Punk rock

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Punk rock
Stylistic origins:	Rock and roll - Rockabilly - Garage rock - Frat rock - Psychedelic rock - Pub rock - Glam rock - Protopunk
Cultural origins:	mid-1970s United States, United Kingdom, and Australia
Typical instruments:	Vocals - Guitar - Bass - Drums - occasional use of other instruments
Mainstream popularity:	Topped charts in UK during late 1970s. International commercial success for pop punk and ska punk, mid-1990s–2000s.
Derivative forms:	New Wave - Post-punk - Alternative rock - Emo
Subgenres
Anarcho-punk - Art punk - Garage punk - Glam punk - Hardcore - Horror punk - Oi! - Riot Grrrl - Skate punk - Christian punk - Nazi punk
Fusion genres
Anti-folk - Celtic punk - Chicano punk - Cowpunk - Deathcountry - Deathrock - Folk punk - Pop punk - Psychobilly - Punkabilly - Punk blues - Ska punk - 2 Tone
Regional scenes
Argentina - Australia - Brazil - California - Germany - Uruguay - Yugoslavia
Other topics
DIY ethic - First wave punk - Queercore - Punk fashion - Punk forerunners - Punk ideologies - Punk movies - Punk fanzines - Punk subculture - Punk timeline - Second wave punk

Punk rock is an anti-establishment rock music genre and movement that emerged in the mid-1970s. Preceded by a variety of protopunk music of the 1960s and early 1970s, punk rock developed between 1974 and 1977 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, where groups such as The Clash, Ramones and The Sex Pistols were recognized as the vanguard of a new musical movement.

Punk bands, eschewing the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock, created short, fast, hard music, with stripped-down instrumentation and often political or nihilistic lyrics. The associated punk subculture expresses youthful rebellion, distinctive clothing styles, a variety of anti-authoritarian ideologies, and a DIY (do it yourself) attitude.

Punk rock became a major phenomenon in the United Kingdom during the late 1970s; its popularity elsewhere was more limited. During the 1980s, forms of punk rock emerged in small scenes around the world, often rejecting commercial success and association with mainstream culture. By the turn of the century, punk rock's legacy had led to development of the alternative rock movement, and new punk bands popularized the genre decades after its first heyday.

Contents 1 Characteristics 2 Pre-history 2.1 Protopunk 2.2 Origin of the term punk 3 Early history 3.1 New York 3.2 The UK and Australia 3.3 The second wave 4 Subgenres and derivative forms 4.1 New Wave 4.2 Post-punk 4.3 Hardcore 4.4 Oi! 4.5 Anarcho-punk 4.6 Pop punk 4.7 Other fusions and directions 5 Legacy and recent developments 5.1 Alternative rock 5.2 Queercore and riot grrrl 5.3 Emo 5.4 The punk revival 6 See Also 7 Footnotes 8 Bibliography 9 External links

Characteristics

The first wave of punk aimed to be aggressively modern, distancing itself from the bombast and sentimentality of early 1970s rock.^[1] According to Ramones drummer Tommy Ramone, "In its initial form, a lot of [1960s] stuff was innovative and exciting. Unfortunately, what happens is that people who could not hold a candle to the likes of Hendrix started noodling away. Soon you had endless solos that went nowhere. By 1973, I knew that what was needed was some pure, stripped down, no bullshit rock 'n' roll".^[2] Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren recalls feeling "punk rock had to come along because the rock scene had become so tame that [acts] like Billy Joel and Simon and Garfunkel were being called rock and roll, when to me and other fans, rock and roll meant this wild and rebellious music".^[3] In critic Robert Christgau's description, "It was also a subculture that scornfully rejected the political idealism and Californian flower-power silliness of hippie myth".^[4] Some participants went even further, making a show of rejecting not only mainstream rock and the broader establishment culture it was associated with, but their own most celebrated predecessors: "No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1977", declared The Clash.^[5] That year, when punk broke nationwide in Great Britain, was to be both a musical and a cultural "Year Zero".^[6] Even as nostalgia was discarded, many in the scene adopted a nihilistic attitude summed up by the Sex Pistols slogan "No Future".^[7]

