Rolling Stone
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Patti Smith, Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill, HR of Bad Brains, Joey Ramone, Joe Talbot of IDLES, Brendan Yates of Turnstile, Lux Interior of The Cramps, Marisa Dabice of Mannequin Pussy, Joe Strummer of The Clash Illustration by Matthew Cooley Punk rock started in 1976 in New York, when four cretins from Queens came up with a mutant strain of blitzkrieg bubblegum. The revolution they inspired split the history of rock & roll in half. But even if punk rock began as a kind of negation — a call to stark, brutal simplicity — its musical variety and transforming emotional power was immediate and remains staggering. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Ramones’ toweringly influential self-titled debut, we’ve compiled a list of the 100 Greatest Punk Albums of All Time.
If Ramones was Year Zero for punk rock, it didn’t come without precedent, so we included essential forebears like the Stooges, the New York Dolls, and Patti Smith, artists who were punk in spirit before the style really had a name. When punk did happen, it was an explosion of ideas and possibilities. Along with the Sex Pistols and the Clash, Black Flag and the Descendents, Bad Brains and Minor Threat, you’ll find Gang of Four mixing funk attack and Marxist theory, the ice-storm goth of Joy Division, the Mekons’ existential country visions, riot grrrl radicals like Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, ska punk from Rancid and Operation Ivy, multiplatinum pop-punks Green Day and Blink 182, and new-look hardcore bands like Turnstile and Soul Glo.
Punk and its many offshoots have spawned so much great music that we’ve included a list of 200 related albums to check out. “Punk rock should mean freedom,” said Kurt Cobain in 1991, just as Nevermind was exploding punk values across the middle American mainstream. Here’s one map to where that freedom can take you.
Photographs in illustration by:
Richard E. Aaron/Redferns/Getty Images; Lindsay Brice/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images; Peter Noble/Redferns/Getty Images; Gus Stewart/Redferns/Getty Images; Jim Dyson/Getty Images; PAUL BERGEN/ANP/AFP/Getty Images; Paul Bergen/Redferns/Getty Images; Lisa Lake/Getty Images/Anheuser-Busch; Richard McCaffrey/Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images
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D.R.I., ‘Dealing With It!’
Tearing through 25 songs in under 35 minutes, the pioneering Texas band turned its second full-length album into a proof of concept: Yes, Virginia, you could merge hardcore punk with the burgeoning 1980s genre known as thrash metal and come up with a pit-perfect crossover sound. Singer Kurt Brecht and his fellow Dirty Rotten Imbeciles were capable of keeping things slow and low when needed — see: the beautifully sludgy “Soup Kitchen” — but it’s songs like “Shame,” which hit the ground running, calls out everything from pollution to war to “stupid, idiot, cock-rock bands,” and still finds time for a shredding guitar solo before hitting the brakes right past the one-minute mark. Their logo of a Pedestrian-Crossing-sign figure in mid-mosh was well-earned. —David Fear
See also: Cro-Mags, The Age of Quarrel (1986); S.O.D., Speak English or Die (1985)
