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49-675: Heralded as an important protopunk group, they were little known during the band's original lifetime, although various members later achieved renown in Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys . Billy Bob Hargus wrote, however, that "The sound of the Rockets is much more ferocious than Ubu or the Dead Boys." The band played their first show June 16, 1974 at the Viking Saloon in downtown Cleveland . The original line-up

98-461: A 1984 Grammy Award for his liner notes on The Fugs Greatest Hits, Volume 1 . Bangs died in New York City on April 30, 1982, at the age of 33; he was self-medicating a bad case of the flu and accidentally overdosed on dextropropoxyphene (an opioid analgesic), diazepam (a benzodiazepine), and NyQuil . Bangs appeared to be listening to music when he died. Earlier that day, he had bought

147-871: A clear anyone-can-do-it signal, and as the skiffle explosion proved, anyone could and did", according to PopMatters writer Ian Ellis. 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." His 1957 British chart-topper " Cumberland Gap " has been referred to as "the first punk No. 1"; 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

196-590: A copy of Dare by the Human League , an English synth-pop band. Later that night, a friend found him lying on a couch in his apartment, unresponsive. " Dare was spinning on the turntable, and the needle was stuck on the end groove," Jim DeRogatis wrote in Let It Blurt , his biography of Bangs. Bangs's criticism was filled with cultural references, not only to rock music but also to literature and philosophy. His radical and confrontational style influenced others in

245-547: A fire when his son was young. When Bangs was 11, he moved with his mother to El Cajon , also in San Diego County. His early interests and influences ranged from the Beats (particularly William S. Burroughs ) and jazz musicians John Coltrane and Miles Davis , to comic books and science fiction . He met Cameron Crowe while they were both contributing music pieces to The San Diego Door , an underground newspaper of

294-480: A given so quickly." In 1973, Jann Wenner fired Bangs from Rolling Stone for "disrespecting musicians" after a particularly harsh review of the group Canned Heat . Bangs began freelancing for Detroit -based Creem in 1970. In 1971, he wrote a feature for Creem on Alice Cooper , and soon afterward he moved to Detroit. Named Creem 's editor in 1971, Bangs fell in love with Detroit, calling it "rock's only hope", and remained there for five years. During

343-772: A single CD by Smog Veil records, and titled The Day the Earth Met the Rocket from the Tombs (2002). San Diego punk band Rocket from the Crypt chose their name after being inspired by hearing Rocket from the Tombs bootleg recordings . The Smog Veil Records CD rekindled interest in Rocket From The Tombs, and they reformed in 2003 with original members Thomas, Chrome, and Bell, joined by Richard Lloyd (guitar), and Steve Mehlman (drums). Some claim that decades earlier, when Lloyd briefly quit

392-580: A small but fanatical following. 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," while Radio Birdman are regarded as co-founders of punk but have also been designated as proto-punk. Lester Bangs Leslie Conway " Lester " Bangs (December 14, 1948 – April 30, 1982) was an American music journalist and critic. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines and

441-674: A wave of influential garage rock bands including the Kingsmen , the Kinks , the 13th Floor Elevators and the Sonics . By the late 1960s, Detroit bands the Stooges and MC5 had used the influence of these groups to form a distinct prototypical punk sound. In the following years, this sound spread both domestically and internationally, leading to the formation of the New York Dolls and Electric Eels in

490-461: Is anything, it might as well be that." 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." In his Book Protopunk: the Garage Bands , music journalist Lester Bangs traced the origins of punk to Ritchie Valens ' 1958 version of

539-778: The BBC stated that "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". In Japan, the anti-establishment Zunō Keisatsu ( 頭脳警察 , lit.   ' Brain Police ' ) , 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

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588-591: The Electric Eels formed. The immediate predecessor to British punk was the early to mid–1970s pub rock scene, which was mostly based around London. Influenced by Detroit proto-punk, 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 . Many of the early British punk scene's musician began their careers in pub rock acts, including

