Set the world on fire: an exploration of punk rock
Written by Lilah Cardillo
Side A: It starts with a man named Fred
When I decided to talk about punk rock, I knew there would be questions. What’s the difference between loving punk and being punk? Is it still supposed to be cool, or is it just the dark backstory to modern indie rock that we’d prefer to forget? Is it a revolution, or just a phase?
I can’t claim to know. The bottom line is there is simply no way to distill the fury of punk rock into one definite meaning. Punk is defined by the collective loves and hates of many generations and carried by the passion of all those who continue to honor it. I can’t tell you everything, but I can take you to what I believe is the very beginning. Punk rock starts with a man named Fred.
Of Shawnee descent, Fred Lincoln (“Link”) Wray grew up poor in the shadow of the Ku Klux Klan, lost a lung in the Korean war (to tuberculosis, not enemy soldiers), and came home to a nation in love with rock ‘n roll. With his brothers and their cousin, the delightfully named Shorty Horton, Link formed a band called the Wraymen. He appeared on The Milt Grant Show into the late 50’s, giving him a stage on which to perfect his gritty, “raw” style on the electric guitar. He slashed holes in the fabric of his amplifier and utilized what some believe to be the first power chords to create a swaggering single that seemed to sneer at anyone listening for the D.C. label Cadence. The producer only reluctantly agreed to release it at the encouragement of his teenage daughter who said it made her think of the gang fights in West Side Story. In 1958, Rumble was born. During its heyday, the song was banned in Boston, Detroit, and New York because people worried it would incite wild and violent behavior in the youth.
According to the Alternative Press, Wray’s techniques were rediscovered by The Kinks, garage rockers who then inspired The Who. The Who’s unique, stripped-down songs had strong bass lines and lyrics about real life. Rock was changing. In 1974, the Ramones came barreling out of Queens with holes in their jeans and the energy of several labrador puppies. In Britain, meanwhile, The Sex Pistols were born in 1972 while its members were ditching school. They spent the next several years bouncing from one record label to the next, rocking worlds as they went.
The Sex Pistols, from left to right: Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Steve Jones, and Paul Cook
The cascade of inspiration continued, with the mean, snarly U.S. band The Sonics. Their bastardization of blues inspired The Stooges’ twangy grit, The Rolling Stones birthed the New York Dolls, who were the obsession of a young Morrisey, and god, does the list go on. Punk is a deep, deep rabbit hole, because the scene was so intertwined. It was a time where everything was new and shocking, and weirdos thrived. To succeed, you needed originality and the courage to break the mold, but one can’t exactly change music busking on the street. Thankfully, as culture evolved, there were always places to go.
Side B: What are you going to do about it?
Country, bluegrass, and blues. When Hilly Kristal opened a bar in the Bowery, that was most of what he had in mind. Over the next 33 years, CBGB & OMFUG would become the beating heart of New York’s punk scene. It drew the weary and the lost, those rejected by more respectable establishments. Kristal took the music no one else wanted and gave it to the people who needed it the most. It seems that the second half of the bar’s name, an acronym for Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandizers, would become prophetic—at the time, punk was as ‘other’ as it got. The story goes that when Hilly Kristal was out fiddling with the club’s iconic red and white awning, he was approached by an equine-faced young man. This was Richard Hell, front man of the band Television. He asked Kristal about the building, and when he said it was a music venue, Hell asked to play. Decidedly not country, bluegrass, or blues, the band became part of the CBGB’s rotation. Television was the first well-known punk band to play there, and from then on, the scene thrived.
For the record, these guys had the best names. Richard Hell, Sid Vicious, Perry Farrel (Like peripheral, get it?)... you can't ignore them. There’s that old colloquialism that if you name your kid Dennis they'll become a dentist, that Laurens will turn out lawyers, and that Abbys will flock to a convent. Your name is your life. By taking on such deterring nomenclature, our heroes took charge of fate.
I was first drawn to look into CBGB because of their impressive history of great groups—The Talking Heads, Blondie, Television, Patti Smith, and many others. But looking at pictures from the bar’s glory days, I am shocked and delighted by its look: the almost accidental and certainly unhygienic moodboard made by everyone who’s ever crossed through the door. It was scrawled with graffiti and the walls were caked with stickers and flyers many layers deep. The club itself was narrow, dark, and in a general state of disrepair—trying to make it to the bathrooms (which David Byrne once described as “legendarily nasty”) while hardcore music blares and fans writhe about sounds like a sensory nightmare. The bathrooms themselves, according to the New York Times, were all-purpose chambers of illicit activity. For example, in the ladies’ there was a chart on the wall for the groupies to record their conquests.
The notorious bathroom of New York City venue CBGB & OMFUG, marked by all who came before
When I talked to music writer Tobias Carroll, he mentioned another one of CBGB’s uniquenesses: they never booked cover bands. The venue was well booked— Carroll described the nights when there would be “Three or four bands playing there and they would just click”. It was, in his words, “a very surreal sort of deal”. He told me about how the space was well curated to audiences who moved against the grain. CBGB & OMFUG became the home base of the undefined. The club gave its bands a venue in which to grow, a canvas upon which to create their legacies and smear their bodily fluids. It wasn’t all about the music, though—every movement needs a uniform, and in Britain a punk matriarch was helping people look the part.
Looking punk had people crossing to the other side of the street if they weren’t beating you up. Punks were ugly, and they liked it that way.
It wasn’t a total abandonment of fashion, though—quite the opposite. Vivienne Westwood’s shop catered to this scene, selling provocative designs on anything you could wear. Nip-zipping tanks, swastika shirts, and indecent cowboy tees were dispersed from Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die (later SEX, and then Seditionaries) to outfit the emerging London punk scene. Westwood’s pieces, buckled and chained, brought bondage to the streets—and people freaked out. Her style was maximalist and off-putting, and as I scroll through images, I catch myself wondering, Who would wear this stuff?
She went all in. With every name change her store experienced, a full interior overhaul came with it. Punk asked what you were willing to do, say, sing, or wear to make people think—and the results of this mindset would outdo each other for decades.