What We Were Listening To in 1975 at The Punk Dump
Not a lot of great music back then, but!
So what music did we listen to back when we lived in The PUNK Dump in late 1975 and very early in 1976 while we were putting together the first and second issues? You know how the music scene back then has been described by some people as a cultural wasteland. It was a weird time for rock ’n’ roll fans. Glam rock was dying, and prog rock had become overly pretentious and unlistenable. Alice Cooper left his band and released Welcome To My Nightmare, The Stooges were long gone… And disco was replacing soul music.
Oddly enough, for three people who wanted to start a music magazine, I was the only person who actually owned a stereo system. Ged Dunn, Jr. had a small album collection, but Legs didn’t like music and didn’t own a single record, so I was usually the one playing music… And inflicting my taste on everyone else in the office.
Of course our favorite album was The Dictators Go Girl Crazy, and I liked Lou Reed’s two live albums from his Academy of Music show, but I’ve already mentioned those two. There wasn’t much punk rock to listen to in 1975 and early 1976, so there were slim pickings when it came to new music. I often played “the classics”: Alice Cooper’s Killer, the Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix, The Yardbirds, etc.
This is the “new stuff” I was also playing on the Punk Dump’s stereo:
On Your Feet Or On Your Knees
Blue Oyster Cult
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On Your Feet Or On Your Knees is one of my favorite live rock albums of all time. The production isn’t great, which indicates that it is a real, live album since so may “live” albums back then we re-recorded in the studio with crowd noise added later on.
It’s a double album, and the fourth side is a must-listen: they do amazing covers of The Yardbirds (“I Ain’t Got You” with a bit of “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” after a guitar break). Then they cover the MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams” with total punk attitude and end with an insane cover of Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild”, one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll songs of all time. Their song “ME 262” (end of side three) was the show-stopping last song of their set (before the “encores” on side four), when all five members picked up guitars at the same time and drove the crowd to total insanity.
When I saw them at Central Park at the Schaefer Festival in 1973, the crowd was the craziest, most violent futhermuckers I ever saw at a show. All of the metal chairs at the Wollman Skating Rink became a trash heap of twisted metal and wreckage. When drummer Al Bouchard threw a few drumsticks into the crowd at the end, fifteen of us grabbed it and tried to wrestle it away from each other! It ended with me and one other guy who stared with a crazed expression on his face and growled: “If you don’t let go, I’m going to KILL YOU!”
So… I let go.
It’s weird that their cover version of the MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams” from that LP doesn’t appear on YouTube, but here it is from a different live video (I hope you can see it):
There has always been a weirdness between punk rock and heavy metal, which always baffled me. I grew up listening to Cream, Jimi Hendrix and The Jeff Beck Group, all “heavy rock” bands in the 1960s. I think the Ramones, Dictators, Dead Boys etc. all played “heavy rock” music. I think that maybe punk rock roots in glam rock turned off a lot of teenagers back then or something, Which is crazy, especially when heavy metal musicians like Rob Halford of Judas Priest came out as gay. I mean, who cares about this stuff?
I think Blue Oyster Cult were the bridge between the two music genres. Patti Smith, Helen Wheels and Richard Meltzer all contributed lyrics to BOC. Their managers got The Dictators their first recording deal. Blue Oyster Cult even appeared on the cover of the first issue of Sniffing’ Glue, the English punk rock zine. I never understood the animosity between the two groups of music fans, there are punk bands I like and other punk bands I am not so fond of, same with heavy metal. Music isn’t supposed to be like a war between religions, no one should worship rock musicians. But they do.
Toys In The Attic
Aerosmith
I’m pretty sure I had a few Aerosmith albums in my collection before I started the magazine. This one had a lot of great songs on it: “Walk This Way”, (the title was hilariously inspired by Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein film), “Sweet Emotion”, and the title track are the best. Get Your Wings, released in 1974, was another good record. They did a nice cover of “Train Kept A Rollin’”, a favorite Yardbirds recording of mine.
Metamorphosis
The Rolling Stones
I didn’t like The Rolling Stones after Satanic Majesties Request, it just seemed that by then they were just doing whatever it took to get attention. But I always liked the early Rolling Stones, so I picked this up. Most of the songs were recorded between 1964 and 1966, when (in my opinion) they were at their creative peak. Classic Stones songs like “Heart of Stone”, “Out of Time” are on here. Have to admit I haven’t listened to it since.
Too Much Too Soon
The New York Dolls
Yeah, it was released in 1974, but it was still a recent album at the time. I thought this was their best LP, and was looking forward to a third album. It had so many good songs on it: “Human Being”, “Don’t Start Me Talkin’”, “Stranded in the Jungle”, “(There’s Gonna Be A) Showdown”, there’s really not a bad song on the LP.