637-509: The 101ers ( Joe Strummer , Richard Dudanski , Tymon Dogg ), Kilburn and the High Roads ( Ian Dury , Nick Cash ) and Flip City ( Elvis Costello ). By 1976, pub rock had ultimately declined in popularity. 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

686-527: The 13th Floor Elevators and the Sonics . AllMusic states that bands like the Sonics and the Monks "anticipated" punk; the latter have likewise been cited as examples of proto-punk and the Sonics' 1965 debut album Here Are The Sonics as "an early template for punk rock". The raw sound and outsider attitude of psychedelic garage bands like the Seeds also presaged the style of bands that would become known as

735-440: The 2003 lineup. It received mostly positive reviews; one critic declared that Redux "never sounds like a complacent reunion record, and in a way, I suppose it's not really a reunion record in the first place so much as it's a debut album, played with all the hunger and fire of a band eager to make their mark on the world." In 2006, Thomas announced that the band had again reunited, this time to work on new material. The band toured

784-563: The Dogs , the Punks and Death , the latter a pioneering but commercially unsuccessful African-American proto-punk group. 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. A 2022 article by Alternative Press stated were "the most important of all protopunk bands after the Stooges [sic]". Their style

833-552: The J. Geils Band were playing in concert, Bangs climbed onto the stage, typewriter in hand, and proceeded to type a supposed review of the event, in full view of the audience, banging the keys in rhythm with the music. In 1979, writing for The Village Voice , Bangs wrote a piece about racism in the punk music scene, called "The White Noise Supremacists", wherein he re-examined his own actions and words, and those of his peers, in light of some bands using Nazi symbolism, and other racist speech and imagery, "for shock value". He came to

882-512: 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). By the 1960s, garage rock a style of raw, loud and energetic rock music had developed significant scenes in both

931-455: The New York City nightclub CBGB , Bangs and guitarist Mickey Leigh , Joey Ramone 's brother, decided to form a band named "Birdland". Although they both had their roots in jazz, the two wanted to create an old-school rock-and-roll group. Leigh brought in his post-punk band, The Rattlers (David Merrill on bass; Matty Quick on drums). On April Fool's Day 1979, the band snuck into Electric Lady Studios for an impromptu late-night recording session;

980-741: The New York-based band Television , Laughner was seriously considered as his replacement. However, on his website richardlloyd.com, Richard Lloyd asserts that Laughner "was never even close to being in Television, unless I was way out of town for a month, and I don't think so." On June 10, 2003 they played their first live radio concert since the 1970s (when two shows live from the Agora club aired on WMMS ) on Brian Turner's program on WFMU . In 2004, Smog Veil and Morphius released Rocket Redux , consisting of Rocket From The Tombs originals performed in studio by

1029-511: The United States and United Kingdom. The Kingsmen and the Kinks both came from the UK's garage rock scene, with the former's cover of "Louie Louie" being described by academic Aneta Panek as "punk rock's ur-text ". Under the influence of "Louie Louie", the Kinks released " You Really Got Me " the following year, which was one of the earliest songs to make use of significant electric guitar distortion and

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1078-515: The United States in the summer of 2006 and debuted some new songs, but no further activity occurred until 2009 when the band contributed a song to the Mark Mulcahy tribute album Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy . An album of new material, Barfly was released on September 13, 2011 with a tour scheduled to begin in November 2011. However, Richard Lloyd was replaced in the band prior to

1127-578: The United States, Dr. Feelgood in England, and the Saints in Australia. 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". In contrast, in

1176-587: The archetypal figures of proto-punk, other examples are the Electric Prunes (who writer Gath Cartwright states were "embraced by the punks" due to covers by the Damned and Wayne County & the Electric Chairs ), Red Crayola and Chocolate Watchband . The hit single " Psychotic Reaction " from 1966 by the garage band Count Five featured fuzztone guitars and blazed the trail for punk rock, influencing

