You're answer's probably above Patrick - and I really don't mean this in a patronising way at all.....

But you had to be there.

I was 17 in 1976, 1977 was my first year at Uni, away from home for the first time.

I'd spent the 70's progressing (sic) from Bolan, through Slade and Glam, into Prog - ELP, Yes and Genesis. A bit of Clapton and a bit of Metal. Bowie pretty much a constant throughout.

As 1976 turned into 1977, I was mostly listening to Hotel California and Rumours.

And thinking there must be something a bit more exciting than this.

Then one day I was idly flicking through the second hand stuff at Skeleton Records in Birkenhead, when this unholy racket came through the speakers.

"Eyeeeeeee aaaam aaan anticherrrrrrisssst!!

And that was it. Year zero. All the prog flogged, a revitalised live scene with some of the most visceral, emotional moments of my young life.

Off to Sheffield to see the first shoots of an eclectic electronic scene that was given permission to flourish on the back of punk's diy ethic - the first Human League, the Cabs, ClockDVA. Manchester close by where the Pistols' shows at the Lesser Free Trade Hall kickstarted a massive City scene - The Fall, Buzzcocks, Warsaw, Johnny Clarke. And then back home in Liverpool another, completely different scene growing around and from the Crucial Three.

Nothing before, or since, has come close for me.

Yes, I know, the dinosaurs never really went away, and over the years I have re-bought virtually all the stuff I sold in '77, and I do know that a lot of punk/new wave was not really very good.

But at the time it was so, so special and important.

Ten years earlier, it may have been the same for those hitting maturity in 1967. People born later than me might have had their revelation when rave culture appeared, or (God help us) Britpop. I don't know, because it wasn't 'my' time.

1977 was. And I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

Weasel words in your last sentence Patrick! If anyone howls in protest at your historical rewriting, quoting a song or a band as evidence of Punk's blistering brilliance, you can always claim that the song or the band are "Noo Wave" rather than punk. Brilliant!

By and large though, I'd agree with you. Wasn't it just a marketing exercise really, once the record companies caught on, to spin a few bands into a movement of sorts? The tabloids really lapped it up and made as much of it as they could. At Christmas in 1977 I was amused by the reaction of my fellow workers, who shouted down my choice of "Never Mind The Bollocks" on the ghetto blaster in the sorting office, but were happy to let me play Supertramp (or whatever) at ear-splitting volumes. Patriots to a man, they HATED "God Save The Queen" with a vengeance reserved these days exclusively for terrorists, real or alleged.

Some of The Pistols could actually play their instruments, as could (some) of the Clash and the Damned. Almost every other band that considered themselves "Punk" rather than "New Wave" left, at best, the odd single for posterity. Serendipitous songwriting flashes in the pan, no more, no less.

Any bands that left a real legacy of recorded music were just lumped into "New Wave" at the time, but really just happened to be contemporaries of the Pistols. Anyone who thought their band idols might be "just like us" would have been sadly disabused of that illusion by many "New Wave" musos, with or without Karate belts, had they expressed it.

I do think the quality, if not the importance, of punk is overstated. I mean, there's a couple of bands who still sound great if you dig out the albums; but, by and large, much of the music they sought to eclipse has aged much better. And, indeed, those bloated and complacent rock stars of the mid 70s weren't easy to shift. The Eagles are still with us; more's the pity (and yet Jackson Browne's material from this period still sounds great. It's a fine line). I also think that many of the American punk/new wave bands have aged much better than most of the UK ones - Talking Heads, Blondie and the good Patti Smith stuff still sound fine, and not so desperate to prove their angry credentials.

I remember reading On The Road for the first time and discussing it with a friend of mine who was much more literary minded than I was, and he said that he thought Kerouac was much more significant for what he meant to literature rather than for the books he actually wrote. That's kind of the way I feel about punk: something had to give, and thank God it happened. But in terms of music that actually lasted , I think there are pretty slim pickings.

But, it may well be a case of 'you had to be there'. I was 5 in 1977.

way of putting it. You may have something there.

...I wasn't around for punk. In fact, I wasn't really around for the Smiths or acid house either. Too young for Britpop...

Listening to the original, most well-known punk stuff (Pistols, Clash etc.), I personally think most of it's rubbish. However, I'm of the persuasion that Belle and Sebastian are the greatest band ever, so I'm hardly going to be really into punk am I?

The reason I'm responding (seeing as I don't have an awful lot to add to the punk debate) is as I've never been part of a scene, what scenes are there now? I'm 21, and other than a phase a few years ago of listening to an awful lot of Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine and generally being an "angry misunderstood teenager," there's not an awful lot to feel part of in my opinion. I'm not disagreeing that there's some great music about, but there's no movement like punk you can be part of, and no band like The Smiths that you can live through.

