Re: NY Punk Scene vs. London Punk Scene

Better Punk scene?

The New York scene started by the NY Dolls via The Mercer Arts Center which essentially spilled over to CBGB's and Max's taking in anyone from the Dolls, Dictators, Ramones, Talking Heads, Heartbreakers, Television, Richard Hell & Voidoids, Mink Deville, Blondie, Tuff Darts, Suicide, Patti Smith, Pere Ubu, Mumps, Cherry Vanilla, Dead Boys, Devo, Jayne County and The Cramps. The Velvet Underground and Modern Lovers have been intentionally left out because they pre-date the CBGB's/Max's scene beginning circa '73-78.

or

The London scene (Roxy, Marquee Club, Speakeasy, etc.) kick-started by Eddie And The Hot Rods and cemented by the Pistols and Damned shortly thereafter taking in anyone from The Clash, The Jam, Sex Pistols, Adverts, Siouxsie & Banshees, Generation X, The Damned, Johnny Thunder's & Heartbreakers, Jayne County, Buzzcocks, Slits, X-Ray Specs, Stranglers, Vibrators, Subway Sect, Ian Dury, Eater, Only Ones, Slaughter & The Dogs, Cherry Vanilla and Sham 69.


I'd go with the NY scene because it was much more diverse. Most of the UK punk groups while not the same seemed to be more of a similar vein with another (unless, of course one would like to add Elvis Costello to the London roster for added diversity but I don't). However, some might prefer the more youthful exuberance of the London scene.

For me the NY scene hands down. Partially because, I don't tend to like politics in my music and that UK scene was so much more politicized (basically I like songs about girls). I mean I got no problem with the Queen.

But I also think of the UK as being mostly a singles thing. For me the Pistols, Buzzcocks and Jam were all at their best in their singles rather than full lengths.

Thunders/Heartbreakers to me belongs exclusively in the NY scene even though they were based in the UK and found their fame there, they are essentially fish outta water and I don't think Londoners ever took them to heart as "their" band, but rather they considered them visiting royalty.



Post Edited (03-02-06 03:03)

NY scene yes.
London bands all sounded the same and since I saw most of the NY bands in '74 and '75 the UK seemed a little late to hit on the new muzak. Plus Heartgreakers, Cherry Vanilla and Wayne/Jayne County were New York bands to me.
The youth thing was the difference since most NY bands were in their mid to late 20s or older (Debbie Harry) while the UK bands were all teens or younger (Eater). It was inspiring to see a band of 18 year olds like the Buzzcocks play 3 chord tunes when you were 18 yourself and think you could do that because no matter how hard you tried there was no way you could do the things Lenny Kaye and Patti Smith, Television, Pere Ubu, even the Dead Boys could do.

cleveland

I agree that County, Cherry Vanilla and Heartbreakers were essentially NY bands but since these three sort of emigrated to the UK I listed them in both categories especially Thunders/Heartbreakers with the Track Records affiliation and all.

We have a vote for the Cleveland Punk scene. Dead Boys, Rocket From The Tombs/Pere Ubu, Styrenes, Electric Eels, Mirrors, Friction, Peter Laughner/Peter And The Wolves, etc.

In my opinion, Laughner's take on Ain't It Fun still remains the definitive version of that song. Even his "Jane Scott" intro is great.

you forgot the mighty pagans

NP
varnaline
sweet life

Damn right, Baker.

I would go with NY also. Reason being that in London a lot of the bands mentioned found success on the charts and were popular nationally for a time no matter how brief. The BBC also made it easy for punk bands to make it, just ban one of their songs. Wasn't there at least one banned song that went number 1? So as a teen in the 80's, discovering this music through the glorious compilation 'Burning Ambitions' was great but I also knew that I was maybe alone in the US but not in the UK.

However, with the NY scene (which admittedly, I really didn't discover until the early 90's) of the 70's; the end of it is usually pegged to when Blondie, the Talking Heads and the Ramones (to some extent) went national. But even in the late 80's/early 90's, the NY scene wasn't known too well. It was something that I could discover and feel like I was part of a select club. Of course, reading Clinton Heylin's excellent "From the Velvets to the Voidoids" (which covered NY, Cleveland and Detroit) really made me feel like I was there while I haven't found anything comparable to the London scene (though I haven't read "London's Dreaming").

So in the end it's all about me, me, me, ME!

Which band from what city did McLaren try and exploit first?

Screw trying to decide. What's better - air or water?

fire

Here's the question - would the NY scene be remembered as being as important as it's remembered to be without the London scene? Local scenes come and go, but only a few become true cultural phenomenons, and London is where that happened to punk. The NY bands influenced and inspired the London bands and then when London blew up, the spotlight from it got reflected back on NY, and was that what lifted the NY scene out of "local scenedom" to be remembered as more important than, say, the Paisley Underground or the Elephant 6 Collective? If the London punks hadn't turned punk into a revolution that really did change the course of music, how would the New Yorkers be remembered? As a true landmark, or a speed bump?

