80 Fun Facts About Punk Rock

Hilly Kristal, owner of the New York club CBGB, preferred to call the new movement at his venue what?

The name that stuck came instead from a magazine that debuted at the end of 1975 and codified the term.

By the end of 1974 the Ramones had played seventy-four shows, each lasting roughly how long?

The band condensed rock and roll to its primal level, drawing on everything from the Stooges to 1960s girl groups.

Which band formed from the audience of the Sex Pistols' June 1976 Lesser Free Trade Hall gig?

Only thirty to forty people attended, but the crowd also went on to form the Fall and the Smiths, and to launch Factory Records.

The Damned's October 1976 single, regarded as the first UK punk rock single, was called what?

The Vibrators followed a month later with "We Vibrate".

The Sex Pistols' notorious 1976 Bill Grundy interview happened because they filled a vacancy left by which band?

The swearing that followed put punk on newspaper front pages and made it a household name within 24 hours.

Which member of the Sex Pistols did most of the swearing at Bill Grundy on live television?

The guitarist was reacting to Grundy's drunken remark to Siouxsie Sioux that they should "meet afterwards".

Where did the Sex Pistols play their first gig under that name on November 6, 1975?

The show soon attracted a small but dedicated following, and the band often provoked crowds into near-riots.

Before recruiting a new singer and renaming themselves, the future Sex Pistols went by what name?

The group hung around Malcolm McLaren's shop and was already being managed by him when the singer's job came open in August 1975.

What single-word name did McLaren and Westwood give their King's Road shop in 1975?

The shop built its reputation on outrageous "anti-fashion" and became the meeting point for the future Pistols.

Which Sex Pistols single reached number two on the UK chart in May 1977 amid a moral panic?

It arrived just after Sid Vicious joined the band on bass, and "Pretty Vacant" reached number six two months later.

What did Sid Vicious throw at the 100 Club Punk Festival in September 1976, leading to his arrest?

The object shattered and destroyed a girl's eye, and press coverage cemented punk's reputation as a social menace.

Which Australian band was the first punk group outside the US to release a record, "(I'm) Stranded" in 1976?

Co-founder Ed Kuepper hated the first Ramones album when he heard it, because he knew his band would be labelled Ramones copyists despite having played that way for years.

Sydney's Radio Birdman built the early Australian punk scene around which venue?

The venue sat in the Darlinghurst suburb; the band released Radios Appear on its own Trafalgar label in June 1977.

Which Ohio city's early-1970s scene produced Rocket from the Tombs, Electric Eels and later Pere Ubu?

The scene's live shows were dubbed "Extermination Night", and guitarist Cheetah Chrome went on to the Dead Boys.

Devo spearheaded a movement named after which Ohio city?

The Cramps briefly relocated to the same city before settling into the New York scene.

The Stooges, fronted by Iggy Pop, came from which Michigan city?

Their debut arrived in August 1969, six months after the MC5's first album; Fun House and Raw Power followed.

Which former Velvet Underground member produced the Stooges' 1969 debut album?

He later produced the Modern Lovers' self-titled album too, another record that anticipated punk.

What was the title of the MC5's influential February 1969 debut album?

The band had formed in 1963 as an R&B and garage outfit; the album is now considered a forerunner of punk.

Which critic mockingly called Iggy Pop "that Stooge punk" in the December 1970 issue of Creem?

The same writer went on to use the term repeatedly for mid-1960s garage acts in the early 1970s.

Who first used the phrase 'punk rock' in print, in the Chicago Tribune on March 22, 1970?

The Fugs co-founder was describing his own first solo album as "punk rock - redneck sentimentality".

Whose liner notes for the 1972 anthology Nuggets applied "punk rock" to 1960s garage bands?

He went on to play guitar in the Patti Smith Group; his notes also contain the earliest known use of "garage punk".

Which 1966 hit was Question Mark & the Mysterians' biggest song?

Marsh later described the band as giving a "landmark exposition of punk rock" in Creem in May 1971.

Which song by the Kingsmen is often cited as punk rock's defining "ur-text"?

The Kinks' "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night" were both influenced by it.

When William Shakespeare used the word "punk" in The Merry Wives of Windsor, what did it mean?

The word later shifted to mean a young hustler, gangster or hoodlum before critics attached it to rock.

Which English fanzine printed the famous 1976 drawing of three chords captioned 'Now form a band'?

The image summed up the DIY ethic that pub rock's small venues and independent labels had helped make possible.

Which Richard Hell song, played in Television's early sets, became the anthem of the New York scene?

Hell soon left Television, and later titled his Voidoids' first full-length album after the song.