The only real scene I can think of is nu-rave at the moment, but that's just a load of NME scenesters with glowsticks riding on the coattails of Klaxons as far as I can tell.

Maybe I'm asking the wrong people (no offence intended) seeing as the Word makes a point of not following scenes or being over-influenced by hype, but it's just a general wondering really...

but Paul put it better than I could (i was 5 in '77 so much more interested in wookiees and stuff)

I never really "got" punk, but listening to The Jam's Down In The Tube Station at Midnight, and maybe The Pistols' Pretty Vacant recently, even though I'd heard them a million times before, I did sort of start to get a sense of how exciting they could have been for a teenager at the time, the sense that something was going on, and that you could be part of it.

As an avowed prog fan I've always felt that I should hate punk on principle. The Sex Pistols, we're told, were loud, hard and angry, and yet Black Sabbath's Paranoid, from years earlier, always sounded infinitely louder, harder and angrier.

Of course by the late 70s Sabbath were coked out of their brains and having rings run around them by the likes of Van Halen. And pop has always been about so much more than the actual music.

I was ever so slightly dismayed, while watching the otherwise excellent Pop What is it Good For, to hear a lot of the usual cliches about prog rock (ie it was all really long solos and about goblins). But I think deep down I prefer it that way so I have something to be annoyed about. Thank god Genesis will never be hip (and have people like Fearne Cotton gushing about them - now that would be *really* annoying)

(i was 5 in '77 so much more interested in wookiees and stuff)

I remember nothing from 1977 except Star Wars. Not the death of Elvis, not the birth of my brother, not punk. Vague memories of the Silver Jubilee. The rest is all Chewbacca toys.

My personal take on the Libertines is Emperor's New Clothes syndrome, I'm afraid. I've never seen instrumental ineptitude as a major blow against The Man, more a sign that music is a means to an end, rather than an obsession. And I write this as someone who was 12 in 1977 - The Pistols and The Damned might not have gone in for half-hour long bass solos, but they could play.
I managed to navigate a twisty path at school: most of my year embraced punk with the fervour of kids who had discovered a type of music that all adults hated, whereas I also loved Rush and Zeppelin and so was on occasion categorised as a "smelly" (being the only one in my year at an all-boys grammar in provincial Walsall with long(ish) hair didn't help…). But I can still enjoy all of the above - and I still think punk was the essential kick up the arse that music needs every so often.
But, as ever, to each their own. Apart from anything with Simon Cowell involved, which is self-evidently shite.

The key thing about any particular musical era or movement is that when you are young it is your music, not your parents' music, not your older brother's music, not the nerd down the street's music. Debates about musical competence or longevity are largely irrelevant.

In Billy Bragg's book The Progressive Patriot he writes about punk, and what it meant to him and how it re-energised rock music for people of his age. He was in a band wanting to be the Rolling Stones until punk emerged, and even then he didn't trust it at first. When the Jam and the Clash appeared, making an essentially British sound, that's when it clicked with him, because it was something he could identify with. That's how it works - a feeling of belonging, or clannishness that comes from being into stuff your mates like, and everybody else doesn't.

Personally I had become a bit jaded with music (in 77 I was 22). But for me it was The Feelgoods, Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads that got me listening again. Hardly punk, but very much in the spirit of stripping all the overblown nonsense away and getting back to the core of the music.

However whether punk was important or not is really only a debate that exists within a certain strata of music fans. I expect for most people the 70's was the era of disco and Saturday Night Fever!

Speaking as a fourteen year old in 1977. I think I'd just repeat what Paul has to say completely.

It was SLF in 1978 that did it for me...WE'RE GONNA BLOW UP IN THEIR FACE!!

I was just lookin through the 1970s Festive 50s.

Does anyone remember The Motors being at number one in 1977? amazingly they knocked Stairway to Heaven off the top slot. I've not knowingly heard a Motors track in 25 years! I used to love them.

The things I go back to now from those days and seem to have stood the test of time are The Clash, The Specials, Ian Dury, Television, The Modern Lovers, The Ramones, John Cooper Clarke, Dr Feelgood, Wreckless Eric, Elvis and anything else involving Nick Lowe...

The punk music didn't keep my attention for very long, but the punk attitude injected everything around it with just a bit more energy, creativity and urgency. The stuff that came after just seemed a little more interesting.

New Boots and Panties (1977) and the first Specials album (1979) seem to have wormed their way into a huge amount of modern music and are still great today.

In the early 70's there was a great deal of polarisation between the 'charts' bands and 'album' bands. On the one hand groups like Mud, Showaddywaddy etc and the other bands (Serious music was played by 'bands' then) like 'Yes' and of course Zeppelin. The interesting thing about punk for me was that the division was blown away over about 6 months.