One of those things that's impossible to answer, I know. But interesting to ponder.

london has a great, sensational, 'yellow' journalism; colorful magazines in which an artist/band was made totally famous for one month and then finished. it fueled a lot of excitement.

Good thread Shizzle. For me there's no "better" one. Both scenes made important and distinct contributions.

What makes both fascinating and relevant are their respective styles. The NY scene was more eclectic, while the London one more uniform in sound. The British punks popularised and defined the genre to posterity, but as Richard Hell said, "we we're more interesting".

mclaren dawdled with the dolls in ny before he found and fired up the pistols in uk

There you have it folks. Let it heretofore be known that while Malcolm McLaren was in New York (pre London punk scene) that he wasted not only his own time but also completely wasted the Dolls. Hence the very appropriate Robbins term "dawdler." Not ever a Doll at all, ah yes, he IS a mere dawd.
No intrinsic value in kissing ass?
Hehehe, all you self-worshiping fools, certainly there is!
Red Leather pants and safety pins.



Post Edited (03-06-06 17:35)

"Here's the question - would the NY scene be remembered as being as important as it's remembered to be without the London scene? If the London punks hadn't turned punk into a revolution that really did change the course of music, how would the New Yorkers be remembered? As a true landmark, or a speed bump?"


That's an interesting question but even if the London Punk seen hadn't exploded and caused the cultural phenomenon that it did I would think that the NY Punk bands would still get credit for the countless bands they would inspire with or without the UK Punk explosion. One of the reasons why the NY Punk scene was so special, and in my opinion superior to the London scene, is because it didn't just spawn three chord punk bands but also those genres such as New Wave, Post-Punk, No Wave, Industrial/Synth-Pop, Alternative or anything else flying against the prevailing commercial music trends.

The New Yorkers would still be remembered as immensely influential without the London Punk scene, however, the London scene certainly did accelerate the NY influence even if it was received second hand. Each of the NY bands had their own singular influence on Rock in one way or another and I'd have to believe that even without the UK scene they would have ultimately been perceived as an enormous influence collectively.

If you really think about it the average person will tell you that Punk Rock originated in the UK with the Sex Pistols anyway. I mean, ask your mailman, mechanic or accountant if they've ever heard of Richard Hell, the Dead Boys or Pere Ubu. Then ask them if they've heard of The Clash or Pistols. Point being is that even without the nototiety the NY scene still lacks (on a poular level) their influence is still immeasurable.

> If you really think about it the average person will tell you that Punk Rock
> originated in the UK with the Sex Pistols anyway. I mean, ask your
> mailman, mechanic or accountant if they've ever heard of Richard Hell,
> the Dead Boys or Pere Ubu. Then ask them if they've heard of The Clash
> or Pistols.

I hope this doesn't come across as snobbish, but perhaps it says something that "the average person" knows more about UK punk than about most NYC punk.

Delvin wrote:

> > If you really think about it the average person will tell you
> that Punk Rock
> > originated in the UK with the Sex Pistols anyway. I mean, ask
> your
> > mailman, mechanic or accountant if they've ever heard of
> Richard Hell,
> > the Dead Boys or Pere Ubu. Then ask them if they've heard of
> The Clash
> > or Pistols.
>
> I hope this doesn't come across as snobbish, but perhaps it
> says something that "the average person" knows more about UK
> punk than about most NYC punk.


i'm not sure the average person does know more about uk punk than they do of that old cbgb crowd...

ask them if they've heard of the talking heads, ramones or blondie. then ask them if they've heard of the damned, jam and buzzcocks. you can load this one however you want...

but the only thing you prove is that the average person doesn't much care. hehe

As an outsider, I have been fortunate enough to witness clips of Shane McGowan wearing the Union Jack while simultaneously pouncing around on the skulls of the British Elite.

So, I'm humbled by such things "BRITISH".



Post Edited (03-12-06 20:41)

Speaking as a Brit, and one who lives in London though only for a year or so, I would say that the interesting thing about the US and UK Punk scenes is not only the difference in the artists, but also the evolution.
Here in Britain, punk started with very much with the reductive ‘no frills’ approach and for all of its greatness, that largely led to postcard-punk gonks with pink Mohicans puking up the same Chuck Berry riffs. What is more interesting about the British punk scene is that post Pistols you had a glorious period of post-punk outfits: PiL, Magazine, Joy Division, The Pop Group, The Slits, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Killing Joke etc etc etc………suddenly, for example, the reggae that had provided the club soundtrack to punk parties in London, Bristol etc was being made.

What seems interesting to me, and please forgive me if you disagree, there seems to be an opposite shift in momentum in the US. Whereas UK punk became more expansive in sound, after Television, Pere Ubu, No Wave and so on you seemed to get a reduction to a more ‘pure’ sound. By that I mean Hardcore. Whilst Black Flag, Dead Kennedys etc were all brilliant – there’s something that seems very narrow minded about Hardcore in its musical sensibility.

