Second wave

By 1977, a second wave of the punk rock movement was breaking in the three countries where it had emerged, as well as in many other places. Bands from the same scenes often sounded very different from each other, reflecting the eclectic state of punk music during the era.[138] While punk rock remained largely an underground phenomenon in North America, Australia, and the new spots where it was emerging, in the UK it briefly became a major sensation.[139]
North America
The California punk scene was in full swing by early 1977. In Los Angeles, there were The Zeros, The Germs, The Weirdos, X, The Dickies, The Bags, and the relocated Tupperwares, now dubbed The Screamers.[140] San Francisco's second wave included The Avengers, Negative Trend, The Mutants, and The Sleepers.[141] The Dils, from Carlsbad, moved between the two major cities.[142] The Wipers formed in Portland, Oregon. In Seattle, there was The Lewd.[143] Often sharing gigs with the Seattle punks were bands from across the Canadian border. A major scene developed in Vancouver, spearheaded by the Furies and Victoria's all-female Dee Dee and the Dishrags.[143] The Skulls spun off into D.O.A. and The Subhumans. The K-Tels (later known as the Young Canadians) and Pointed Sticks were among the area's other leading punk acts.[144]
In eastern Canada, the Toronto protopunk band Dishes had laid the groundwork for another sizable scene,[145] and a September 1976 concert by the touring Ramones had catalyzed the movement. Early Ontario punk bands included The Diodes, The Viletones, The Demics, Forgotten Rebels, Teenage Head, The Poles, and The Ugly. Along with the Dishrags, Toronto's The Curse and B Girls were North America's first all-female punk acts.[146] In July 1977, the Viletones, Diodes, and Teenage Head headed down to New York City to play a four-day showcase at CBGB. Punk rock was already beginning to give way there to the anarchic sound of what became known as No Wave, although several original punk bands continued to perform. Leave Home, the Ramones' second album, had come out in January. September saw Richard Hell and The Voidoids' first full-length, Blank Generation.[147] The Heartbreakers' debut, L.A.M.F., and the Dead Boys', Young, Loud and Snotty, appeared in October; the Ramones' third, Rocket to Russia, in November. The Cramps, whose core members were from Sacramento by way of Akron, had debuted at CBGB in November 1976, opening for the Dead Boys. They were soon playing regularly at Max's Kansas City.[148] The Misfits formed in nearby New Jersey; by 1978, they had developed a style known as horror punk.
The Ohio protopunk bands were joined by Cleveland's The Pagans,[149] Akron's Bizarros and Rubber City Rebels, and Kent's Human Switchboard. Bloomington, Indiana, had MX-80 Sound and Detroit had The Sillies. The Feederz formed in Arizona. Atlanta had The Fans. In North Carolina, there was Chapel Hill's H-Bombs and Raleigh's Th' Cigaretz.[150] The Chicago scene began not with a band but with a group of DJs transforming a gay bar, La Mere Vipere, into what became known as America's first punk dance club. Tutu and the Pirates and Silver Abuse were among the city's first punk bands.[151] In Boston, the scene at the Rat was joined by the Nervous Eaters, Thrills, and Human Sexual Response.[150] In Washington, D.C., the Controls played their first gig in spring 1977, but the city's second wave really broke the following year with acts such as Urban Verbs, Half Japanese, D'Chumps, Rudements, and Shirkers.[152] By early 1978, the D.C. jazz-fusion group Mind Power had transformed into Bad Brains, one of the first bands to be identified with hardcore punk.[150][153]
Australia
In February 1977, EMI released The Saints' debut album, (I'm) Stranded, which the band recorded in two days.[154] The Saints had relocated to Sydney; in April, they and Radio Birdman united for a major gig at Paddington Town Hall.[155] Last Words had also formed in the city. The following month, The Saints relocated again, to Great Britain. In June, Radio Birdman released the album Radios Appear on its own Trafalgar label.[100]
The Victims became a short-lived leader of the Perth scene, self-releasing the classic "Television Addict". They were joined by The Scientists, Kim Salmon's successor band to the Cheap Nasties. Among the other bands constituting Australia's second wave were the Hellcats and Psychosurgeons (later known as the Lipstick Killers) in Sydney;[156] The Leftovers, The Survivors, and Razar in Brisbane;[157] and La Femme, The Negatives, and The Babeez (later known as The News) in Melbourne.[158] Melbourne's art rock–influenced Boys Next Door featured singer Nick Cave, who would become one of the world's most celebrated post-punk artists.
