Released: 1976
Possibly the biggest differentiator between any old punk rock and good punk rock comes with the rhythm section; whether the pairing was Cook/Jones, Simonon/Headon or Sensible/Scabies, it was that lower end which kept things in check whilst everybody else just struck a pose.
Fittingly it was a drummer who would help cast the movement’s first stone. The man in question was Tommy Erdelyi, who’d been a sound engineer at New York’s Record Plant studio before joining a bunch of untutored scruffians from Queens who went by the name of the Ramones. Growing out of the CBGB scene like a fungus the quartet played trashy, tainted rock and roll at amphetamine speed and the release of their eponymous debut album in the spring of 1976 made them undeniably the first to arrive at punk’s crime scene.
Erdelyi would provide the chassis and some of the words for it’s opening track and first single Blitzkrieg Bop, a putative statement of intent which sounded wonderfully like Phil Spector being mugged by The Stooges. Impossible to resist, it was all of Da Brudders manifesto in 134 perfect seconds, a cartoon song that also felt somehow deadly serious at the same time. For good measure there was a beat you could kick to, chops courtesy of a drummer who didn’t know that he’d just hit the skins on what would become one of the most famous punk numbers of all time.
The Voice Of Unreason 