Punk Rock Trivia
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130 free Punk Rock trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Punk rock was a word critics used for 1960s garage bands before it became a scene at a Bowery club, a national scandal on British teatime television and, eventually, a marketing slogan for a Subaru. This punk rock trivia quiz runs from the proto-punk of Detroit and the garage bands of the Nuggets era through the New York clubs, Patti Smith and the Ramones, to a shop on the King's Road, the Sex Pistols, the Grundy interview, the Damned, the Buzzcocks, the Clash and the Australians who got there first. It then follows the schism: hardcore in Southern California and Washington D.C., straight edge, Fear on Saturday Night Live, Crass and anarcho-punk, Oi!, D-beat, the 2 Tone ska revival, riot grrrl, and the 1990s explosion of Green Day, the Offspring, Rancid, Blink-182 and Sum 41 that had purists crying sellout. Easy questions open each era and the deep cuts follow. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's punk rock article, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 130 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Hilly Kristal, owner of the New York club CBGB, preferred to call the new movement at his venue what?
Street rock
Kristal's preferred label, "Street rock", never caught on; the name that stuck came from Punk magazine, which John Holmstrom and Legs McNeil launched at the end of 1975.
Q 02By the end of 1974 the Ramones had played seventy-four shows, each lasting roughly how long?
17 minutes
Each of the Ramones' seventy-four 1974 shows ran about 17 minutes: two-minute songs played at breakneck pace, stripping rock and roll back to its primal level.
Q 03Which band formed from the audience of the Sex Pistols' June 1976 Lesser Free Trade Hall gig?
Joy Division
Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook were in the thirty-odd-strong audience; they formed Warsaw, renamed Joy Division in 1978. Others present went on to the Fall, the Smiths and Factory Records.
Q 04The Damned's October 1976 single, regarded as the first UK punk rock single, was called what?
New Rose
"New Rose", released by Stiff Records on 22 October 1976, beat the Pistols' debut single to the shops by over a month; the Vibrators followed with "We Vibrate" in November.
Q 05The Sex Pistols' notorious 1976 Bill Grundy interview happened because they filled a vacancy left by which band?
Queen
EMI labelmates Queen dropped out of Thames Television's Today programme on 1 December 1976, so the Pistols were sent instead; the swearing that followed put punk on the front pages.
Q 06Which member of the Sex Pistols did most of the swearing at Bill Grundy on live television?
Steve Jones
Guitarist Steve Jones supplied the expletives after Grundy, who had been drinking, suggested to Siouxsie Sioux that they "meet afterwards"; Johnny Rotten had only muttered one swear word earlier.
Q 07Where did the Sex Pistols play their first gig under that name on November 6, 1975?
Saint Martin's School of Art
The Pistols supported Bazooka Joe at Saint Martin's School of Art on Charing Cross Road; the set was cut short, yet the band soon drew a small, dedicated following.
Q 08Before recruiting a new singer and renaming themselves, the future Sex Pistols went by what name?
The Strand
Wally Nightingale, Paul Cook and the future Pistols guitarist formed The Strand in the early 1970s; McLaren was already managing them when the singer's job came open in August 1975.
Q 09What single-word name did McLaren and Westwood give their King's Road boutique?
Sex
McLaren and Westwood rebranded 430 King's Road as Sex, selling rubber and bondage wear as "anti-fashion"; the shop became the meeting point for the future Pistols.
Q 10Which Sex Pistols single reached number two on the UK chart in June 1977?
God Save the Queen
"God Save the Queen" was released on 27 May 1977 and peaked at number two on the chart dated 11 June, Jubilee week, amid claims the chart was fixed to deny it the top spot.
Q 11What did Sid Vicious throw at the 100 Club Punk Festival in September 1976, leading to his arrest?
A glass
A glass thrown by Vicious during the Damned's set shattered against a pillar and blinded a girl in one eye; the press coverage cemented punk's reputation as a social menace.
Q 12Which Australian band was the first punk group outside the US to release a record, "(I'm) Stranded" in 1976?
The Saints
The Saints, from Brisbane, self-released "(I'm) Stranded" in September 1976; co-founder Ed Kuepper hated the first Ramones album because he knew his band would be labelled copyists despite playing that way for years.
Q 13Sydney's Radio Birdman built the early Australian punk scene around which venue?
The Oxford Tavern
Q 21Whose liner notes for the 1972 anthology Nuggets applied "punk rock" to 1960s garage bands?
Lenny Kaye
Lenny Kaye, who compiled the Nuggets double album for Elektra, used "punk rock" for the garage bands in his notes; he went on to play guitar in the Patti Smith Group for decades.