As a prog Fan and a teenager in '76 I felt decidedly suspicious of Punk, but the sheer fun of singles like 'Gary Gilmore's eyes' 'Babylon's Burning' and 'You've got my number' had me converted in a trice. Yes there was a load of rubbish about, but the sheer hedonistic joy of jumping about to Punk made that a small price to pay.

Whether you like Punk (I do) or not it's almost impossible to overstate the impact and importance of it - Punk turned music, fashion, media, and design industries up side down, all of which still reference the sound, attitude and look as undiluted source material today - walk down almost any high Street and you'll see the shadow of Punk, Sex Pistols, Westwood and McClaren somewhere. There's no other movement that's endured like Punk and been viewed as almost relevant and contemporary 30 years after it's sell by date.

A couple of points worth considering ..

Without the Pistols Free Trade Hall gigs it's doubtful that the Manchester scene would have been the same
Morrisey, New Order, Paul Morley and Tony Wilson were all part of the audience energised by the Pistols performances

Without New Wave that followed it's possible that Elvis Costello, Paul Weller and Andy Partridge would still be plugging away in the provinces.

Have a peep at this and see what all the fuss was about

in 1966. Discuss.

Points taken, Dave, but the Lesser Free Trade Hall holds about 50 people. For everyone who claims they saw the Pistols there to have done so, it'd have to be twice the size of Old Trafford. That gig was really influential only in retrospect. Since I have no street credibility (remember that?) to protect, I will chirpily admit that I once owned the flyer for the Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall. It was mine for exactly forty-six seconds: the time it took me to walk to the nearest litter bin. A year or so later I saw the Clash at the Rainbow (blows on knuckles and buffs lapel). The truth? Apart from "Police and Thieves" -- not exactly their song -- it was a right mess. I'd seen bands just as competent and entertaining supporting Edgar Broughton at Oldham Tech. (Most of them got spat at too, strangely enough.)

And while it may be true that without punk Paul Weller would still be plugging away in the provinces, it may equally be true that without punk Rory Gallagher -- surely its most unjust victim -- would still be alive. And I know which one I'd rather have still around today, if forced to choose.

As for Elvis Costello, I suspect that with or without punk he would eventually have fulfilled his ambitions to trot off to Nashville to record with Tammy Wynette's svengali, play the Albert Hall backed by Elvis's crew from the Vegas burger years, and have his songs arranged for string quartet. There wasn't much pogoing going on there, was there?

Mid-70's Britain was more like Eastern Europe before the collapse of the Berlin Wall than anyone now could imagine. A cradle-to grave socialist paradise gone wrong where men wore brown flares & inappropriate hair, women were old by the time they were 30, food was terrible, beer was terrible, goods were shoddy, work largely involved doing nothing & everyone lived in council houses. It was fucking grim, let me tell you. Then, at its grimmest, punk came along. Most of it wasn't very good but that didn't matter because it was fun & it was exciting - commodities as rare as a new BT phone (there was a nine month waiting list) in 1976. And no, it didn't change everything, but it blew a lot of cobwebs away & made people realise that it was easier than everyone thought to be creative - even if you were a bit rubbish - and a burst of creativity ensued which Brain Salad Surgery had singularly failed to inspire. I haven't listened to a punk record in years but I look back on that time only with fondness. I don't think the sheer joy my C90 of the punky bits of 1977's Festive Fifty gave me has ever been replicated by any other music.

I was 21 in 1977 and Punk/New Wave was a pretty young thing that although not exactly replacing my 6 year love of all things prog did initiate a change in my listening habits.Was it just the scene or was it circumstance? To be truthful I dont really know. The circumstance was that at that time I had a serious girlfriend some 4 years younger than me so there was always going to be an opportunity to be influenced somewhat by what she and her 6th form friends were listening to. As much as Elvis Costello, Talking Heads,Jonathan Richman, Blondie, The Damned, The Clash etc it was also around this time that Dire Straits emerged too. I dont think Punk was the music so much as the attitude -'we are young and we can do what we want'. Compare this with todays X Factor/ Boy Band scenario and there is little wonder that the era is revered as a special time.
I look back on it with fondness but no more so than 5/6 years earlier when I was listening to Purple,Sabbath,Yes,Genesis et al.I am not that sure that it is significantly different to the Teddy Boy era and the flower power era that preceded it but the time since is notable for its absence of any new groundbreaking genre.
A very good chronicle of this time is the Julian Cope autobiographies which perfectly evoke the prevailing attitudes.

If you were there at the time or just after have a peep at this blog piece I posted yesterday, a few scans (with prices) from the 1981 BOY catalogue - includes stringy mohair jumpers, early Adam and the Ants T shirts, Crazy Colour hair dye, muslin T shirts and Punky troos.

http://planetmondo.blogspot.com/2008/01/blackmail-boy.html

Good:

Moved music into new period where otherwise music would have stagnated with hangover from 60s still going on, even though great records were still being made.