United Kingdom
The Pistols' live TV skirmish with Bill Grundy was the signal moment in British punk's transformation into a major media phenomenon, even as some stores refused to stock the records and radio airplay was hard to come by.[159] Press coverage of punk misbehavior grew intense: On January 4, 1977, the Evening News of London ran a front-page story on how the Sex Pistols "vomited and spat their way to an Amsterdam flight".[160] In February 1977, the first album by a British punk band appeared: Damned Damned Damned reached number thirty-six on the UK chart. The EP Spiral Scratch, self-released by Manchester's Buzzcocks, was a benchmark for both the DIY ethic and regionalism in the country's punk movement.[161] The Clash's self-titled debut album came out two months later and rose to number twelve; the single "White Riot" entered the top forty. In May, the Sex Pistols achieved new heights of controversy (and number two on the singles chart) with "God Save the Queen". The band had recently acquired a new bassist, Sid Vicious, who was seen as exemplifying the punk persona.[162]
New groups continued to form around the country: Crass, from Essex, merged a vehement, straight-ahead punk rock style with a committed anarchist mission. Sham 69, London's Menace, and the Angelic Upstarts from South Shields in the Northeast combined a similarly stripped-down sound with populist lyrics, a style that became known as streetpunk. These expressly working-class bands contrasted with others in the second wave that presaged the post-punk phenomenon. Such groups expressed punk rock's energy and aggression, while expanding its musical range with a wider variety of tempos and often more complex instrumentation. London's Wire took minimalism and brevity to an extreme. London's Tubeway Army, Belfast's Stiff Little Fingers, and Dunfermline, Scotland's The Skids infused punk rock with elements of synth and noise music.[163] Liverpool's first punk group, the theatrical Big in Japan, didn't last long, but it spun off several well-known post-punk acts.[164]
Alongside thirteen original songs that would define classic punk rock, The Clash's debut had included a cover of the recent Jamaican reggae hit "Police and Thieves".[166] Other first wave bands such as The Slits and new entrants to the scene like The Ruts and The Police interacted with the reggae and ska subcultures, incorporating their rhythms and production styles. The punk rock phenomenon helped spark a full-fledged ska revival movement known as 2 Tone, centered around bands such as The Specials, The Beat, Madness, and The Selecter.[167]
June 1977 saw the release of two more charting punk records: The Vibrators' Pure Mania and the Sex Pistols' third single, "Pretty Vacant", which reached number six. In July, The Saints had a top-forty hit with "This Perfect Day". Recently arrived from Australia, the band was now considered insufficiently "cool" to qualify as punk by much of the British media, though they had been playing a similar brand of music for years.[168] In August, The Adverts entered the top twenty with "Gary Gilmore's Eyes". The following month, the Pistols hit number eight with "Holidays in the Sun", while Generation X and The Clash reached the top forty with, respectively, "Your Generation" and "Complete Control".[169] In October, the Sex Pistols released their first and only "official" album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. Inspiring yet another round of controversy, it topped the British charts. In December, one of the first books about punk rock was published: The Boy Looked at Johnny, by Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons.[170] Declaring the punk rock movement to be already over, it was subtitled The Obituary of Rock and Roll. In January 1978, the Sex Pistols broke up while on American tour.
Rest of the world
Meanwhile, punk rock scenes were emerging around the globe. In France, les punks, a Parisian subculture of Lou Reed fans, had already been around for years.[171] Following the lead set by Stinky Toys, Métal Urbain played its first concert in December 1976. The new punk band's brief set included a cover of the Stooges' "No Fun", also a staple of the Sex Pistols' live show.[172] Métal Urbain's debut single, "Panik", released in May 1977, was perhaps the first non-English-language punk rock record;[173] with its "near motorik beat ... gruff guitar riffs, shouted lyrics, and the occasionally swooping synth line", it is also one of the earliest examples anywhere of a style that would become identified with post-punk.[174] Other French punk acts such as Oberkampf and Starshooter soon formed.[175]
In West Germany, bands primarily inspired by British punk came together in the Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW) movement. Ätzttussis, the Nina Hagen Band, and S.Y.P.H. featured "raucous vocals and militant posturing", according to writer Rob Burns.[176] Before turning in a mainstream direction in the 1980s, NDW attracted a politically conscious and diverse audience, including both participants of the left-wing alternative scene and neo-Nazi skinheads. These opposing factions were mutually attracted by a view of punk rock as "'against the system' politically as well as musically".[176] Briard jump-started Finnish punk with its 1977 single "I Really Hate Ya"/"I Want Ya Back";[177] other early Finnish punk acts included Eppu Normaali and singer Pelle Miljoona. In Yugoslavia, punk rock acts emerged in Croatia (Paraf), Slovenia (Pankrti), and Serbia (Pekinška patka). In Japan, a punk movement developed around bands playing in an art/noise style such as Friction, and "psych punk" acts like Gaseneta and Kadotani Michio.[178] In New Zealand, Auckland's Scavengers and Suburban Reptiles were followed by The Enemy of Dunedin.[150] Punk rock scenes also grew in other countries such as Belgium (The Kids, Chainsaw),[179] the Netherlands (The Suzannes, The Ex),[180] Sweden (Ebba Grön, KSMB),[181] and Switzerland (Nasal Boys, Kleenex).[182]