Patti Smith's 1974 debut single, often called the first punk record, paired "Hey Joe" with which B-side?

She released it on her own Mer Records label with Television guitarist Tom Verlaine playing on it.

Which band did Richard Hell form after Television, with ex-Dolls Thunders and Nolan?

He left that band too in early 1976 to found the Voidoids, described as one of punk's most harshly uncompromising groups.

"Chinese Rocks", co-written by Richard Hell and a Ramone, takes its title from a strong form of which drug?

Both writers used it, as did Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, and Thunders helped popularise it among British punks on tour.

Which label released the Ramones' debut album in April 1976?

The record was embraced by a discerning few and, in one later description, slagged off as a bad joke by the majority.

Which Ramone shouted "1-2-3-4!" at the start of every song?

The bassist's count-in made it sound as if the group could barely master the rudiments of rhythm.

Which Ramones album was released in November 1977, their third in nineteen months?

The same autumn saw debut albums from the Dead Boys and the Voidoids.

Which hardcore band's 1981 Saturday Night Live set sparked an on-air riot and mosh pit?

The pit included future scene figures Ian MacKaye, Harley Flanagan, Tesco Vee and John Brannon.

Bad Brains launched the Washington D.C. hardcore scene in 1980 with which rapid-fire single?

The band, all of whom were black, later relocated to New York and joined its growing hardcore scene.

Minor Threat, SS Decontrol and 7 Seconds built which movement based on abstinence from drink and drugs?

The movement rejected the self-destructive lifestyles of their hardcore peers in favour of positivity.

Discharge, founded in 1977, established which punk subgenre in the early 1980s?

The style is named for its drumbeat; Amebix and Antisect developed the separate crust style around the same time.

Napalm Death, Carcass and Extreme Noise Terror defined which extreme genre in the mid-1980s?

All three grew out of the anarcho-punk scene, adding death-metal guitar work to extremely fast tempos.

Music journalist Garry Bushell is credited with labelling which working-class punk subgenre in 1980?

One American critic described it as "politicized football chants for unemployed louts".

Oi! partly takes its name from which band shouting it before every song instead of counting in?

The shout replaced the time-honoured "1, 2, 3, 4!" that most punk bands used.

Crass's Essex commune, the hub of anarcho-punk, was known by what name?

The band's own Crass Records label inspired Subhumans, Conflict, Poison Girls and Flux of Pink Indians.

What was the late-1970s British ska revival around the Specials, Madness and the Selecter known as?

Punk sparked it: the Clash covered a Jamaican reggae hit on their debut, and the Slits and the Ruts also absorbed reggae rhythms.

Which 1994 Green Day album sold nine million US copies in just over two years?

Its single "Longview" topped Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart that June, arguably the first American punk song to become a top-forty airplay hit.

Epitaph Records, home of NOFX and the Offspring in 1994, was founded by the guitarist of which band?

Brett Gurewitz's label put out Let's Go, Punk in Drublic and Smash in a single year, each eventually certified gold or better.

A bootleg MP3 of which Offspring single was downloaded a record 22 million times?

The 1998 album, released by Columbia, debuted at number two on the album chart.

Which Blink-182 album, their first fully major-label release, sold four million copies in under a year?

Its second single "All the Small Things" peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 2000.

Which number one US Alternative hit from Sum 41's All Killer No Filler was described as 'brat rap'?

The Ontario band's album reached the Canadian top ten and went platinum in the United States.

A 1993 advertising campaign claimed which car was "like punk rock"?

By then punk trappings were routinely used to market highly commercial acts as "rebels".

Roughly how much did Nirvana spend recording their first album, Bleach, in 1989?

Two years later Nevermind brought huge and unexpected success; Kurt Cobain called punk "musical freedom".

The 1991 riot grrrl concert billed "Love Rock Revolution Girl Style Now" was in which city?

The lineup at the International Pop Underground Convention included Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, L7 and Mecca Normal.

Which art punk group did Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna form in 1998?

Meanwhile Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein had cofounded Sleater-Kinney in 1994.

Which member of Rage Against the Machine declared in 2016 that "Rage is a punk band"?

The bassist argued that the band's ethics were punk because it never did anything anyone wanted it to do.

Which band's 1977 single 'Oh Bondage Up Yours!' was banned by the BBC but became a punk essential?

The single never charted; women were near the centre of the London scene from the start.

The Clash's debut album included a cover of which recent Jamaican reggae hit?

The album rose to number twelve in the UK, and "White Riot" entered the top forty.

Which December 1979 Clash album mixed punk with reggae, ska, R&B and rockabilly to wide acclaim?

