Punk Rock emerged nearly simultaneously in both New York with the Ramones and London with the Sex Pistols. These pioneering bands, rising out of the ashes of Garage rockers like the Stooges and the MC5, Glamsters like the New York Dolls, and the minimalism of the Velvet Underground, were loud, fast and in your face.

Rock and Roll had become bloated on ego and excess (both personally and artistically) and Punk drained the fluid right out of that mangled corpse, leaving only the essentials. 3 chord riffs, loud and fast beats and angry lyrics scared the establishment and titillated the youth much as early Rock and Roll had done.

Punk flirted with mainstream success only briefly in the States and soon fizzled in the UK as well. What was left stayed underground, growing and subdividing until the term Punk is now not much more descriptive than is the term Rock.