It just seems curious that in the US there seemed to be a shift from Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Television, Suicide, Teenage Jesus, DNA, Branca et al to a more straight up, no frills, rock sound whereas in the UK it seemed to move in the opposite direction: e.g. Pistols to PiL, Sham 69 to Throbbing Gristle. Obviously, there are many exceptions to this observation. However, I think it is testament to how both scenes really fed off of each other and this continued in the 1980s.

What do others think of this?

It's a valid point , but really the US equivalent of the British post-punk scene is our post-hardcore scene of the early 80s.

By 1982-84 you have : REM, Husker Du (growing by leaps and bounds), the Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Mission of Burma. The slew of bands Robert Christgau labeled "Amer-indie" that seemingly sprung up from nowhere were astonishingly diverse and expansive, by any definition they were forward looking acts.

US hardcore definitely fed off the socio-political ideas behind UK punk, so in effect hardcore was almost a re-starting point, - once the decks had been cleared anything could happen.

Thought::
US is a much bigger country than GB.
Therefore, in some contexts, it clarifies to define Black Flag/DK as Californian examples of the style; distinct from NYC.

I always saw US hardcore as analagous to Oi! and that sort of stuff in the UK - the Anti-Nowhere League, etc. So just as hardcore punk didn't necessarily replace post-punk in the US, post-punk didn't completely displace hardcore punk in the UK.

Though I favor the NY Punk scene over the UK scene for its diversity I do have to give the UK scene props for injecting reggae forms into their music (or at least making some concerted effort to do so).

I do agree that U.S. Hardcore was very narrow-minded musically and seemed to actually sort of move backward musically without the originality or intellect of the previous scene that had recently ended. While I'm sure they were passionate about what they were doing many of those Califormia Hardcore bands answer was to just play louder and faster without regard to much melody (tuneless and kinetic). Ironically, it appeared that bands like the Dead Kennedys and Germs were more influenced by the Pistols and UK Punk than American Punk.

Still, I don't know if you can define U.S. Post-Punk solely by the early 80's American Hardcore scene as there were still bands like Jim Carroll and The Cramps filling that Post-Punk void in addition to those Hardcore bands like Husker Du that really emerged as something more than just a run-of-the-mill Hardcore outfit. As already mentioned, REM and what would become College Radio would come to be another component of American Post-Punk.

Oh God – yes – all of you. The point I was making was the weird dynamism that seemed to be mirror images in UK and US.
If you define the punk explosion as being, say, 1976 – 1978, then the moment that they seem to branch out from beyond their staring points (eg NY or London) one suddenly seems to become post punk and the other hardcore.
Re size of the US – fair point. Though please don’t let that make you think that the entire UK scene centres around London cause it doesn’t. London bands are and were frequently feted solely for being from London. I am from Bristol myself and we are all very influenced there by the dub soundsystems, reggae and – punk wise – The Pop Group and Rip Rig and Panic.
Similarly, there is a vast difference between the Manchester sound of Buzzcocks, Fall, Joy Division, Magazine or the Leeds scene of Gang of Four and Mekons to the ‘London’ sound.



Anyhoo – I always have to admit that my record collection revolves around the US bands more: though the British bands are always heroes to me through a sense of it being ‘ours’. Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Flipper, Scratch Acid and Half Japanese are some of the bands I really rate from the 1980s, though my faves have to be Big Black, The Cramps, Sonic Youth and Chrome.

Also – has anyone read the excellent book Rip It Up And Start All Over Again? Kinda the story of Post Punk – from a largely Ukcentric perspective – but with some excellent stuff on bands from around the world.
If anyone has read it, what do people think of The Residents’ output and influence on punk sensibility?

A little off topic but still relavent:

NME Top Ten All time Best British Albums of all time (Yuk, I know another top ten list!) Amazing the punk influence of the 70's on todays music listeners still holds true....

The Top Ten is as follows:
1. The Stone Roses 'The Stone Roses'
2. The Smiths 'The Queen Is Dead'
3. Oasis 'Definitely Maybe'
4. Sex Pistols 'Never Mind The Bollocks'
5. Arctic Monkeys 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not'
6. Blur 'Modern Life Is Rubbish'
7. Pulp 'Different Class'
8. The Clash 'London Calling'
9. The Beatles 'Revolver'
10. The Libertines 'Up The Bracket'

fuckin goddamnit!
this post has been reamed out so many times it's neuron, (you fackin neurotics) has collapsed.
Get this, bunghole bobs...NY NY NY NY NY NY NY
Buy a decent fuckin needle (thanks Peter @ SOUNDSMITHS) and spin Television, Ramones, the dolls or the Dictators.
For fucks sake discussion over.

actually the dics, ramones and dolls sound better fuzzy

hmm, I saw an old zenith gargantuan floor model on the side of the road earlier today...i'm goin back to check out the turntable condition.