It may be that famil­iar­i­ty breeds con­tempt, and if that’s so, we should all be very glad of the wealth of excel­lent doc­u­men­taries cor­rect­ing the mono­lith­ic com­mer­cial sto­ry of punk, which goes some­thing like this: The Sex Pis­tols and The Clash explode into the world in 1977 pur­vey­ing anar­chy and rev­o­lu­tion and design­er BDSM gear, and the sta­tus quo freaks out, then dis­cov­ers many savvy mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and here we are at our local punk bou­tique before the punk are­na show at Cor­po­ra­tion Sta­di­um.

That’s a bor­ing sto­ry, most­ly because all the most inter­est­ing parts, and weird­est, most vio­lent, gross-out, angry, exper­i­men­tal, queer, black, rad­i­cal, fem­i­nist, etc. parts get left out, along with near­ly all the best bands. Even if we date punk from the ear­ly sev­en­ties in New York with Pat­ti Smith and the Ramones, we’re miss­ing key prog­en­i­tors from the 60s, from Detroit, Ger­many, Taco­ma, Wash­ing­ton… The brack­ets we snap around decades as though each one popped into exis­tence inde­pen­dent­ly may blind us to how much his­to­ry folds back in on itself, as do musi­cal eras and gen­res.

Even before Crass arrived in ‘77 as “the miss­ing link between coun­ter­cul­ture hip­pies and punk’s angry rhetoric,” the MC5 ruled Detroit stages and bloody polit­i­cal con­ven­tions in 1968 Chica­go. Though they’re credited—along with fel­low motor city natives Iggy and The Stooges—with the inven­tion of punk, they played hip­py music: loose, bluesy, soul­ful, filled with long jams and solos. But they played it hard­er and with more speed, raw met­al edge, and inten­si­ty than any­one, while adopt­ing the pol­i­tics of the Black Pan­thers. It’s refresh­ing to see both the MC5 and The Stooges rep­re­sent­ed in the Spo­ti­fy playlist below, “The Evo­lu­tion of Punk in Chrono­log­i­cal Order.” (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here.)

What may sound didac­tic is in fact pleas­ant­ly sur­pris­ing, and maybe essen­tial as far as these things go. No, of course, “not EVERY punk band will be list­ed here,” the playlist’s cre­ator con­cedes on Red­dit. Not only is this impos­si­ble, but, as he or she goes on, “I am con­struct­ing this list by my own per­son­al beliefs of what makes a band punk.” (Sor­ry, Blink 182 fans.) I’d be intrigued to know what those beliefs are. They are dis­crim­i­nat­ing, yet ecu­meni­cal. Not only does the MC5 get much-deserved inclu­sion, but so do sem­i­nal 60s garage rock bands like The Monks, an Amer­i­can band from Ger­many, and The Son­ics from Taco­ma.

We begin with a lit­tle-known, quaint­ly-named act called Ron­nie Cook & The Gay­lads, who in 1965 record­ed “Goo Goo Muck,” a nov­el­ty track that deliv­ered for The Cramps six­teen years lat­er. Ear­ly 60s rock­a­bil­ly, surf-rock, and bub­blegum (all prod­ucts of the pre­vi­ous decade), are of course essen­tial to so much punk, but the nov­el­ty act is also a punk sta­ple. I’m pleased to see here seri­ous exper­i­men­tal­ists like Sui­cide and NEU!, two bands with­out whom so much of the 2000s could not have hap­pened. I’m also pleased to see eight­ies pranksters The Dead Milk­man, who wrote deeply offen­sive nov­el­ty songs like “Takin’ Retards to the Zoo” and sound­ed like a com­ic book.

Do we not hear of the Dead Milk­men, and bands like Chok­ing Vic­tim, Cock Spar­rer, or the Cru­ci­fucks, because of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness run amok? That seems like an anachro­nis­tic way to look at things. I can assure you they pissed peo­ple off just as much at the time, and every­one argued end­less­ly about free speech. It’s true, the most offen­sive punk fig­ure on the list, G.G Allin, became a minor celebri­ty on the day­time cir­cuit after his extreme indul­gences in masochism and coprophil­ia onstage. But most punk bands played for lim­it­ed audi­ences, released on tiny labels, and attached them­selves to par­tic­u­lar regions. Play­ing punk rock was not always a very pop­u­lar thing to do.

There are too many frag­ments, too many off­shoots, tribes, divi­sions and affil­i­a­tions for a mono­cul­ture sum­ma­ry. But if you were to write an account of punk using only the tracks on this playlist, it would be a com­pre­hen­sive overview most peo­ple do not know, and a fas­ci­nat­ing one at that. Maybe punk died–in ’77 when it signed to CBS, or in 1979 at the dawn of the eight­ies, or last year, who knows. But this list insists on cov­er­ing over fifty years–from “Goo Goo Muck” to SKAAL’s 2016 “Not a Fan,” an almost clas­si­cal slab of hard­core, with a cho­rus that pro­vides the ide­al coda: “Your rules / I’m not a fan.” Is punk dead? You tell me.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing (1977–1980)

33 Songs That Doc­u­ment the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk (1975–2015): A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

The MC5 Per­forms at the 1968 Chica­go Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, Right Before All Hell Breaks Loose

Watch the Pro­to-Punk Band The Monks Sow Chaos on Ger­man TV, 1966: A Great Con­cert Moment on YouTube

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Just a quick fyi: The Man­ches­ter Ben­e­fit con­cert is hap­pen­ing now, and stream­ing live on YouTube. Cold­play, Phar­rell Williams, Justin Bieber, Katy Per­ry, Miley Cyrus, Niall Horan, Ush­er, and Ari­ana Grande will all per­form. Click play above to stream the live video feed.