Punk bands often emulate the bare musical structures and arrangements of 1960s garage rock.^[8] This emphasis on accessibility exemplifies punk's DIY aesthetic and contrasts with the ostentatious musicianship of many of the mainstream rock bands popular in the years before the advent of punk. A 1976 issue of the English punk fanzine Sideburns featured an illustration of three chords, captioned "This is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now form a band".^[9]

Typical punk instrumentation includes one or two electric guitars, an electric bass, and a drum kit, along with vocals. In the early days of punk rock, musical virtuosity was often looked on with suspicion. According to Punk magazine founder John Holmstrom, punk was "rock and roll by people who didn't have very much skills as musicians but still felt the need to express themselves through music".^[10]

Punk vocals sometimes sound nasal, and are often shouted instead of sung in a conventional sense. Complicated guitar solos are considered self-indulgent and unnecessary, although basic guitar breaks are common.^[11] Guitar parts tend to include highly distorted power chords, although some punk bands have taken a surf rock approach with a lighter, twangier guitar tone. A wild, "gonzo" attack is sometimes employed, a style that stretches from Robert Quine, lead guitarist of seminal punk band The Voidoids, back through The Velvet Underground to the 1950s recordings of Ike Turner.^[12] Bass guitar lines are often basic and used to carry the song's melody, although some punk bass players such as Mike Watt put greater emphasis on more technical bass lines. Bassists often use a plectrum rather than fingerpicking due to the rapid succession of notes, which makes fingerpicking impractical. Drums typically sound heavy and dry, and often have a minimal set-up. Production is minimalistic, with tracks sometimes laid down on home tape recorders.

Punk songs are normally between two and two and a half minutes long, though many last for less than a minute. Most early punk songs retained a traditional rock 'n' roll verse-chorus form and 4/4 time signature. However, second wave punk bands—including bands from both the post-punk and hardcore punk subgenres—often sought to break from that format. In hardcore, the drumming is considerably faster, with lyrics often half shouted over aggressive guitars.^[13] In critic Steven Blush's description, "The Sex Pistols were still rock'n'roll...like the craziest version of Chuck Berry. Hardcore was a radical departure from that. It wasn't verse-chorus rock. It dispelled any notion of what songwriting is supposed to be. It's its own form".^[14]

Punk lyrics are typically frank and confrontational, and often comment on social and political issues.^[15] Trend-setting songs such as The Clash's "Career Opportunities" and Chelsea's "Right to Work" deal with unemployment, boredom, and other grim realities of urban life. The Sex Pistols songs "God Save the Queen" and "Anarchy in the U.K." openly disparaged the British political system. There is also a strain of anti-romantic depictions of relationships and sex, exemplified by the The Voidoids' "Love Comes in Spurts". According to Search and Destroy founder V. Vale, "Punk was a total cultural revolt. It was a hardcore confrontation with the black side of history and culture, right-wing imagery, sexual taboos, a delving into it that had never been done before by any generation in such a thorough way."^[16]

With Patti Smith as the groundbreaker, Siouxsie Sioux, The Slits, Pauline Murray, Nina Hagen, Gaye Advert, Poly Styrene, and other punk vocalists, songwriters, and instrumentalists introduced a new brand of femininity to rock music: "They adopted a tough, unladylike pose that borrowed more from the macho swagger of sixties garage bands than from the calculated bad-girl image of bands like The Runaways. They went beyond the leather outfits to the bondage gear of Sioux and the straight-from-the-gutter androgyny of Smith. They articulated a female rage that surpassed the anger of the women's movement of the sixties".^[17]

The classic punk look among male musicians harkens back to the T-shirt, motorcycle jacket, and jeans ensemble favored by 1950s greasers (associated with the rockabilly scene). In the 1980s, tattoos and piercings became increasingly common among punk musicians and their fans.

