Known Pleasures Ep 64 - Who Invented Punk?

I think, I think we're all, we would all three of us probably agree that you've got to start talking about a couple of seminal US bands when you talk about the lineage of punk and where it began.

You've got to talk about the MC5.

You've got to talk about the Stooges and maybe a little bit later, the New York Dolls.

Patrick, you've been doing a bit of a deep dive into the MC5.

You want to tell me what your perspective on them is?

I would even potentially go further back than the MC5 and the Stooges because those guys were influenced by other bands.

So, I mean, the likes of The Who and so on, certain songs by The Kinks, you know, the kind of harder edged, songs by those guys.

And there was some pretty kind of rough garage rock type stuff, proto-punk or however you want to describe it, in the mid-60s.

So a band like the Sonics was an influence on Iggy Pop.

I think he said that they were the first garage band in the States.

And the Sonics cover version of Louie Louie from 65, 66, and another song of theirs I really like, Cinderella, is, yeah, it's like that's almost as good a starting point for the idea of punk or proto-punk or whatever.

Yeah, the interesting thing from my point of view is the fact that the United States is a very large country, but it so happened that the two bands that everyone thinks of or a lot of people think of as being the starting point for punk or aspects of punk came from the same city, the same, like within, you know, like a few hundred yards of each other, I guess.

And what city was that, Patrick?

That city was Detroit, Michigan.

Motor city.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

And so a city that's produced more than its fair share of music.

And guns.

And cars.

And cars, yeah.

Until the auto industry shut down and killed the city.

Kick off! The MC5 and the Stooges, they were both around for a while before things happened for them.

I think the MC5 formed in 1963, but they started having record companies sniffing around in, I guess, 1968 or so.

And another fantastic thing is that the MC5 and the Stooges were signed up to Elektra Records on the same day in 1968.

So that's how in sync they were.