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When we think of LSD and the Bea­t­les, John Lennon invari­ably gets the nod as the main mind expander of the group. After all, despite all protes­ta­tions to the con­trary, “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” lit­er­al­ly spells out Lennon’s indul­gence in the psy­che­del­ic drug.

But it was Paul, as seen in this above news­reel, who announced that he him­self had dropped acid before any oth­er band mem­ber admit­ted to such. And in doing so, know­ing the whole world was watch­ing, McCart­ney insist­ed on telling the truth and fac­ing the music, as it were.

The inter­view was record­ed on June 19, 1967, a day after Paul’s 25th birth­day. Their album Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band had been released three weeks pri­or on June 1, ush­er­ing in a par­tic­u­lar psy­che­del­ic era in Lon­don, though the band had been drop­ping hints (as well as lyser­gic acid) as ear­ly as 1966’s Revolver and 1965’s “Day Trip­per.”

McCart­ney had already let it be known he had tak­en the drug in an inter­view a few days before in Queen mag­a­zine, which Life then reprint­ed.

After I took it (LSD), it opened my eyes. We only use one-tenth of our brain. Just think what we could accom­plish if we could only tap that hid­den part. It would mean a whole new world.

The quote sent ITV crews to McCartney’s back­yard gar­den on Cavendish Ave. for this con­fronta­tion­al inter­view, where the inter­view­er wants to know first where he got the LSD from, but then chas­tis­es the singer for not keep­ing such a per­son­al event qui­et.

McCart­ney respond­ed:

Mmm, but the thing is — I was asked a ques­tion by a news­pa­per, and the deci­sion was whether to tell a lie or tell him the truth. I decid­ed to tell him the truth… but I real­ly did­n’t want to say any­thing, you know, because if I had my way I would­n’t have told any­one. I’m not try­ing to spread the word about this. But the man from the news­pa­per is the man from the mass medi­um. I’ll keep it a per­son­al thing if he does too you know… if he keeps it qui­et. But he want­ed to spread it so it’s his respon­si­bil­i­ty, you know, for spread­ing it not mine.

The reporter, look­ing for an angle, asks “Do you think that you have now encour­aged your fans to take drugs?”

McCart­ney puts the onus back on the reporter for sen­sa­tion­al­iz­ing a per­son­al mat­ter.

No, it’s you who’ve got the respon­si­bil­i­ty. You’ve got the respon­si­bil­i­ty not to spread this NOW. You know, I’m quite pre­pared to keep it as a very per­son­al thing if you will too. If you’ll shut up about it, I will.

Fun­ni­ly enough, it was Paul who came to LSD long after Lennon and Har­ri­son had tak­en it for the first time…inadvertantly, that is:

John, George and their wives were slipped a dose on a sug­ar pill in their evening cof­fee by den­tist John Riley, who had the cou­ples over for din­ner, and pos­si­bly some free love. Instead the four went club­bing and had their minds expand­ed. You can read the whole sto­ry over here at this fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry of Bea­t­le drug use. Also hear John tell it in the ani­ma­tion above.

McCart­ney final­ly dropped acid–the last Bea­t­le to do so–on March 21, 1967 after a record­ing ses­sion for “Get­ting Bet­ter.” Lennon had tak­en some acid by acci­dent and sat out the ses­sion, unable to con­tin­ue and McCart­ney took him home to his flat, where he decid­ed to try LSD, to “sort of catch up” with his friend. The Beat­les­Bible site quotes from McCartney’s bio by Bar­ry Miles, Many Years from Now.

And we looked into each oth­er’s eyes, the eye con­tact thing we used to do, which is fair­ly mind-bog­gling. You dis­solve into each oth­er. But that’s what we did, round about that time, that’s what we did a lot. And it was amaz­ing. You’re look­ing into each oth­er’s eyes and you would want to look away, but you would­n’t, and you could see your­self in the oth­er per­son. It was a very freaky expe­ri­ence and I was total­ly blown away.

There’s some­thing dis­turb­ing about it. You ask your­self, ‘How do you come back from it? How do you then lead a nor­mal life after that?’ And the answer is, you don’t. After that you’ve got to get trepanned or you’ve got to med­i­tate for the rest of your life. You’ve got to make a deci­sion which way you’re going to go.

I would walk out into the gar­den — ‘Oh no, I’ve got to go back in.’ It was very tir­ing, walk­ing made me very tired, wast­ed me, always wast­ed me. But ‘I’ve got to do it, for my well-being.’ In the mean­time John had been sit­ting around very enig­mat­i­cal­ly and I had a big vision of him as a king, the absolute Emper­or of Eter­ni­ty. It was a good trip. It was great but I want­ed to go to bed after a while.

I’d just had enough after about four or five hours. John was quite amazed that it had struck me in that way. John said, ‘Go to bed? You won’t sleep!’ ‘I know that, I’ve still got to go to bed.’ I thought, now that’s enough fun and par­ty­ing, now … It’s like with drink. That’s enough. That was a lot of fun, now I got­ta go and sleep this off. But of course you don’t just sleep off an acid trip so I went to bed and hal­lu­ci­nat­ed a lot in bed. I remem­ber Mal com­ing up and check­ing that I was all right. ‘Yeah, I think so.’ I mean, I could feel every inch of the house, and John seemed like some sort of emper­or in con­trol of it all. It was quite strange. Of course he was just sit­ting there, very inscrutably.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed John Lennon Describes His First Acid Trip

Meet the Icon­ic Fig­ures on the Cov­er of The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band

Sgt. Pepper’s Album Cov­er Gets Reworked to Remem­ber Icons Lost in 2016

How The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cov­er Design For­ev­er

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.