Pre-history

Protopunk

In the 1960s and early 1970s, bands that would later come to be recognized as punk's progenitors began springing up in many different locations. Though they did not yet form a cohesive movement and differed widely in sound, these bands were linked by a particular countercultural sensibility that set them apart from the mainstream. In contrast to the expansive utopianism of the late 1960s musical counterculture (which characterized much of rock during the era), bands now seen as protopunk tended toward minimalist, aggressive music and lyrics that often dealt with taboo subject matter.^[18] These early bands operated within small "scenes", regional or entirely local, facilitated by enthusiastic impresarios who operated clubs or organized gigs in whatever venues were available—schools, garages, warehouses—advertising via locally printed flyers and fanzines. This do-it-yourself ethic in many cases reflected an aversion to commercial success, as well as a desire to maintain creative and financial autonomy.^[19]

In 1969, debut albums by two Michigan-based bands appeared that are commonly regarded as the seminal protopunk records. In the spring, Detroit's MC5 released Kick Out the Jams. "Musically the group is intentionally crude and aggressively raw", wrote Rolling Stone critic Lester Bangs, who continued:

Most of the songs are barely distinguishable from each other in their primitive two-chord structures. You've heard all this before from such notables as the Seeds, Blue Cheer, Question Mark and the Mysterians, and the Kingsmen. The difference here...is in the hype, the thick overlay of teenage-revolution and total-energy-thing which conceals these scrapyard vistas of clichés and ugly noise.... "I Want You Right Now" sounds exactly (down to the lyrics) like a song called "I Want You" by the Troggs, a British group who came on with a similar sex-and-raw-sound image a couple of years ago (remember "Wild Thing"?)^[20]

That summer, The Stooges, from Ann Arbor, premiered with a self-titled album. According to critic Greil Marcus, the band, led by singer Iggy Pop, created "[t]he sound of Chuck Berry's Airmobile—after thieves stripped it for parts".^[21] The album was produced by John Cale, a former member of New York's experimental rock group The Velvet Underground. Having earned a "reputation as the first underground rock band", VU would inspire, directly or indirectly, many of those involved in the creation of punk.^[22]

On the East Coast, the New York Dolls updated the original wildness of 1950s rock 'n' roll in a fashion that would later become known as glam punk.^[23] In Ohio, a small but influential underground rock scene emerged, led by Devo, The Electric Eels, and Rocket from the Tombs, who in 1975 split into Pere Ubu and The Dead Boys (the latter would move to New York and become part of the city's punk scene the following year). In London, the pub rock scene stripped the music back to its basics, and provided a grounding for many of the key players in the later punk explosion, including The Clash, The Stranglers, and Cock Sparrer.^[24] Bands with a compatible sensibility were coming together 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.^[25] A new generation of Australian garage rock bands, inspired mainly by the Stooges and MC5, was coming even closer to the sound that would soon be called "punk": in Brisbane, The Saints also recalled the raw live sound of the British Pretty Things, who had made a notorious tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1965;^[26] Radio Birdman were playing gigs to a small but fanatical following in Sydney.

Origin of the term punk

Preceding the mid-1970s, punk, a centuries-old word of obscure etymology, was commonly used to describe "a young male hustler, a gangster, a hoodlum, or a ruffian".^[27] As Legs McNeil explains, "On TV, if you watched cop shows, Kojak, Baretta, when the cops finally catch the mass murderer, they'd say, 'you dirty Punk.' It was what your teachers would call you. It meant that you were the lowest."^[28] The term punk rock was apparently coined by rock critic Dave Marsh in a 1970 issue of Creem, where he used it to describe the sound and attitude of ? and the Mysterians.^[29] In June 1972, the fanzine Flash included a "Punk Top Ten" of 1960s albums.^[30] That year, Lenny Kaye used the term in the liner notes of the anthology album Nuggets to refer to 1960s garage rock bands such as The Standells, The Sonics, and The Seeds.^[31] Bomp! maintained this usage through the early 1970s, also applying it to some of the darker, more primitive practitioners of 1960s psychedelic rock.^[32]