It exemplified the breadth of classic punk's legacy just as the scene split into hardcore and new wave.

The Clash were widely accused of "selling out" in 1977 for signing with which record company?

The same accusation followed Green Day and others onto major labels and MTV in the 1990s.

Which NME journalist proposed 'New Wave' as a label for the punk scene in 1976?

At first the two terms were interchangeable; only later did new wave come to mean Blondie, Talking Heads, the Cars and the Police.

The Boy Looked at Johnny, one of the first books about punk (1977), was written by Julie Burchill and whom?

The same month the Sex Pistols' only official album topped the British charts.

Which self-released Buzzcocks EP became a benchmark for the DIY ethic in British punk?

The Manchester band had formed after seeing the Sex Pistols in February 1976.

Which designer's "anarchy flag" poster and other Sex Pistols work helped establish punk's visual aesthetic?

The poster accompanied "Anarchy in the U.K.", released on November 26, 1976, which became a national scandal as intended.

The Cramps and South London's the Meteors were innovators in which fusion style?

In Los Angeles, the Flesh Eaters pioneered deathrock and Gun Club punk blues.

Milwaukee's Violent Femmes jumpstarted which American fusion scene, as the Pogues did across the Atlantic?

R.E.M. and the Proclaimers also folded folk elements into a punk approach.

Which 1980 Dead Kennedys song is a classic hardcore attack on middle-class values?

The San Francisco band also led a US anarcho-punk scene alongside Austin's MDC.

Which future hip-hop stars debuted in 1981 as a New York hardcore band?

They were part of a New York scene that soon added the Cro-Mags, Murphy's Law and Agnostic Front.

In LA around 1979, the older crowd were "Hollywood punks"; the new hardcore kids were what kind of punks?

Hardcore drew a younger suburban audience from the South Bay and Orange County shoreline.

Los Saicos, a 1960s band retrospectively credited with pioneering punk, came from which country?

Founded in 1964, they screamed souped-up songs about prison escapes, funerals and destruction.

Which band of American G.I.s in Germany released the proto-punk album Black Monk Time in 1966?

It was their only album, fusing beat music with raucous garage rock.

Which New York duo, formed in 1970, was one of the earliest acts to describe its own music as "punk"?

The pair billed their gigs as "punk music" or a "punk mass" for a couple of years.

What was the title of the Dead Boys' debut LP, released at the end of August 1977?

The band's guitarist Cheetah Chrome had come from Rocket from the Tombs.

Sonic Youth grew out of which late-1970s New York scene, associated with Lydia Lunch and James Chance?

The scene formed in opposition to the more commercial sound then emerging from the same downtown clubs.

Which band's 1995 album ...And Out Come the Wolves was the first record of the 1990s ska revival to go gold?

Sublime's self-titled 1996 album followed it to platinum early in 1997.

Which was Liverpool's first punk group, short-lived but the seed of several well-known post-punk acts?

The band moved in a glam, theatrical direction rather than a stripped-down one.

Stiff Little Fingers formed in which city, far from the London punk scene?

The Skids, from Dunfermline in Scotland, formed in the same second wave.

Which Anaheim band, with Boston's Mighty Mighty Bosstones, led the mid-1990s ska punk boom?

The genre also spread to Japan, where Australian acts Frenzal Rhomb and Bodyjar built followings.

Which Australian "punkabilly" band became major stars at home with its self-titled 1998 debut?

The trio's rockabilly-punk hybrid arrived at the height of the North American pop-punk boom.

Alongside the mall chain Hot Topic, which touring festival brought punk further into the US mainstream?

Purists argued that major labels and MTV appearances meant bands were buying into the system punk was created to challenge.

Jon Savage outlined the concept of post-punk in the November 1977 "New Musick" issue of which magazine?

He named Devo, Pere Ubu, Throbbing Gristle, Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Slits as early examples.

In which part of London was the Hamborough Tavern, firebombed during an Oi! gig in July 1981?

Local Asian youths believed the show by the Business, the 4-Skins and the Last Resort was a neo-Nazi gathering.

Which song by the Exploited was adopted as an anthem by Mexico's disaffected urban "bandas" in the 1980s?

One banda even named itself PND after the song's initials.

Which Electric Eels member may have been the first rock musician to wear a jacket covered in safety pins?

Richard Hell is usually credited with inventing the safety-pin aesthetic that inspired McLaren.

Before settling on their famous name, Black Flag formed in Hermosa Beach in 1976 under what name?

They played their first show under the new name in a Redondo Beach garage in December 1977 and went on to shape hardcore punk.