History of the punk subculture

The cultural critique and strategies for revolutionary action offered by the Situationist International in the 1950s and 1960s were an influence on the vanguard of the British punk movement, particularly the Sex Pistols.

Charles Dickens' working class politics and unromantic depictions of disenfranchised street youth influenced British punk in a number of ways.

)[8] The British punk movement also found a precedent in the "do-it-yourself" attitude of the Skiffle craze that emerged amid the post-World War II austerity of 1950s Britain.

[citation needed] At the same time, punks rejected the long hair adopted by hippies in favor of short, choppy haircuts, especially in the Britain as a follow on from the precursor Mod, Skinhead and the late sixties/early 70s Bootboy hairstyle fashions.

The jeans, T-shirts, chains, and leather jackets common in punk fashion can be traced back to the bikers, rockers and greasers of earlier decades.

[citation needed] In 1991, Observer journalist John Windsor wrote a story about artist Frankie Stein – Precursor to Punk, observing that she was wearing a safety pin as earring some years before her friends in SexPistols picked it up and experimented in tandem with Sassoon artistic director Flint Whincop with hairstyles copied by people in her circle such as Toya, Steve Strange and what became The Sex Pistols.

[7] The next step in punk's early development, retroactively named protopunk, arose in the north-eastern United States in cities such as Detroit, Boston, and New York.

Bands such as the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, MC5, and the Dictators, coupled with shock rock acts like Alice Cooper, laid the foundation for punk in the US.

A collection of art school students and a thriving drug underground caused Los Angeles to develop one of the earliest punk scenes.

The first ongoing music scene that was assigned the "punk" label appeared in New York in 1974–1976 centered around bands that played regularly at the clubs Max's Kansas City and CBGB.

[12] The CBGB and Max's scene included the Ramones, Television, Blondie, Patti Smith, Johnny Thunders (a former New York Doll) and the Heartbreakers, Richard Hell and the Voidoids and Talking Heads.

At the same time, a less celebrated, but nonetheless highly influential, scene had appeared in Ohio, including the Electric Eels, Devo and Rocket from the Tombs, who in 1975 split into Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys.

By the end of 1976, many fans of the Sex Pistols had formed their own bands, including the Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Adverts, Generation X, the Slits and X-Ray Spex.

Other UK bands to emerge in this milieu included The Damned (the first to release a single, the classic "New Rose"), the Jam, The Vibrators, Buzzcocks and the appropriately named London.

In December 1976, the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned and Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers united for the Anarchy Tour, a series of gigs throughout the UK.

The notoriety of punk rock in the UK was furthered by a televised incident that was widely publicized in the tabloid press; appearing on a London TV show called Thames Today, guitarist Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols was goaded into a verbal altercation by the host, Bill Grundy, swearing at him on live television in violation of at the time accepted standards of propriety.

During this same period, bands that would later be recognized as "punk" were formed independently in other locations, such as the Saints in Brisbane, Australia, the Modern Lovers in Boston, and the Stranglers and the Sex Pistols in London.

Notable artists included: the pioneers Pankrti, Paraf and Pekinška patka (the first two formed in 1977, the latter in 1978), the 1980s hardcore punk acts: KUD Idijoti, Niet, KBO!

The scene ceased to exist with the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s, and its former artists continued their work in the independent countries that emerged after the breakup of Yugoslavia, where many of them were involved in anti-war activities and often clashed with the domestic chauvinists.

When punk emerged, it "did not appropriate socialism as its goal"; instead, it embraced "nihilism", and focused on keeping the memories of past abuses alive, and accusing all of Spanish society of collaborating with the fascist regime.

In Barcelona, a city which had a particularly "marginalized status under Franco", because he suppressed the area's "Catalan language and culture", the youth felt an "exclusion from mainstream society" that enabled them to come together and form a punk subculture.

The song, which sounded like the US band The Stooges stated that no one believed in revolution anymore, and it criticized the emerging consumer culture in Spain, as people flocked to the new department stores.

Some, such as the Misfits (from New Jersey), the Exploited (from Scotland), GBH (from England) Black Flag (from Los Angeles), Stiff Little Fingers (from Northern Ireland) and Crass (from Essex) would go on to influence the move away from the original sound of punk rock, that would spawn the Hardcore subgenre.

Early hardcore bands include Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Bad Brains, the Descendents, the Replacements, and the Germs, and the movement developed via Minor Threat, the Minutemen, and Hüsker Dü, among others.

In New York, there was a large hardcore punk movement led by bands such as Agnostic Front, the Cro-Mags, Murphy's Law, Sick of It All, and Gorilla Biscuits.

As alternative bands like Sonic Youth and the Pixies were starting to gain larger audiences, major labels sought to capitalize on a market that had been growing underground for the past 10 years.

Nirvana's success kick-started the alternative rock boom that had been underway since the late 1980s, and helped define that segment of the 1990s popular music milieu.

Epitaph Records, an independent record label started by Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion, would become the home of the "skate punk" sound, characterized by bands like the Offspring, Pennywise, NOFX, and the Suicide Machines, many bands arose claiming the mantle of the ever-diverse punk genre—some playing a more accessible, pop style and achieving commercial success.

Examples of bands labeled "pop punk" by MTV and similar media outlets include; Blink 182, Simple Plan, Good Charlotte, and Sum 41.

The widespread availability of the Internet and file sharing programs enables bands who would otherwise not be heard outside of their local scene to garner larger followings, and is in keeping with punk's DIY ethic.