Blondie
Artist: Blondie
Community Score: 7.86

If new wave was about reconfiguring and recontextualizing simple pop/rock forms of the '50s and '60s in new, ironic, and aggressive ways, then Blondie, which took the girl group style of the early and mid-'60s and added a '70s archness, fit right in. True punksters may have deplored the group early on (they never had the hip cachet of Talking... Read More

Mondo Deco
Artist: Quick

Earle Mankey worked with Sparks and the Dickies, and the type of understanding necessary to translate sounds from those experimental groups is a plus on Mondo Deco, from the original Quick. As with the other major Kim Fowley and Mankey discovery, the Runaways, this band was released on Mercury in 1976, and it is one of the best examples of fun... Read More

In the City/This Is the Modern World
Artist: The Jam

Polydor repackaged the Jam's first two albums, In the City and This is the Modern World, as a single-cassette release in 1980. It's not necessarily a bad way to purchase the albums, but the presentation and fidelity are a little shabby, and the vinyl records and subsequent CD reissues are a much more preferable way to acquire these albums. ~... Read More

Live at Max's Kansas City
Artist: Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers
Young Loud & Snotty
Artist: Dead Boys
Community Score: 8.07

Fellow Cleveland types Pere Ubu may have won the artistic kudos for their adventurous, surprising work, but if the goal was just to rock and rock again, the Dead Boys had them totally trumped. As both title phrase and capsule description, Young, Loud & Snotty accurately defines the predominating aesthetic so well that one could just leave it at... Read More

Count Bishops
Artist: The Count Bishops

Kicking off with a great cover of the Kinks' "I Need You," this solid, unpretentious debut album belongs in the home of every fan of English R&B from the Yardbirds to the Pretty Things to Dr. Feelgood. Guitarists Johnny Guitar and Zenon de Fleur keep it tight and simple, never wasting a note, and vocalist Dave Tice is so macho, it's enough to... Read More

Adventure
Artist: Television
Community Score: 6.75

Television's groundbreaking first album, Marquee Moon, was as close to a perfect debut as any band made in the 1970s, and in many respects it would have been all but impossible for the band to top it. One senses that Television knew this, because Adventure seems designed to avoid the comparisons by focusing on a different side of the band's... Read More

Marquee Moon
Artist: Television
Community Score: 9.18

Marquee Moon is a revolutionary album, but it's a subtle, understated revolution. Without question, it is a guitar rock album -- it's astonishing to hear the interplay between Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd -- but it is a guitar rock album unlike any other. Where their predecessors in the New York punk scene, most notably the Velvet Underground,... Read More

The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle
Artist: The Sex Pistols
Community Score: 8.55

A wildly inconsistent but often entertaining collection, the soundtrack to the Sex Pistols' pseudo-documentary contains great music, wacked-out novelties, and flat-out tripe in approximately equal proportions. Some formative recordings are included -- mostly covers like "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone," plus a demo of "Anarchy in the U.K." that... Read More

Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols
Artist: The Sex Pistols
Community Score: 8.28

While mostly accurate, dismissing Never Mind the Bollocks as merely a series of loud, ragged midtempo rockers with a harsh, grating vocalist and not much melody would be a terrible error. Already anthemic songs are rendered positively transcendent by Johnny Rotten's rabid, foaming delivery. His bitterly sarcastic attacks on pretentious... Read More

In the City
Artist: The Jam
Community Score: 7.96

On their debut, the Jam offered a good balance between the forward-looking, "destroy everything" aggression of punk with a certain reverence for '60s beat and R&B. In an era that preached attitude over musicianship, the Jam bettered the competition with good pop sense, strong melodies, and plenty of hooks that compromised none of punk's ideals... Read More

Generation X - UK
Artist: Generation X
Community Score: 5.90

Original Debut is a reissue of the U.K. version of Generation X's first album. Cocky and commercial -- and sporting some of Billy Idol's better lyrics -- Original Debut is more like glam or straight power pop with punk themes than pure punk. The guitar freakout at the end of "Youth Youth Youth" is the sort of noodly guitar jam you might not... Read More

Machine Gun Etiquette
Artist: The Damned
Community Score: 9.21

Rejoining forces without James, who pursued his own interests from then on (only hooking up with the band again for a late-'80s "farewell" show), the remaining three brought in young Saints veteran Ward on bass, recorded an album, and hoped for the best. That best proved much better than expected; while singles ended up on the charts, Etiquette... Read More

Damned Damned Damned
Artist: The Damned
Community Score: 9.50

While the Sex Pistols will always have a prominent place in the story of U.K. punk, the Damned did nearly everything first, including the first single, the smoking "New Rose," and the first album, namely, this stone classic of rock & roll fire. At just half an hour long, Damned Damned Damned is a permanent testimony to original guitarist Brian... Read More

Plastic Letters
Artist: Blondie
Community Score: 8.08

In artistic terms, Plastic Letters, Blondie's second album, was a classic example of the sophomore slump. If their debut, Blondie, was a precise update of the early-'60s girl group sound, delivered with an ironic, '70s sensibility, its follow-up seemed to consist of leftovers, the songwriting never emerging from obscurity and pedestrian musical... Read More

Radios Appear
Artist: Radio Birdman

Starting off with a rip-snortin' cover of The Stooges' "T.V. Eye," this is primal (and prime) Birdman, with Tek and Younger firmly ensconced in the eye of this guitar-fueled hurricane. Tek's originals are pretty strong, especially the grimy tale of urban desolation "Murder City Nights" and the noisy freakout "Descent Into the Maelstrom." One of... Read More