Q 22Which 1966 hit was Question Mark & the Mysterians' biggest song?
96 Tears
"96 Tears" topped the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1966; Dave Marsh later described the band as giving a "landmark exposition of punk rock" in Creem in May 1971.
Q 23Which song by the Kingsmen is often cited as punk rock's defining "ur-text"?
Louie Louie
Radio Birdman ran their Oxford Funhouse nights upstairs at The Oxford Tavern in Darlinghurst; the band released its debut Radios Appear on its own Trafalgar label in 1977.
Q 14Which Ohio city's early-1970s scene produced Rocket from the Tombs, Electric Eels and later Pere Ubu?
Cleveland
Cleveland's scene billed its Rocket from the Tombs and Electric Eels shows as "Extermination Night"; Rocket guitarist Cheetah Chrome went on to the Dead Boys.
Q 15Devo spearheaded a movement named after which Ohio city?
Akron
Devo led the late-1970s "Akron sound", named for Akron, the rubber-industry city they came from; the Cramps briefly relocated there before settling into the New York scene.
Q 16The Stooges, fronted by Iggy Pop, came from which Michigan city?
Ann Arbor
The Stooges formed in Ann Arbor in 1967; their debut arrived in August 1969, six months after the MC5's first album, with Fun House and Raw Power following.
Q 17Which former Velvet Underground member produced the Stooges' 1969 debut album?
John Cale
John Cale, the Velvet Underground's viola player until 1968, produced The Stooges' debut in 1969 and later the Modern Lovers' demos that became their self-titled album.
Q 18What was the title of the MC5's influential February 1969 debut album?
Kick Out the Jams
Kick Out the Jams was recorded live at Detroit's Grande Ballroom over two nights in October 1968 and released in February 1969; it is now considered a forerunner of punk.
Q 19Which critic mockingly called Iggy Pop "that Stooge punk" in the December 1970 issue of Creem?
Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs wrote the jibe in Creem's December 1970 issue while mocking more mainstream rock musicians; by 1971 Creem writers were applying "punk rock" to mid-1960s garage acts.
Q 20Who first used the phrase 'punk rock' in print, in the Chicago Tribune on March 22, 1970?
Ed Sanders
Ed Sanders, co-founder of the Fugs, was quoted describing his own first solo album as "punk rock - redneck sentimentality"; it is the first known use of the phrase in print.
The Kingsmen's 1963 recording of "Louie Louie", with its slurred vocals and three-chord riff, is often cited as punk's defining "ur-text"; the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night" were both influenced by it.
Q 24When William Shakespeare used the word "punk" in The Merry Wives of Windsor, what did it mean?
Prostitute
Prostitute was the Elizabethan sense of the word; it later shifted to mean a young hustler, gangster or hoodlum before rock critics attached it to music in the early 1970s.
Q 25Which English fanzine printed the famous 1976 drawing of three chords captioned 'Now form a band'?
Sideburns
Tony Moon's fanzine Sideburns ran the three-chord diagram in its first issue; the image summed up the DIY ethic that pub rock's small venues and independent labels had helped make possible.
Q 26Which Richard Hell song, played in Television's early sets, became the anthem of the New York scene?
Blank Generation
"Blank Generation" became the New York scene's anthem; Hell left Television in 1975 and later titled his Voidoids' 1977 debut album after the song.
Q 27Patti Smith's 1974 debut single, often called the first punk record, paired "Hey Joe" with which B-side?
Piss Factory
"Piss Factory", a spoken-word piece about Smith's time on a New Jersey assembly line, backed "Hey Joe" on the 1974 single she released on her own Mer Records, with Television guitarist Tom Verlaine playing on it.
Q 28Which band did Richard Hell form after Television, with ex-Dolls Thunders and Nolan?
The Heartbreakers
Hell formed The Heartbreakers in 1975 but left in early 1976 to found the Voidoids, described as one of punk's most harshly uncompromising groups.
Q 29"Chinese Rocks", co-written by Richard Hell and a Ramone, takes its title from a strong form of which drug?
Heroin
Heroin was the drug: "Chinese rocks" was street slang for a potent form of it. Hell, his Ramone co-writer, Thunders and Nolan all used it, and Thunders helped popularise it among British punks on tour.
Q 30Which label released the Ramones' debut album in April 1976?
Sire Records
Sire Records, Seymour Stein's label, issued Ramones on 23 April 1976 after sessions costing about $6,400; a discerning few embraced it while the majority dismissed it as a bad joke.