where a wave of glam punk bands, including Hollywood Brats and Jet, coalesced by the middle of the decade.<ref name="Sfetcu 2" />
A new generation of Australian garage rock bands, inspired mainly by the Stooges and MC5, came even closer to the sound that would soon be called "punk": in Brisbane, the Saints (formed in 1973) recalled the raw live sound of the British Pretty Things, who had made a notorious tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1965,Template:Sfn while in Sydney, Radio Birdman, co-founded by Detroit expatriate Deniz Tek in 1974, began playing gigs to a small but fanatical following.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Saints are regarded as a punk band and as being "to Australia what the Sex Pistols were to Britain and the Ramones to America,"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> while Radio Birdman are regarded as co-founders of punk<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> but have also been designated as proto-punk.<ref name=RB>Template:Cite web</ref>
See also
References
Bibliography
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