US '77 / CBGB Punk
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US '77 / CBGB Punk is the New York-centered first wave: minimal pop speed, art-rock nerves, street poetry, glam residue and downtown weirdness sharing the same small-stage ecosystem. It is less uniform than UK '77 punk: Ramones made cartoon-fast minimalism, Television stretched guitar interplay, Patti Smith fused poetry and rock, and Suicide stripped everything down to drum machine menace. The common thread is a lower-Manhattan rejection of arena rock through style, attitude and economy.
History
CBGB became the symbolic home, but the broader scene included Max's Kansas City, lofts, fanzines and labels such as Sire. Ramones codified punk's fast-pop grammar, while Television, Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Blondie, Talking Heads, Dead Boys and Suicide showed how elastic the scene actually was. The New York first wave influenced British punk, new wave, post-punk, no wave, indie rock and hardcore even when its musicians sounded wildly different from one another.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Please Kill Me oral history
- CBGB histories
- AllMusic New York punk biographies
- Sire Records and early punk reissue notes