Brought rock back into singles charts, although highest sellers were still likes of Boney M and Abba. Was music suited to great singles, not so many great albums though.

Bad:

NME and others dictating that only punk, new wave and post-punk counted and persuading us impressionable youngsters we had to agree thus dismissing much non-punk great music. And in the UK you were supposed to pretend you were working class and not too clever, whereas in US this was not an issue. Supposed to be about being different but ended up as conformity.

Trend toward hype of artist, looking for next big thing - leading to loss of longevity, all over after the debut album, as still goes on today?

Just a few thoughts

The hypocrisy of John Lydon admitting that he liked Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin all along, but rubbishing them back in the day because he wanted to appear cool. That is really sad, if you ask me.

Why did we need punk?

because of the following:

and this

and this

I could go on...

It always winds me up when people, particularly critics, try to be overly prescriptive about music, telling us it "should" be this or it "should" be that. Says who, exactly? Punk was particularly guilty of thrusting this kind of critical fascism in our faces, and it's never been allowed to be properly challenged.
For example, how many time have you heard some tedious rock hack telling us "pop music should be a furious, three minute blast of adrenalin" or "pop music should be a sugar-rush of frothy, meaningless, throwaway fun" or something equally restrictive and narrow-minded?
Sure, pop music CAN be these things - and some of the greatest records of all time are exactly that. But that doesn't mean it HAS to be. Even if you don't like 'em (and I don't particularly) 25-minute prog epics complete with drum solo and 12-string guitar workouts are just as valid forms of musical expression. In fact, if there's one thing you could say pop music genuinely SHOULD be, it should be a bit of everything. That's why the all-time faves playlist on my iPod has The Undertones next to S-Club 7 next to, God help me, Del Amitri.

I was there and it was a great time to be young and into live music. There were hundreds of bands that were great live and many went on to make classic singles. These bands were connecting with a disenfranchished audience of teens, many with nothing but the dole queue to look forward too. (The Dole released my favourite ever b side title - Hungry Men No Longer Steal Sheep But Are There Hanging Judges). Then there were the small indie labels who sprung into action and whole new scenes opened up, quirky bands like Young Marble Giants and Orange Juice got a chance to be heard.

It's easy not to look beyond the Clash, Pistols, Damned or Ramones but punk opened the door to a new way of doing business that didn't need the man in the suit to sell records and didn't need to make records to appeal to a mass audience but just enough people to finance the next release.

Without 'punk' would the likes of Ian Dury or Elvis Costello have got a look in? I bloody well doubt it! I think the lasting changes have been cultural rather than musical - you only have too look at the diversity of musical trends now and the declining number of sales needed for a number 1 hit. There is a much broader, commercially viable scene out there today

On Saturday I went to see the London date of Henry Rollins' spoken word tour.

One of the many topics that he touched upon was the effect that punk had on him in his teens and what a big thing it was to be asked to perform a one-off live show with the surviving members of The Ruts.

I don't think that anyone who was there that night and saw Henry up on stage, unabashedly eulogising about the music that moved him as a young adult and continues to move him 30 years on, would say that punk was worthless. Maybe you can say "I don't like punk", but you have to recognise that for some people it was a very big deal that changed their lives and the way they thought about music.

Doubters at this point will be relieved to hear that, while punk in spirit, Rollins' performance was decidedly prog rock in length, lasting over 3 hours.

I've never quite 'got' punk. Nothing at all against its fans or the musicians (though some might use that term loosely!), it's the posturing from the media that really gets my back up. There is, as has been noted here, a real lack of objectivity about it in its coverage that I have rarely seen in any other genre. The genre it supposedly 'killed off' (though it is interesting how so many punk/post-punk types acknowledge it as an influence), progressive rock, is often dismissed with blanket terms, as if everything about that was crap and everything about punk was perfect. A quite ludicrous idea, but one that seems to inform a lot of programmes and articles I've witnessed.

I think The Damned's debut, The Buzzcocks' 'Another Music In A Different Kitchen' and The Sex Pistols' 'Never Mind The Bollocks' all still pack a punch, but I cannot claim to like too much else within the genre. The appeal of The Clash continues to elude me; the debut in particular I don't like at all. 'London Calling' I like a bit more but even then, I don't love it. That's before we've even got onto the likes of The Lurkers, Sham 69, Slaughter And The Dogs et al. A lot of it is just sloppy, badly played rock and roll riffs to my ears, that does not (to me) justify the coverage it gets.

The post-punk bands are another kettle of fish though...

PunxNotDead!