Dead Head & I Hate Led Zeppelin

If Webster’s had an illustration to accompany the definition for punk, it would depict a guy with a Mohawk, a spiked collar, and ripped clothing just barely held together by a few safety pins. This punk is probably giving you the finger—and quite possibly the two-fingered Fuck You favored by the Brits.

In its earliest days, however, punk was an artistic free-for-all, with acts as disparate as Patti Smith and The Ramones arising out of New York while Black Flag and the Go-Gos surfaced in L.A. In Chicago, the punk scene was home not just to musicians but to art school kids and drag queens.

The history of punk has been documented in several places, and more and more memoirs seem to be on the way. But you can patch together an entertaining portrait of the early years by listening to some of Marc Maron’s recent and excellent interviews on his WTF podcast. John Doe, Mike Watt, and David Byrne were all quick to point out the diversity of those early days.

John Doe: “The original punk rock scene in LA was eclectic. It was the Weird-Os and the Screamers and the Germs and Fear and the Controllers and the Alley Cats and the Go-Gos… it was all arty and then rock and roll. "

Mike Watt: “For us, punk was never a style of music… it was anything… it was a state of mind.” When Maron mentions, “No one sounds like you guys,” Watt is quick to shoot back: “We thought that was the point though! We thought that was part of the movement!” He then charmingly reminisces about discovering a John Coltrane record and assuming it was an older guy playing punk.

David Bryne: (recalling the scene at CBGBs) “There was a kid, Steve Forbert, a folk singer from Mississippi who came in and he became part of the thing… not punky at all. There was another, like, progressive jazz group, I forget what they were called, where they’d gone to Berkeley or whatever and these kids could really, really play and sing and all that kind of stuff. Our jaws just dropped and it was like, what is that doing here? But all that was kind of accepted, which was kind of great. It wasn’t until later that things got competitive…”

So how did it go from a free-for-all to the singular, angry image that one tends to conjure when hearing the word punk? Artistic movements often seem to have a life and momentum of their own, and it can be simplistic to pin a larger phenomenon down to a single novel, painting, or song… though in this case an obvious answer does offer itself up. As John Doe said on WTF, “The Ramones and all of us—we wanted to be famous. We wanted to be popular. And then the Sex Pistols came in and fucked it all up for everybody.”

If punk’s not your thing, then the Sex Pistols are probably the band you most immediately associate with it. I’m certain it would be the #1 response on Family Feud. Considering that they remain the most iconic band in an iconoclastic genre, it’s worth noting how they actually came together. It’s not the story of four scrappy friends with a dream. They were deliberately assembled by a manager, Malcolm McLaren, who wanted to create and promote a punk band. They were in search of a lead singer when they spotted John Lyndon walking up the street, wearing an I HATE Pink Floyd t-shirt. “I personalized it myself,” he later boasted.

Of course, no one just decides to be popular. The public has to go along with it. Since other bands were just as willing, why, then, did the Sex Pistols take hold? I suspect it’s because they gave everyone what they wanted. If you were at an age when you wanted to believe the grown-ups were idiots and the world was fucked, well, the Sex Pistols were basically providing the soundtrack to your angst. And if you were outside of this new and bizarre scene and you wanted to hate it but couldn’t quite put your finger on why, well, the Sex Pistols did that work for you. Hate us! They seemed to be screaming.

Even if the Sex Pistols never existed, I very much doubt punk would’ve remained a free-for-all forever. One way or another, it would’ve codified into a more singular sound, and a good deal of snotty, irreverent angst would likely have been at the forefront of it all.

This brings me back to that t-shirt John Lyndon was wearing that day when the band first laid eyes on him. I Hate Pink Floyd. I doubt the Teen Idles or Screeching Weasel had John Lyndon’s t-shirt in mind when they wrote “Dead Head” and “I Hate Led Zeppelin” (respectively but not respectfully), but these songs send the same message: You know that thing the previous generation loved? We hate it. We are drawing a line between it and us. We are not you.

In my profile I make some claims about placing great works of art side by side. This post is different. I don't think these songs are great. But they’re fun and they’re funny and they perfectly express the playful irreverence that we now associate with punk. And while these aren't songs that win a spot on your regular rotation, it can be fun to play them for your friends—particularly to burst their nostalgic bubble.