HISTORY OF

Punk Rock, in their meaning literal rock "garbage".
The expression included to a group of bands (Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, Johnny
Thunders Heartbreakers, Richard Hell, Flowers of Romance, The Vibrators, Siouxsie and The
Banshees, among other) arisen in London and whose epicentre you she/he found in the store of
fashion that she/he governed in King´s Road, Chelsea, the one from 1971 promoter and veteran
sympathetic of the movement suprematista Malcolm McLaren and the designer Vivianne
Westwood. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that they would be these and others formations tune those that to
half-filled of the decade they would give their definitive profile to the movement punk, their antecedents more
clear they are in United States. It is certain that bands as MC5 (that undertakes
their term in 1968), Velvet Underground (that is dissolved in 1970), Iggy Pop and The
Stooges (whose first concerts go back at 1969), New York Dolls (formed in 1973
and sponsored by McLaren), The Ramones, Television (both created in 1974), and soloists
as Patti Smith or Alex Harvey, they contributed with their performances in direct a vision
renovating and inconformista of the rock that served as model inspiring to the British punks. Already
be an or another current, the punk rock was not limited to to only be a musical style.
First because their first manifestations possess a character more general and puristic to the
to affirm and to reject the decadence of the rock profesionalizado and desvirtuado in that time for
the commercial interests of the big companies discográficas.
This rebellion impulse was intensified also by the period of economic penury that the
I reign United it suffered during the era thatcheriana that made worse those social inequalities and
it drove to the frustration and the unemployment to wide sectors of the population affecting in way
special to the youths. Next to these factors, the crisis of the it makes aware national -exalted with
Victorian manners from the Government - and the dissatisfaction widespread they explain that an existed
broth of favorable cultivation so that the punk reaches a great one resonance in all the orders
of the life of the Britons, accidental impact in principle regarding the musical adventures
of some unhappy boys.
Lastly, the punk met a quick and unusual diffusion, visual before musical, thanks to
their external manifestations that didn't decrease to the simple one exhibition of their attractive ones and
singular features of aesthetic identity, marked by the spontaneity and the rupture desire.
The aesthetics and the business
If some analysts have considered that in the field of the plastic one the punk only represents
the returned "enésima of tuerca" of the pop art of Andy Warhol, the phenomenon is in fact more
complex, because in their origins it is difficult to clarify until where it was a business
planned by skilled managers without scruples -although with few resources - or of a
continued improvisation whose effects amplified favorable circumstances, marked for
chaotic proposals but in any event transgressors.
The campaigns undertaken by McLaren from King´s Road, to half I walk among the
propaganda and the publicity, they popularized among the youngest the use of T-shirts and stockings
of ripped grill that they were supplemented with other garments and you throw away paramilitares,
safety pins, belts, decorations sadomasoquistas, chains, necklaces of dog, as well as attitudes
of great aggressiveness. One of them, the pogo, the crash body to body systematized among those
assistants to the concerts, even implying the interpreters in scene, it was invention of Sid
Vicious, from February of 1977 first floor of Sex Pistols, and she/he became in one of the more symbols
notorious of the punk. The pogo and likewise the irreverence dedicated to those who were presented
as stars of the rock, expressed by means of the escupitajo, they transformed the scene of the rock
British, contributing to reinforce before the public the reputation violent that the means of
communication conservatives and numerous British parliamentarian they had awarded to the
movement. Another of the distinctive features of the artists punk it consisted on substituting their
last names for diverse alias that they accentuated their sense of the marginalidad and the provocation.
Faced the approaches teachers that governed the industry (or the business) of the rock the groups
punk didn't in fact attract the interest of the discográficas, what hindered the access of their
more representative bands to the recording studies. The first punk disk that was recorded
and it distributed in the history of the rock it was the one it sails titled ' New Rose', of The Damned, spirit
in November of 1976, one of whose curiosities reside in including in the expensive B a
soprendente version of ' Help' of The Beatles. In January of 1977, and also in the catalog of
the independent company Stiff, The Damned published the first Lp of punk rock whose title
she/he repeated for three times the name of the band.
Before and after Sex Pistols
The Damned successes didn't subtract protagonism to the formation considered pioneer and
unquestionable leader of the punk: Sex Pistols that from principles of the seventy it had already suffered
some changes. If their better known members were the one soloist Johnny Rotten ("Podrido"),
the guitar Steve Jones, the battery Paul Cook and the first floor Sid Vicious, most of those
compositions of the band (' Anarchy In The UK', ' God Save the Queen' or ' Pretty Vacant',
for example) it was their first bassoonist's work, Glen Matlock, that she/he abandoned the group for
disagreements with McLaren and Rotten.
