Sunday Morning Playlist: Proto Punk - Page 4

5. New York Dolls: Personality Crisis

If the Velvet Underground was the first real proto-punk group, then the New York Dolls were the first punk group. Formed in 1971 by guitarists Johnny Thunders and Rick Rivets, bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane, drummer Billy Murcia, and vocalist David Johanson (who, many years later, would gain notoriety as Buster Poindexter), the Dolls virtually invented a new kind of hard rock that straddled a line between punk rock and heavy metal. This basic sound was glammed-up to bigger than life proportions. Rivets and Murcia were replaced by Syl Sylvian and Jerry Nolan, respectively, in 1972, in time for their debut album. New York Dolls is at once kitschy and menacing; it camps things up while it threatens you with a switchblade. "Personality Crisis" leads off the album, and remains their best known song.

6. Television: Little Johnny Jewel

Television were one of the very best of the New York punk-era bands. Their sound centered around the sometimes complex jams of guitarists Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd. Their music was as devoid of blues as could be; their jams were usually angular and abrasive, but could also emerge into shimmering, textured planes that were stunning in their beauty. They were particularly adept at taking a song down unexpected byways; nothing they recorded quite turned out the way it sounded at the outset. "Little Johnny Jewel" was the band's very first single, released in late 1974; it is a prime example of the New York school of proto-punk, which had a bohemian artiness ingrained in it, yet never stopped sounding raw and basic. Their 1977 album, Marquee Moon, is one of the indispensible recordings of the late 1970's.

7. Captain Beefheart: Abba Zaba

Captain Beefheart (Don Vliet) left a mark on the world in 1967 with his Safe As Milk album, heralded by John Lennon as one of his favorites. Not so much a punk as the consummate outsider, Beefheart grew up a desert rat in the Mojave. He had a fortuitous meeting with a young Frank Zappa who encouraged his jazz/blues/noise experiments. He relocated to Los Angeles in 1964 and formed The Magic Band. "Abba Zaba" is from Safe As Milk, and is an abstract delta blues, rough and loose, with an electric garage sound, featuring Beefheart's gravelly yips and yelps, and unhinged guitar from a 20-year-old Ry Cooder. Beefheart would pursue a noisy outsider's route through his career, which ended suddenly and without warning in 1982, when he announced his retirement after a string of challenging, acclaimed albums. He persued painting for awhile in retirement, with considerable success, but has been almost invisible for over a decade, due to multiple sclerosis.

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