By 1975, punk was being used to describe acts as diverse as Patti Smith, the Bay City Rollers, and Bruce Springsteen.^[32] As the scene at New York's CBGB club (popularly referred to as "CBGBs") attracted notice, a name was sought for the developing sound. Club owner Hilly Kristal called the movement "street rock"; John Holmstrom credits Aquarian magazine with using punk "to describe what was going on at CBGBs".^[33] Holmstrom, McNeil, and Ged Dunn's magazine Punk, which debuted at the end of 1975, was crucial in codifying the term.^[34] "It was pretty obvious that the word was getting very popular," Holmstrom later remarked. "We figured we'd take the name before anyone else claimed it. We wanted to get rid of the bullshit, strip it down to rock 'n' roll. We wanted the fun and liveliness back."^[32]

Early history

New York

The origins of New York's punk scene can be traced back to such sources as late 1960s trash culture and an early 1970s underground rock movement centered around the Mercer Arts Center in Greenwich Village, where the New York Dolls performed.^[35] In 1974, the members of a band from Forest Hills, Queens, adopted a common surname. Drawing on such sources as the Beatles, Herman's Hermits, The Beach Boys, and 1960s girl groups, the Ramones condensed rock 'n' roll to its primal level: "'1-2-3-4!' bass-player Dee Dee Ramone shouted at the start of every song, as if the group could barely master the rudiments of rhythm".^[36]

By the following year, they were playing regularly at the lower Manhattan club CBGB. "When I first saw the Ramones," critic Mary Harron later remembered, "I couldn't believe people were doing this. The dumb brattiness."^[37] CBGB was already the regular venue for another band that played very loud, but much more complex music, Television. The band's bassist/singer, Richard Hell, created a look including "leather jackets, torn T-shirts, and short, ragamuffin hair" credited as the basis for punk visual style.^[38] Early in 1975, Hell wrote "Blank Generation", the scene's emblematic anthem of escape; a recording of the song by Hell and a new band of his, The Voidoids, would first be released in 1976.^[39] In August 1975, Television—with Fred Smith, former bassist for another CBGB band, Blondie, replacing Hell—privately recorded and released a single, "Little Johnny Jewel". As critic John Walker describes, the record is regarded as "a turning point for the whole New York scene" if not quite for the classic punk sound itself—Hell's departure left the band "significantly reduced in fringe aggression".^[40] Yet another regular performer at the club was Patti Smith, a veteran of independent theater and performance poetry, who was developing an intellectual, feminist take on rock 'n' roll. Her debut album Horses, one of the seminal punk records, was produced by John Cale and released in November 1975.^[41]

That same month, Sire Records released the first recording by the Ramones, the single "Blitzkrieg Bop". The inaugural issue of Punk appeared in December.^[42] The new magazine tied together earlier artists such as Velvet Undergound lead singer Lou Reed, the Stooges, and the New York Dolls with the array of new acts centered around the CBGB and Max's Kansas City venues: the Ramones, Television, The Heartbreakers (started in May 1975 by Richard Hell with former Dolls' guitarist Johnny Thunders, who would oust Hell early in 1976), Patti Smith, Blondie, Talking Heads, and others.^[43] The term "punk" initially referred to the scene in general, more than the sound itself. The early New York punk bands represented a broad variety of influences; though the Ramones and Richard Hell's post-Television bands were establishing a distinct style, punk rock was not yet defined by the standards of minimalism, speed, and arrogance that later emerged.^[44]