1225-575: 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. One of

1274-441: The conclusion that generating outrage for attention was not worth the harm it was causing fellow members of the community, and expressed his personal shame and embarrassment about having engaged in these racist behaviors himself. He praised the efforts of activist groups like Rock Against Racism and Rock Against Sexism as "an attempt at simple decency by a lot of people whom one would think too young and naive to begin to appreciate

1323-462: The contradictions." Bangs was also a musician. In 1976, he and Peter Laughner recorded an acoustic improvisation in the Creem office. The recording included covers/parodies of songs like " Sister Ray " and " Pale Blue Eyes ", both by the Velvet Underground . In 1977, Bangs recorded, as a solo artist, a 7" vinyl single named "Let It Blurt/Live", mixed by John Cale and released in 1979. In 1977, at

1372-620: The decade. 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, while in Sydney , Radio Birdman , co-founded by Detroit expatriate Deniz Tek in 1974, began playing gigs to

1421-592: The development of a new musical style. 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 more well known bands. Musically distinct from most other punk predecessors, New York's the Velvet Underground were not aggressive, instead influencing punk through their avant-garde take on rock, which incorporated dissonance and taboo lyrical topics such as urban decay , drug addiction and sadomasochism . A 2014 article by

1470-459: The earliest influences on both punk rock music and the punk subculture as a whole is folk musician Woody Guthrie . Beginning in the 1930s and becoming popular in the 1940s, Guthrie is often known as one of the first punks. 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 "[sending] out

1519-468: 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. 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

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1568-464: The early 1970s, Bangs and some other writers at Creem began using the term punk rock to designate the genre of 1960s garage bands and more contemporary acts, such as MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges . Their writings provided some of the conceptual framework for the later punk and new wave movements that emerged in New York, London, and elsewhere later in the decade. They were quick to pick up on these new movements and provide extensive coverage of

1617-450: 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 . Simply Saucer formed in Hamilton, Canada in 1973 and have been called "Canada's first proto-punk band", blending garage rock, krautrock, psychedelia and other influences to produce a sound that

1666-417: The idiosyncratic images of David Bowie and Roxy Music )". With his Ziggy Stardust persona, David Bowie made artifice and exaggeration central elements, that were later picked up by punk acts. 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". Bands anticipating

1715-551: The late 1960s. Bangs became a freelance writer in 1969, after reading an ad in Rolling Stone soliciting readers' reviews. His first accepted piece was a negative review of the MC5 album Kick Out the Jams , which he sent to Rolling Stone with a note requesting, if the magazine were to decline to publish the review, that he be given a reason for the decision; no reply was forthcoming, as

1764-483: The magazine did indeed publish the review. His 1970 review of Black Sabbath 's first album in Rolling Stone was scathing, rating them as imitators of the band Cream : Cream clichés that sound like the musicians learned them out of a book, grinding on and on with dogged persistence. Vocals are sparse, most of the album being filled with plodding bass lines over which the lead guitar dribbles wooden Claptonisms from

1813-429: The master's tiredest Cream days. They even have discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitized speedfreaks all over each other's musical perimeters yet never quite finding synch—just like Cream! But worse. Bangs wrote about the death of Janis Joplin in 1970 from a drug overdose: "It's not just that this kind of early death has become a fact of life that has become disturbing, but that it's been accepted as

1862-423: 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. The tendency towards aggressive, simplistic rock songs is a trend critics such as Lester Bangs have traced to as far back as Ritchie Valens ' 1958 version of the Mexican folk song " La Bamba ", which set in motion