Sadly they were on a downward spiral by this time. I witnessed their decline. The first time I saw them was at Madison Square Garden’s Felt Forum, when they opened for Mott The Hoople. They didn’t exactly light up the world at the time, but I liked them. I think their peak was when they headlined The Academy of Music later on, where Bob Gruen’s “Lipstick Killers” film opened their show. That was a kickass performance and I thought they might become a popular band. They were great. But it was all downhill from there.
As leaders of the New York City downtown rock scene, it was disappointing that they broke up in 1975, but they inspired so many bands in their wake. It’s amazing.
Looking over the top rock records of 1974, I kind of think 1975 might have been a slight improvement: David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs, The Rolling Stones It’s Only Rock ’N’ Roll, John Lennon’s Walls and Bridges, Queen, Billy Joel, Bachman Turner Overdrive, The Doobie Brothers… and even more musicians seemed past their prime in 1974.
The music scene had atrophied by then, propelled by the industry promoting the same old same old. But this is why Ged Dunn Jr. and I thought a new magazine promoting a new music scene could catch fire.
Ged Dunn Jr’s Favorites:
Born To Run
Bruce Springsteen
Ged’s favorite album featured the song “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out,” which was one of our favorite songs, because that winter? At the PUNK Dump? Yeah, that was it. That song described our existence that winter: FREEZING COLD! (Sort of like the weather in New York City and down south lately!) Also, “Born To Run” was constantly on the radio, and it was a great song.
Sadly, Bruce was receiving so much media hype back then that we just assumed he wasn’t authentic. Now? I think he was worth all the hype, of course. The Patti Smith Band covered “Because The Night” years later and he wrote “Hungry Heart” for the Ramones and all… He contributed to Lou Reed’s Street Hassle LP and did a lot to support the local music scene. Cool guy, but I never got into his music.
This was Ged Dunn Jr.’s favorite album, so when he got control of the stereo we’d be forced to listen to it, of course. Ged also liked The Patti Smith Group first LP.
Horses
The Patti Smith Group
This is a tough one. When Horses was released in November 1975 it put the CBGB scene on the map. It got a lot of favorable coverage from the mainstream media. Since it was released around the same time as Springsteen’s “Born To Run” (which became a huge mainstream hit record), the two of them were going to be “The Future of Rock ’N’ Roll!”
This was a weird situation for me, since I thought the Ramones and The Dictators were going to be the future of rock ‘n’ roll!
I loved The Patti Smith Group’s debut single “Piss Factory/Hey Joe” 45 rpm (bought my copy at East Side Books on St. Marks Place in 1974). To me that was one of the most honest statements about life, it was like classic literature. So I had trouble processing their debut album. I liked it but didn’t love it. There weren’t any songs that related to my real life (like “Piss Factory”).
But I’ve always respected Patti’s position as the most prominent figure from the CBGB scene in those years before the Ramones, Talking Heads and Blondie became famous. And she was cool: Patti gave us access for an interview for our second issue (against the advice of her management team), which gave us a great cover story. A year later, when she was still recovering from a horrendous stage accident that injured her neck and wore a neck brace, she headlined our benefit concert at CBGB, which raised enough money to keep us in business. She did a lot of cool stuff that has to be respected.
But I have to say it made my life difficult when we were trying to establish “punk rock” as music by the Ramones, The Stooges, The Dictators etc. while Patti and Bruce were actually selling records and getting media attention and “street-rock poets” etc. There was a lot of confusion about what “punk rock” was back then. The Sex Pistols changed everything, of course, in the next year. But their first single wasn’t released until the end of 1976.
Ged Dunn Jr.’s other favorite album was:
Blood On The Tracks
Bob Dylan
Ged was such a super-fan of Dylan that he bought tickets for all of us to see The Rolling Thunder Review at Madison Garden when Dylan and company played a famous concert there on December 8, 1975. I thought it was just awful: an over-hyped media event with a lot of bad music. But it was the “Biggest Event in Music History” so I went to see it.
Looking back, it’s sad that Ged didn’t understand the punk rock phenomenon and enjoyed shit like this instead. He only visited CBGB once or twice, usually dressed in a suit and tie, and preferred mainstream music and singles bars (a 1970s phenomenon). Like most “music consumers” back then, he didn’t dig punk. It was too “downmarket” or something. People back then wanted nothing to do with hanging out in a bar on The Bowery, where there were bums all over the streets.
I can only imagine what could have been if he took that stick out of his butt, joined Legs and I hanging out at CBGB and got into punk rock.
Legs McNeils’ Favorites:
Meet the Beatles
The Beatles
Legs McNeil’s favorite music back then was early Beatles and Chuck Berry. (And early ZZ Top, once we got their promo albums a few months later.) He’d put headphones on hiss head, play air guitar and dance to this stuff. I had a few early Beatles and Chuck Berry LPs in my collection, so it worked.
It’s weird to me that nowadays, Legs is viewed as a “music journalist” who had something to do with promoting punk rock back in the day, because back then he always said he “hated music” and refused to cover the band scene. Again, this was a missed opportunity for PUNK Magazine. I was starting a magazine about punk rock with two guys who didn’t get it.
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