The UK and Australia

After a brief period managing the New York Dolls, Englishman Malcolm McLaren returned to London in May 1975, inspired by the new scene he had witnessed at CBGB. He opened SEX, a clothing store which specialised in "anti-fashion", and sold the slashed T-shirts, drapes, brothel creepers and fetish gear later popularised by the punk movement.^[45] He also began managing The Swankers, who would soon evolve into the Sex Pistols. The Sex Pistols developed an early cult following in London, centered on a clique known as the Bromley Contingent, named after the suburb where many of the fans had grown up.^[46] Britain also had its own homegrown influences that contributed to the style and sound of the local punk scene, as described by rock journalist Clinton Heylin:

Britain's progenitors were the Sixties bands that combined a keen pop sensibility with ballsy rhythm & blues—the early Stones and Who, the Small Faces, the Yardbirds—and those glam bands who gave noise back to teenagers in the early Seventies—T.Rex, Slade and Roxy Music.^[47]

On July 4, 1976, the Ramones, the Stranglers, and the Flamin' Groovies played to a crowd of two thousand at the Roundhouse in London.^[48] The concert is seen as crucial in bringing together the nascent UK punk scene.^[49] Over the next several months, many fans of the Sex Pistols formed their own bands, including The Clash, Joy Division, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Adverts, Generation X, The Slits, and X-Ray Spex. Other groups to emerge in this milieu included The Jam, The Vibrators, Buzzcocks, and the appropriately named London.

At virtually the same time punk was starting to break in the UK, it was doing the same thing, albeit deeper underground, in Australia. Operating within a relatively limited sphere, some of the bands down under were amazed, or dismayed, to discover like-minded musicians exploring a similar path. Ed Kuepper of The Saints reports,

One thing I remember having had a really depressing effect on me was the first Ramones album. When I heard it [in 1976], I mean it was a great record...but I hated it because I knew we’d been doing this sort of stuff for years. There was even a chord progression on that album that we used...and I thought, "Fuck. We’re going to be labeled as influenced by the Ramones," when nothing could have been further from the truth.^[50]

In September 1976, The Saints became the first punk band outside of the U.S. to release a recording, the single "(I'm) Stranded". It had limited impact at home, but the British music press recognized it as a groundbreaking record.^[51] Radio Birdman soon came out with an EP, Burn My Eye, described by critic Ian McCaleb as the "archetype for the musical explosion that was about to occur".^[52] On the other side of Australia, in Perth, germinal punk act the Cheap Nasties had also formed.

In October, The Damned became the first UK punk band to release a single, the classic "New Rose".^[53] The Sex Pistols followed the next month with "Anarchy in the U.K." In December, the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, and The Heartbreakers united for the Anarchy Tour, a series of gigs throughout the UK. Many of the shows were cancelled by venue owners after tabloid newspapers and other media seized on sensational reports about the antics of the bands and their fans.^[54] One incident that month sealed punk's notorious reputation: On Thames Today, an early evening London TV show, Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones was goaded into a verbal altercation by the host, Bill Grundy, and swore at him on live television, outraging a nation.^[55]

The second wave

As the punk scene expanded rapidly in Great Britain during 1976, a few bands sharing elements of the emerging style began to appear around the United States. By 1977, a second wave of the movement broke in both the UK and the US, as well as in Australia and Canada. In the New York scene, punk largely gave way to No Wave, though older punk bands like The Ramones and the Cramps continued to perform. The New Jersey-based Misfits emerged during this time and by 1978 developed a style that would be known as horror punk.

