The PUNK ideal is so ambitious that it can't be maintained.It had to do with a kind of honesty that's so pure that it doesn't really exist,so it's going to destroy you if you try to maintain it.
Richard Hell 2005
If one sees the PUNK journey,spanning the decade 1973 - 83,as two distinct phases,then the first five years(stuck on its eyes)was when Punk had an "ideal",an attitude,that was reflected in and refracted by a kind of viral cacophony that speared from Sydney to Brisbane,Cleveland to New York,Manchester to London - upward and downward,embracing all styles of edginess to the new Rock's rancid bosom.
The came it's precipitous fall from Pop's possibilities,circa 73 - 83,into a fixed form,frantic,feudal,futile - Hardcore in sound and deed.A ninety - mph ride down a dead-end street.
It's a case of never mind the same ol'sanitized set of songs,here's the original bollocks.
The first CD is devoted to the American brand of ProtoPunk(Smart alecks please note : Radio Birdman's "1-94" is included,at CD's end,because it represents the same American brand - being composed by a lad from Detroit about aroad from Detroit,and as a song first recorded in 1973,qualifies as a pre-CBGB's strain.
Various - Babylon's Burning - The Rough'n'Ready Rise Of PUNK RAWK 1973-1978
Label : Castle Music ?– CMXBX1941
Format : 4 CD, Compilation, Boxset
Country : UK
Released : 2007
Genre : Rock
Style : Punk
Disc One
1. The Modern Lovers : Roadrunner
2. The Modern Lovers : She Cracked
3. New York Dolls : Personality Crisis (Demo)
4. New York Dolls : Looking For A Kiss (Demo)
5. Suicide : 96 Tears (Live)
6. Patti Smith : Hey Joe (Non-LP 45)
7. The Heartbreakers : Love Comes Into Spurts (Live)
8. The Finns : Baby's On Fire (Live)
9. Rocket From The Tombs : Ain't It Fun (Demo)
10.Rocket From The Tombs : Sonic Reducer (Live)
11.Peter Laughner & Craig Bell : Life Stinks
12.Pere Ubu : Final Solution (Live)
13.Styrenes : Drano In My Veins (Demo)
14.Electric Eels : Jaguar Ride (Demo)
15.Richard Hell & The Voidoids : You Gotta Lose (1st EP)
16.Richard Hell & The Voidoids : Another World (Live)
17.Johnny Thunders & Heartbreakers : Born To Lose (Demo)
18 Johnny Thunders & Heartbreakers : Chinese Rocks (Demo)
19.Radio Birdman : I-94 (1st EP)
MODERN LOVERS
The Modern Lovers were an American rock band led by Jonathan Richman in the 1970s and 1980s. The original band existed from 1970 to 1974 but their recordings were not released until 1976 or later.
In April 1972, the Modern Lovers traveled to Los Angeles where they held two demo sessions: the first was produced by the Velvet Underground's John Cale for Warner Bros. while the second was produced by Alan Mason for A&M. The Cale sessions were later used on the band’s debut album. While in California the band also performed live, and one gig at the Long Branch Saloon in Berkeley was later issued as a live album. Producer Kim Fowley courted the band, traveling to Boston to produce some poor-quality demos in June 1972.
NEW YORK DOLLS
The New York Dolls is an American rock band, formed in New York in 1971.The band's protopunk sound prefigured much of what was to come in the punk rock era;
their visual style influenced the look of many new wave and 1980s-era glam metal groups, and they began the local New York scene that later spawned the Ramones, Blondie, Television and Talking Heads.
In 2004 the band reformed with three of their original members, two of whom, David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain, continue on today and have released three records of new material.
The original bassist, Arthur Kane, died shortly after their first reunion concert.
SUICIDE
Suicide is an American electronic protopunk musical duo, intermittently active since 1970 and composed of vocalist Alan Vega and Martin Rev on synthesizers and drum machines. They are an early synthesizer/vocal musical duo.
Suicide took their name from the title of a Ghost Rider comic book titled Satan Suicide, a favorite of Alan Vega.
PATTI SMITH
Revered as the shaman of Punk - some claimed her "Hey Joe/Piss Factory" was the first Punk Rock record - or decried as self-indulgent,Smith had made one earlier come back after breaking bones in her neck by falling from a stage,resurrecting herself on 1978's "Easter" with "Because the night",a song co-written with Bruce Springsteen.
Patti Smith is a trailblazer who was before all the Punk hustle,and who is probably a lot better than the people she admires.
Called the "Godmother of Punk",
her work was a fusion of rock and poetry.
THE HEARTBREAKERS
In May 1975, Johnny Thunders (vocals/guitar) and Jerry Nolan (drums) quit the New York Dolls, the same week that Richard Hell (vocals/bass) left Television. Their first gig was on May 31st of that year, at the Coventry, a rock club in Queens. The trio soon adding Walter Lure (guitar/vocals), who had played with a glam-punk band called the Demons.
In 1976 Hell left the group and was replaced by Billy Rath.
Arriving for a European tour just as the UK punk scene was building momentum, the Heartbreakers developed a following in and around London. The band's members and image were widely associated with drug use, specifically heroin.
Nolan died in 1992. Hell rarely plays music live, concentrating instead on writing and spoken-word performances. Billy Rath currently lives in New Jersey and played with Walter Lure at the Max's Kansas City Reunion in September 2010.
THE FINNS
If New York was locked in a lovelorn embrace with garageland USA-exemplified by PSG guitarist Lenny Kaye's definitive double LP "Nuggets"-Cleveland's protopunks had become equally infatuated with the more esoteric side of British Rock,from Roxy Music to Richard Thompson.