This episode marked followed act the meteoric career of Sex Pistols in the plane discográfico.
In January of 1977 McLaren she/he received from EMI an advance that ascended to 40.000 sterling pounds
for the topic ' Anarchy' (they were sold in a few days more than 50.000 you copy, but the disk was
retired of the stores and it was not programmed in the radio stations, to it causes of the scandal that there was
unchained). In March of the same year, another advance of 75.000 pounds with A&M Records,
it took to the members of the band to pose before the Buckinghan Palace to sign the contract
of God Save The Queen (the 25.000 carried out copies of the disk they were destroyed by those
press that artists and personal of the discográfica they exercised so that the topic was not
distributed). This took to McLaren to sign in May with Virgin, in exchange for 15.000 pounds
so that records and God distributed Save The Queen, of the one that in less than one week you
they almost sold 200.000 copies and that it was retired of the market a little then for the scorn
with which the letters treated the queen's figure, even when there was gotten the number two in
the lists of success.
Hardly one month later, June 7, the Sex Pistols caused a new scandal to the
to mount a concert for the Támesis in the barge Queen Elisabeth and to interpret, coinciding
with the weddings of the queen's from England silver, the topic ' Anarchy' when they were to the
height of the British Parliament. This event that concluded with the detention of the members
of the band when they returned to port, she/he had big repercussions international, because
besides the interest that unchained in the press of Europe and United States, determined that
the punk had stopped to be an exotic anecdote of the rock that it arose in London for
to become a movement with own entity that she/he promised innovations impredecibles.
Nevertheless, in January of 1978 Sex Pistols she/he is dissolved in the course of their first one and accident victim
it rotates for United States (most of the performances suited in advance they were
canceled at the last moment), event that marks the ascent of other bands attributed to the
punk and she/he gives news of the variety of this vision of the rock: I reject of the musicalidad
conventional (considered as ' the great cheat of the rock´n´roll); tendency toward the elaboration
of very brief topics that sound as hymns or I eat incitement furious to a freedom
exercised without obstacles, to the limit; very primary compositions, but critical, reivindicativas and
radicalizadas in the political and nihilistic plane in the one singular, open inclination toward atmospheres
called "siniestras" that would be prolonged in those bands of final of the seventy until half-filled
of the eighty, denominated after punk (Magazine, Joy División, Pchychedelic Furs, Killing
Joke, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Bauhaus, The Cures and New Order they were the more ones
outstanding) and the satire exposed in an aggressive and explicit language regarding the hypocrisy
moral and sexual that governs in the advanced societies, they would be those lines teachers that
they would conform their portrait.
With Sid Vicious tragic disappearance February 2 of 1979, hardened bands as
The Clash, ironic as The Damned or Dead Kennedys, Crass, Generation X, Buzzcocks,
Boomtowm Rats or Public Image Limited, captained by Johnny Rotten, Addicts, GBH,
Blitz, Exploited and Discharge, among other, enjoyed some years of success that you/they gave test of
the force with which the postulates and the attitudes punk had soaked in the rock. It proves of it
it is that the punk, even when it gives the step in the eighties to the new wave, impregnates those
manners of numerous formations coming from the hardcore, of the one heavy metal, the new
romantic music and the glam rock (Motorhead, Anti-Sect, Plasmatics, Iron Maiden, Megadeth,
Wendy O. Williams, Suicidal Tendencies, Panther, Sepulchre) and she/he reborns in the ninety as
it influences ostensible and decisive in the grunge, the bondage, the music electronic, the snuff, and
even the neo-punk (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chain, The Tubes, Ministry, Theraphy?,
Nine Inch Nails, Gwar, Marilyn Manson, Offsprings or Bad Religión, among other bands). In
Spain the influence of the punk is already perceived advanced the 70, with a proliferation of bands
of ephemeral existence in most of the cases and one surprising capacity of
transformation (KK of Luxe, Alaska and the Celluloses, Kortatu, The Polla Records,
Eskorbuto, RIP, Scar, Larsen, Vulpes, Total Catastrophe, You Resentful, Paralysis
Permanent, they were the most outstanding formations).
In that context, the commercial operation for the one that, from July of 1996 the survivors of
Sex Pistols (Rotten, Matlock, Steve Jones and Paul Cook) you they reconcile and they undertake the tour
world "Sucio Lucro", it supposes the most extravagant of the metamorphoses of the punk.

ATRAS