It may be that famil­iar­i­ty breeds con­tempt, and if that’s so, we should all be very glad of the wealth of excel­lent doc­u­men­taries cor­rect­ing the mono­lith­ic com­mer­cial sto­ry of punk, which goes some­thing like this: The Sex Pis­tols and The Clash explode into the world in 1977 pur­vey­ing anar­chy and rev­o­lu­tion and design­er BDSM gear, and the sta­tus quo freaks out, then dis­cov­ers many savvy mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and here we are at our local punk bou­tique before the punk are­na show at Cor­po­ra­tion Sta­di­um.

That’s a bor­ing sto­ry, most­ly because all the most inter­est­ing parts, and weird­est, most vio­lent, gross-out, angry, exper­i­men­tal, queer, black, rad­i­cal, fem­i­nist, etc. parts get left out, along with near­ly all the best bands. Even if we date punk from the ear­ly sev­en­ties in New York with Pat­ti Smith and the Ramones, we’re miss­ing key prog­en­i­tors from the 60s, from Detroit, Ger­many, Taco­ma, Wash­ing­ton… The brack­ets we snap around decades as though each one popped into exis­tence inde­pen­dent­ly may blind us to how much his­to­ry folds back in on itself, as do musi­cal eras and gen­res.

Even before Crass arrived in ‘77 as “the miss­ing link between coun­ter­cul­ture hip­pies and punk’s angry rhetoric,” the MC5 ruled Detroit stages and bloody polit­i­cal con­ven­tions in 1968 Chica­go. Though they’re credited—along with fel­low motor city natives Iggy and The Stooges—with the inven­tion of punk, they played hip­py music: loose, bluesy, soul­ful, filled with long jams and solos. But they played it hard­er and with more speed, raw met­al edge, and inten­si­ty than any­one, while adopt­ing the pol­i­tics of the Black Pan­thers. It’s refresh­ing to see both the MC5 and The Stooges rep­re­sent­ed in the Spo­ti­fy playlist below, “The Evo­lu­tion of Punk in Chrono­log­i­cal Order.” (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here.)

What may sound didac­tic is in fact pleas­ant­ly sur­pris­ing, and maybe essen­tial as far as these things go. No, of course, “not EVERY punk band will be list­ed here,” the playlist’s cre­ator con­cedes on Red­dit. Not only is this impos­si­ble, but, as he or she goes on, “I am con­struct­ing this list by my own per­son­al beliefs of what makes a band punk.” (Sor­ry, Blink 182 fans.) I’d be intrigued to know what those beliefs are. They are dis­crim­i­nat­ing, yet ecu­meni­cal. Not only does the MC5 get much-deserved inclu­sion, but so do sem­i­nal 60s garage rock bands like The Monks, an Amer­i­can band from Ger­many, and The Son­ics from Taco­ma.

We begin with a lit­tle-known, quaint­ly-named act called Ron­nie Cook & The Gay­lads, who in 1965 record­ed “Goo Goo Muck,” a nov­el­ty track that deliv­ered for The Cramps six­teen years lat­er. Ear­ly 60s rock­a­bil­ly, surf-rock, and bub­blegum (all prod­ucts of the pre­vi­ous decade), are of course essen­tial to so much punk, but the nov­el­ty act is also a punk sta­ple. I’m pleased to see here seri­ous exper­i­men­tal­ists like Sui­cide and NEU!, two bands with­out whom so much of the 2000s could not have hap­pened. I’m also pleased to see eight­ies pranksters The Dead Milk­man, who wrote deeply offen­sive nov­el­ty songs like “Takin’ Retards to the Zoo” and sound­ed like a com­ic book.

Do we not hear of the Dead Milk­men, and bands like Chok­ing Vic­tim, Cock Spar­rer, or the Cru­ci­fucks, because of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness run amok? That seems like an anachro­nis­tic way to look at things. I can assure you they pissed peo­ple off just as much at the time, and every­one argued end­less­ly about free speech. It’s true, the most offen­sive punk fig­ure on the list, G.G Allin, became a minor celebri­ty on the day­time cir­cuit after his extreme indul­gences in masochism and coprophil­ia onstage. But most punk bands played for lim­it­ed audi­ences, released on tiny labels, and attached them­selves to par­tic­u­lar regions. Play­ing punk rock was not always a very pop­u­lar thing to do.

There are too many frag­ments, too many off­shoots, tribes, divi­sions and affil­i­a­tions for a mono­cul­ture sum­ma­ry. But if you were to write an account of punk using only the tracks on this playlist, it would be a com­pre­hen­sive overview most peo­ple do not know, and a fas­ci­nat­ing one at that. Maybe punk died–in ’77 when it signed to CBS, or in 1979 at the dawn of the eight­ies, or last year, who knows. But this list insists on cov­er­ing over fifty years–from “Goo Goo Muck” to SKAAL’s 2016 “Not a Fan,” an almost clas­si­cal slab of hard­core, with a cho­rus that pro­vides the ide­al coda: “Your rules / I’m not a fan.” Is punk dead? You tell me.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing (1977–1980)

33 Songs That Doc­u­ment the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk (1975–2015): A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

The MC5 Per­forms at the 1968 Chica­go Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, Right Before All Hell Breaks Loose

Watch the Pro­to-Punk Band The Monks Sow Chaos on Ger­man TV, 1966: A Great Con­cert Moment on YouTube

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Just a quick fyi: The Man­ches­ter Ben­e­fit con­cert is hap­pen­ing now, and stream­ing live on YouTube. Cold­play, Phar­rell Williams, Justin Bieber, Katy Per­ry, Miley Cyrus, Niall Horan, Ush­er, and Ari­ana Grande will all per­form. Click play above to stream the live video feed.

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