1876: Henry Rollins is born in a cave and suckled by bears.
1912: The word ‘Bollocks’ enters into the English language when Queen Victoria drops an iron on her foot and will come in very handy later on in the history of punk.
1939: First Doctor Marten boots are made and instantly become hugely popular with a new youth craze called the ‘Nazis’ who popularise the footwear and a new dance called the ‘Goose Step’. The craze sweeps across Europe whilst off their tits to bangin’ heavy Oompah music. Hitler personally favours an Ox blood 8 eye.
1956: First report of someone who is too young to buy a drink anyway claiming to be Straight Edge in a Beatnik bar outside San Bernardino.
1970s: The UK is downing with surplus Royal Stewart tartan after the Bay City Roller craze has died. A canny cockney rag merchant called Malcolm McLaren purchases the lot and starts making them into tight trousers for the Highland fetishist market.
1974: New York- The Ramones print their first tee shirt and shortly after decide to form a band to better publicise their business.
1975: David Bowie invents Punk during a paranoia filled coke induced fit where he bangs Brian Eno’s head against a drinks tray for over an hour and records the sound. But Bowie forgets to patent it or tell anyone except for his flatmate Iggy Pop who is unimpressed as during this period Iggy is under the impression he is a lizard until the drugs wear off in 1990.
1975: A pair of pants rips so someone (maybe a hobo) shoves a safety pin in to keep them together and it catches on.
1976: A perky boy band called the Sex Pistols hoping to be the next teen sensation release an album of catchy beat/folk ballads about London’s terrible parking restrictions under the title ‘Never Mind the Bollards’ due to a terrible printing error they end up in hot water and on the front pages of every newspaper.
This new aggressively nice and overly polite mix of Folk and 1960s beat music and charity shop chic is dubbed ‘Punk’ by the press when they pick that name out of a hat during an office party. The scene soon centres around key locations of: The Kings Road, Malcolm McLaren’s shop in London and John Robb’s garden shed in Lancashire.
Soon a whole new army of ‘Punk’ bands are forming such as:
The un-Damned ( a Christian band from Dudley) The ‘Slits’ (An all female band of road trench diggers) The Buzzcocks (who only sing songs about chickens high on caffeine) The UK Subs (a band recruited from stand in teachers) and many, many more such as:
Eddie & The Hot Pots, Ian Dreary & the Dickheads, Useless Eric, Generation Z, Stiff Little Mingers,The Understones, Killing Poke, Chelsea-sick-Steve
and of course lesser groups such as:
The Fancy Lads, Rumba Bastards, the Adverts, Pelican Crossing, 999, The Yobs, Pole Smoke, GBH, Extraordinary Offence Caused By Our Music (EOBOM for short), Discharge, Norks, Frilly Knickers, More Tea Vicar, Scruffy Oiks, Shocking Sound and the Dingle-Berries (an Irish folk-punk band)
1976 (again) : The Clash win Opportunity Knocks and go head to head in a singles war with The Sex Pistols for the number one slot. This battle of the bands is the top story in all the papers with the lead singers from each band often seen scuffling with one another outside the Groucho. This struggle defines the two camps of Punk between the middle class fans of the suburbanite Pistols and the working class estate football based ‘lad’ culture of the Clash and is whipped up to a frenzy by the NME and Q magazine. The Pistols win but victory is pyrrhic and short lived as people are already moving into the latest craze which is Zydeco fuelled all nighters warehouse parties. Britain is now wholly looking forward to Thatcherism, things can only get better surely?
Disillusioned the Pistols move to Hollywood to start a football team of lardy ex-pat former celebrity Brits. Lead singer Johnny Rotten reverts to his birth name of Old Dirty Bastard and invents Hip-Hop.
1976/77: The Clash sell out, buy back in and then decide to sublet instead.
1977: Punk is dead, long live punk. The trend is now global so the real punkers move on and buy capes, get widow peak haircuts and hang upside down in coffins for long hours to protest the death of their scene, this inadvertently gives rise to ‘Goth’.
1979: Sid Vicious always a rebel bucks the usual pop music trend by dying aged 21 and not 27. Elvis back from the dead for a brief period.
A band called The Spam kick start a Mod revival. Punk bands left over from 77 quickly buy parkas and get their mums to give them a bowl cut.
1980s: The second wave of punk is led by Roland Rat Scabies and The Exploited. Soon across school job fairs punk stalls can be seen recruiting gullible kids for the ranks. On deciding to become punk they are issued with one leather jacket, a pair of bleached denim jeans, a glue bag, army boots and a book of clichés. Many instead opt for the army and a tour of Northern Ireland or sell their souls to get jobs in the City.
1981: Henry Rollins decides to reinvent the wheel and ends up just calling Punk ‘Hardcore’ instead which seems to do the trick. He visits Preston, gets beaten up and will never cease to mention this forever more as if anyone can do anything about it now. He overcompensates by bulking up and shouting a lot, he is in effect the Brian Blessed of Punk Rock.