Here the town's leading Punk,Peter Laughner,is found in one of his pre-Ubu incarnations setting light to the post-Roxy Eno's paean to pyromania with some positively Thompsonesque guitar,at another ill-attended free concert in the suburbs.It would not be until he caught Television at CBGBs in August that year,though that Laughner began writing his own material in earnest.
ROCKET FROM THE TOMBS
Rocket From the Tombs (or RFTT) is an American rock music band originally active from mid-1974 to mid-1975 in Cleveland, Ohio.
Heralded as an important protopunk group, they were little known during their lifetime, though various members later achieved renown in "Pere Ubu" and "The Dead Boys". Billy Bob Hargus wrote, however, that "The sound of the Rockets is much more ferocious than Ubu or the Dead Boys."
PETER LAUGHNER & CRAIG BELL
Peter Laughner was an American guitarist, songwriter and singer.
A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Laughner remains a rather little known figure;He led a variety of groups (including Mr. Charlie, Cinderella Backstreet, Peter & The Wolves, The Blue Drivers and Friction) but his most enduring contributions were to "Rocket From the Tombs" and the early work of "Pere Ubu".
After the Tombs he decided to make his own set of demos,enlisting fellow Tomb-raider Graig Bell,to help out.Laughner died before "Pere Ubu" issued their first album.
PERE UBU
Pere Ubu is an experimental rock music group formed in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1975. Despite many long-term band members, singer David Thomas is the only constant.
Led by hulking frontman David Thomas, whose absurdist warble and rapturously demented lyrics remained the band's creative focus throughout their long, convoluted career, Ubu's protean art punk sound harnessed self-destructing melodies, scattershot rhythms, and industrial-strength dissonance to capture the angst and chaos of their times with both apocalyptic fervor and surprising humanity.
Named in honor of Alfred Jarry's surrealist play Ubu Roi, Pere Ubu was formed in the autumn of 1975 from the ashes of local cult favorite Rocket from the Tombs, reuniting Thomas (aka Crocus Behemoth) with guitarist Peter Laughner; adding guitarist Tom Herman, bassist Tim Wright, keyboardist Allen Ravenstine, and drummer Scott Krauss, the group soon issued their debut single, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo," on Thomas' Hearthan label. The follow-up, "Final Solution," appeared on the renamed Hearpen in early 1976, and resulted in a series of live dates at the famed New York City club Max's Kansas City.
MIRRORS a.k.a THE STRYRENES
Cleveland proto-punk combo the Styrenes was originally formed in 1971 by singer/guitarist Jamie Klimek, bassist Craig Bell, and drummer Mike Weldon; initially dubbed the Mirrors, the three high schoolers soon added guitarist Jim Crook to the lineup, honing a noisy pop sound so out of step with other local acts that live gigs became impossible to come by.
ELECTRIC EELS
They formed in 1972 after hulking John Morton and suburban Cleveland friends Dave E and Brian MacMahon saw a terrible band, with a recording contract no less, open for Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band.
The Electric Eels might well have been the biggest bunch of low-lifes to come out of the late pre-punk scene in Cleveland, which is saying something for a scene that contributed antisocial snotballs like the Pagans and substance-fueled art-punks like Rocket From the Tombs.
They played a total of six gigs (all of which ended in violence and/or arrest) and recorded a handful of crudely played (and mostly bass-less) garage-punk that predicted the angry, fuzzed-out and revved-up sound of the Dead Boys and Rubber City Rebels. So it is safe to call theElectric Eels an influential band, but in a warped, disturbing kind of way.
RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS
Richard Hell and the Voidoids were an American rock band from the first wave of punk rock, fronted by Richard Hell, a former member of the Neon Boys, Television and the Heartbreakers. Formed in New York City, at various times the band included influential guitarist Robert Quine, Ivan Julian, Naux Maciel, Jahn Xavier, former Contortions and Raybeats guitarist Jody Harris, Golden Palominos leader Anton Fier, and future Ramone Marc Bell.
JOHNNY THUNDERS & THE HEARTBREAKERS
Shortly after the disintegration of the New York Dolls in 1975, guitarist Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan formed the Heartbreakers (not to be confused with Tom Petty's Heartbreakers).
The original lineup consisted of the duo plus former Television bassist Richard Hell. The group played regularly in New York City, becoming part of the early CBGB punk scene. Thunders assumed the vocal duties, while the music was quite comparable to the trashy rock that the Dolls patented, except that just about every song was about either the pursuit of the opposite sex or drugs (all the bandmembers were addicted to hard drugs, so much so that at one point, Thunders considered changing the band's name to "the Junkies").
RADIO BIRDMAN
Although the best-known band of the early Australian punk scene of the late '70s was the Saints, the first band to wave the punk rock flag in the land down under was Radio Birdman. Formed by Australian emigre Deniz Tek (originally from Ann Arbor, MI) and Aussie surfer-turned-vocalist Rob Younger in 1974, Radio Birdman's approach to rock & roll was rooted in the high-energy, apocalyptic guitar rant of the Stooges and MC5, sprinkled liberally with a little East Coast underground hard rock courtesy of Blue Oyster Cult.
Their first EP, Burn My Eye, released in 1976, was a great record and still remains a seminal chunk of Aussie punk.
Without a label, the band struggled to progress musically. In 1978, as one last sendoff, they recorded their second album Living Eyes at Rockfield Studio in Wales, which had a posthumous release in 1981, long after the band's 1978 break-up.
Radio Birdman reunited for the Big Day Out tour in 1996 and again in 1997. Since then Radio Birdman have continued to perform sporadically.The year 2006 saw much activity by Radio Birdman, spearheaded by the completion of a new album entitled "Zeno Beach".
Fans of the band often classed the music as "proto-punk" or the Detroit sound, similar to bands such as MC5 and The Stooges.
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