FIVE FAVORITE BANDS OF '70s BRITISH PUNK ROCKERS:
by Peter Gorman
1. The Small Faces -- This 60s band was fairly popular in England, but not too popular, which was the key. They retained a bit of cool by never becoming really big. The punks might have liked the Rolling Stones but publicly they had to denounce them as dinosaurs; the Stones hadn't even done the proper thing and broken up, as the Small Faces had done. So the Small Faces defined two rules for the punks: don't sell too many records, and break up early. Because of their resurgence in popularity the Small Faces did get back together in 1977, and suddenly they weren't so popula anymore.
2. Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band -- This strange bird from California was most loved for his atonal double record, Trout Mask Replica. The punks liked his abrasiveness (and his lack of popularity), but they never sounded like him, though some of them did pay homage to atonality.
3. New York Dolls -- These New York glam rockers from the early 1970s were loved for their outrageousness. They also could barely play their instruments. The punks took their "anyone can do it" theme from the Dolls, and their attempts at theater.
4. The Ramones -- New York punks who were punks before the Brits were, but were also retro in a way the British punks would never be. The punks liked their simplicity and straightforward manner, and convinced some, but not all, of the punks to take themselves less seriously.
5. David Bowie/Roxy Music -- The secret heroes of the punks, and the main reason that punk disappeared so quickly from the charts in England, to be replaced by the new romantics like Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, and so on. The punk rockers on stage and in the audience had been big fans of Bowie and Roxy Music before the Sex Pistols came along, and they returned to their imitators soon after the Pistols were gone. It was fun while it lasted.
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