mayvis

The Clash was clearly a better band. The Pistols sent a hand scrawled letter to the powers that be when they were inducted into the Rock & Roll hall of fame basically insulting the institution and refusing to have anything to do with them. It was cool, if not a little childish. I met Johnny Rotten back in 2000 and chatted with him for a good half an hour, mostly about politics. he was a surprisingly nice guy. Not just nice for a punk, but much nicer than the average person. He even offered me one of his cigarettes after I smoked my last one without me asking.

Malcolm McClaren brought punk to the UK by way of New York. He briefly managed the New York Dolls in the mid 70s and saw the rise of the NY punk scene. He taught the Pistols how to act, what to play what to think, and basically how to be "punk". The Pistols song "Pretty Vacant" was suggested by McClaren because he wanted them to write a song that was the English equivalent of "Blank Generation" by Richard Hell & the Voidoids, the song most directly responsible for describing the punk ethos. Punk was born in New York then spread from there. As for who was the first real punk band, one could argue that until the end of time. Personally, I think of the Ramones as the band that laid the foundation for what punk was to be. They were certainly the band that carried punk out of New York and spread it around the rest of America. When they first toured their audience members, who had never heard punk before, began starting their own punk bands all over the country.

I can talk about this crap all day. Can you tell?

I think most of what you see publicly of Johnny Rotten is just an act, his public persona. That in itself is such a British punk thing. It seems like most of early Brit punk is about going out of your way to shock people.
American punk: "I'm going to do whatever I feel like, and I don't care what other people think about it."
British punk: "I'm going to do what I do specifically to shock and annoy other people."
You see that in the way punks dressed in the 70s. In America is was about antifashion. People would get old clothes at Goodwill and didn't care what they looked like. Not caring what they looked like was a way of rebelling, and that's how the safety pin thing got started. Your crappy shirt got ripped? Fix it with a safety pin! In England they spent lots of money buying "punk" clothes from Malcolm McClaren, jackets with bizarre cuts that already had 500 safety pins attached to it. It seems like the look was the most important thing in the UK, whereas in the US punk was primarily about the mindset. The sound itself was nothing more than bringing rock & roll back to its roots. It was a reaction to the ostentatious, overindulgent arena rock that had taken over the airwaves by the mid 70s. When you listen to early Ramones, or the Dead Boys, or any of those early NY punk bands, the structure of their songs is like sped up Chuck Berry or Gene Vincent. Just basic, highly accessible, high energy rock & roll that anyone can play.

In my mind punk is a 70s and 80s thing. If you want to get into the more accessible stuff from the last ten or twenty years, I'd agree that there's more of an English influence. The English sound was more polished. The English have always been that way, in every era. American musicians have more of a connection with their blues, folk and country roots in the way they play rock & roll. For an example, look at the difference in the playing styles of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. It's a matter of personal preference, I guess, but I think the English shoot themselves in the foot sometimes by overproducing their music. They kill the soul of the music with overproduction, giving it a sterile sound.