1911-842: The personnel split and formed three different musical groups: All three bands used songs first written or performed by Rocket From The Tombs as parts of their repertoires: the Dead Boys were known for " Ain't It Fun ," "What Love Is," "Down in Flames," "Caught With the Meat in Your Mouth" (done by RFTT as "I'm Never Gonna Kill Myself Again") and " Sonic Reducer "; Pere Ubu went on to reinterpret "Final Solution," "Life Stinks" and "30 Seconds Over Tokyo"; Saucers played "Muckraker”, and “Frustration”. Rocket From The Tombs never recorded an album in their initial timespan, but various live recordings and demos circulated occasionally as bootlegs . Most of these were collected on

1960-739: The phenomenon. Bangs was enamored of the noise music of Lou Reed , and Creem gave exposure to artists such as Reed, David Bowie , Roxy Music , Captain Beefheart , Blondie , Brian Eno , and the New York Dolls years earlier than the mainstream press. Bangs wrote the essay/interview " Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves " about Reed in 1975. Creem was also among the earliest publications to give sizable coverage to hard rock and metal artists such as Motörhead , Kiss , Judas Priest , and Van Halen . After leaving Creem in 1976, he wrote for The Village Voice , Penthouse , Playboy , New Musical Express , and many other publications. He won

2009-762: The punk movement." 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 ; contemporaries Crushed Butler have been called "Britain's first proto-punk band." 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

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2058-538: The punk rock and related social and political movements. In a 1982 interview, he said: Well, basically, I just started out to lead [an interview] with the most insulting question I could think of. Because it seemed to me that the whole thing of interviewing as far as rock stars and that was just such a suck-up. It was groveling obeisance to people who weren't that special, really. It's just a guy, just another person, so what? A performer with his own band, he also appeared on stage with others at times. On one occasion, while

2107-467: The studio was under renovation but Merrill was helping and had the key. Birdland broke up within two months of the recording. The cassette tape from the session became the master, mixed by Ed Stasium and released by Leigh in 1986 as "Birdland" with Lester Bangs . In a review of the album, Robert Christgau gave it a B-plus and said, "musically he always had the instincts, and words were no problem." In 1980, Bangs traveled to Austin, Texas , where he met

2156-415: The tour's launch, and Cheetah Chrome announced his departure from Rocket From the Tombs on December 30, 2011, leaving David Thomas and Craig Willis Bell as the only remaining original members. In November 2015, the band released Black Record . Protopunk Proto-punk (or protopunk ) is rock music from the 1960s to mid-1970s that foreshadowed the punk rock movement. A retrospective label,

2205-519: Was David Thomas (then known as "Crocus Behemoth" (vocals, bass), Kim Zonneville (bass, vocals), Glenn "Thunderhand" Hach (guitar, vocals) and Tom "Foolery" Clements (drums). There was some fluctuation of the group's personnel, but what has come to be known as the "classic" lineup included, Thomas, Peter Laughner , Craig Willis Bell (a.k.a. Darwin Layne), Gene O'Connor (a.k.a. Cheetah Chrome ), and Johnny Madansky (a.k.a. " Johnny Blitz "). When RFTT disbanded,

2254-658: Was adopted by a number of New York bands, including the Stilettos , the Brats and Ruby and the Rednecks , 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 . The Detroit proto-punk sound also spread to Cleveland Ohio by the middle of the decade, where influential proto-punk bands including Pere Ubu and

2303-461: Was also a performing musician. The music critic Jim DeRogatis called him "America's greatest rock critic". Bangs was born in Escondido, California . He was the son of Norma Belle ( née Clifton) and Conway Leslie Bangs, a truck driver. Both of his parents were from Texas : his father from Enloe and his mother from Pecos County . Norma Belle was a devout Jehovah's Witness . Conway died in

2352-685: Was immediately influential for this reason. In the following years, this raw sound was being adopted by other British Invasion acts including the Who on their single " My Generation " (1965) and the Rolling Stones on their 1966 live album Got Live If You Want It! . 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 . One of

2401-616: Was later described as having a "frequent punk snarl." 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. The sound of these albums influenced a wave of subsequent bands in Michigan, which notably included

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