Punk scenes began to spring up in other North American cities during the 1976–1979 period. In Washington, D.C., a small punk and New Wave scene arose centered around bands like Overkill, the Slickee Boys, Half Japanese, the Urban Verbs, Tru Fax and the Insaniacs, and White Boy. The Washington, D.C. scene grew considerably in 1979 with the rise of hardcore bands like the Bad Brains and Teen Idles.^[56]

Beginning in 1976–1977, a prolific California punk scene began to emerge in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Among these bands were The Weirdos, The Dils, The Screamers, The Dickies, The Go-Go's, X, The Plugz, The Zeros, and The Bags in Los Angeles, and The Avengers, The Nuns, Crime, and Negative Trend in San Francisco.^{[57] [58]} These bands often sounded very different from each other musically, reflecting the highly eclectic state of punk music during this era.^[59]

In 1978–1979, hardcore punk emerged in Southern California, with the bands Middle Class and Black Flag generally regarded as having made the earliest hardcore punk recordings.^{[60] [61]} In Los Angeles and San Francisco, hardcore was not always well-received by the older punk scene, and a rivalry developed between the two scenes. Hardcore appealed to a younger and more suburban crowd and was perceived as anti-intellectual, overly violent, and musically limited by many in the older punk scene. (In Los Angeles, this two factions were often referred to as "Hollywood punks" and "beach punks", referring to Hollywood's place as the center of the original LA punk scene and to the popularity of hardcore in suburban areas like the beach communities of South Bay and Orange County.)^[62] By 1981, hardcore had become dominant in the punk scene in California (and in much of the rest of the North America).^[63] The bands of the older California punk scene had largely split up, though a few, such as X and the Go-Go's, went on to mainstream success.^[64]

In Perth, Australia, The Victims became a short-lived leader on the scene, recording the classic "Television Addict". The Scientists, with vocalist-guitarist-songwriter Kim Salmon, soon became the local spearhead. In Melbourne, the art rock–influenced Boys Next Door featured singer Nick Cave, who would shortly become one of the world's most celebrated post-punk artists.

Though punk was to remain largely an underground phenomenon in America and Australia during the 1970s, in the UK it became a broad-based sensation.^[65] New British bands such as Wire, Crass, and Stiff Little Fingers harnessed the energy and aggression of earlier punk, while expanding its musical palette.^[66] Employing a wider variety of tempos and more complex instrumentation, the British second wave infused punk with elements of synth and noise music.^[67] In London, first wave bands such as The Slits and new entrants to the scene like The Police interacted with the Jamaican reggae and ska subcultures, incorporating their rhythms and production styles. The Clash's self-titled debut album, released in April 1977, included a cover of the recent reggae hit "Police and Thieves".^[68] (The punk phenomenon helped spark a full-fledged ska revival movement known as 2 Tone, centered around bands such as The Specials, The Beat, Madness, and The Selecter.^[69]) The Clash would later release London Calling; fusing punk with reggae, ska, R&B, and rockabilly, it would go on to be acclaimed as one of the best rock records of all time.^[70] In December 1977, one of the first books about punk rock was published: The Boy Looked at Johnny, by Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons.^[71] Declaring the punk movement to be already over, it was subtitled The Obituary of Rock and Roll. In January 1978, the Sex Pistols broke up while on American tour.

Meanwhile, punk scenes were emerging around the world. In West Germany, the Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW) movement brought together a diverse audience. NDW started with both punk bands (Abwärts, Fehlfarben, DAF) and industrial rock groups (Kraftwerk, Einstürzende Neubauten), before going mainstream with acts like Ideal, Extrabreit, and Nena. For the first time since World War II, German bands were attracting a large audience of German youth, bringing Krautrock acts back to life and opening a market for protest singers and bands. These opposing factions were united by a feeling that rock 'n' roll had lost its anti-establishment edge since the late 1960s, and that punk rock was "'against the system' politically as well as musically."^[72] In France, a scene developed out of a Parisian pre-punk subculture of Lou Reed fans calling themselves les punks,^[73] and developed around bands such as Métal Urbain and Oberkampf. Punk scenes also grew in countries such as Japan (The Stalin, Star Club), Belgium (The Kids, Cell 609), the Netherlands (The Ex, God's Heart Attack), Switzerland (Kleenex), and Sweden (Ebba Grön). In Canada, groups from Toronto such as Teenage Head, The Diodes, The Viletones, The Demics, the all-female Curse, and The Government popularized punk.

Subgenres and derivative forms

As the early media hype surrounding punk ebbed in the late 1970s, the movement fragmented into subgenres, some that gained broad popularity, others that became closely linked with underground cultures. The early unity between arty, middle-class bohemians and working-class punks began to fracture, leading to the rise of New Wave and post-punk on one side, and hardcore punk and Oi! on the other.^[74] Anarcho-punk bands used their music for a committed political agenda, while pop punk groups created blends like that of the ideal record, as defined by Mekons cofounder Kevin Lycett: "a cross between Abba and the Sex Pistols".^[75] A wide variety of other styles emerged, many of them fusions with long-established genres.

New Wave

For more details on this topic, see New Wave music.

New Wave and its attendant subculture arose along with the earliest punk groups; indeed, "punk" and "New Wave" were initially interchangeable.^[76] Over time, however, the terms began to acquire different meanings: bands such as Talking Heads, Blondie, Devo, and The Police that were experimenting with instrumentation, incorporating dance-oriented rhythms, and working with more polished production were called "New Wave" rather than "punk". Combining elements of early punk music and fashion with a far more pop-oriented and less "dangerous" style, New Wave artists such as The Cars and Elvis Costello became very popular on both sides of the Atlantic. New Wave became a catch-all term for mainstream punk-inspired music, encompassing disparate styles such as 2 Tone ska, the mod revival based around The Jam, the New Romantic phenomenon typified by Duran Duran, and synthpop groups like Depeche Mode. New Wave became a pop culture sensation with the debut of the cable television network MTV in 1981, which put many New Wave videos into regular rotation. However, the music was often derided at the time as being silly and disposable.^[77]

Post-punk

For more details on this topic, see Post-punk.

In the UK, a wide variety of post-punk bands emerged, including The Fall, Joy Division, Gang of Four, and Public Image Ltd. Some bands classified as post-punk, such as Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, had been active before the punk scene itself had coalesced;^[78] others, such as The Slits and Siouxsie & The Banshees, transitioned from punk into post-punk. The music was often experimental, like that of the New Wave bands; defining them as "post-punk" was a sound that tended to be less pop and more dark and abrasive—sometimes verging on the atonal, as with Wire, and Subway Sect. Drawing inspiration from such art rock sources as Captain Beefheart, David Bowie, and Krautrock, post-punk also explored new lyrical approaches:^[79] The Fall's Mark E. Smith wrote "oblique observations of Northern underclass grotesquerie".^[80]

Post-punk brought together a new fraternity of musicians, journalists, managers, and entrepreneurs; the latter, notably Geoff Travis of Rough Trade and Tony Wilson of Factory, helped to develop the production and distribution infrastructure of the indie music scene that blossomed in the mid-1980s.^[81] Smoothing the edges of their style in the direction of New Wave, a number of post-punk bands such as New Order (descended from Joy Division) and U2 crossed over to a mainstream U.S. audience. Others, like Gang of Four, The Raincoats and Throbbing Gristle, who had little more than cult followings at the time, are seen in retrospect as significant influences on modern popular culture.^[82]

A number of U.S. artists were retrospectively defined as post-punk; Television's debut record Marquee Moon, released in 1977, is seen by many as the seminal album in the field.^[83] The No Wave movement that developed in New York in the late 1970s, with artists like Lydia Lunch, is often treated as the phenomenon's U.S. parallel.^[84] The term is also applied to the later work of Ohio protopunk pioneers Pere Ubu.^[85] One of the most influential American post-punk bands was Boston's Mission of Burma, who brought abrupt rhythmic shifts derived from hardcore into a highly experimental musical context.^[86] In 1980, Australia's Boys Next Door moved to London and changed their name to The Birthday Party, which would evolve into Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.