Originally Posted by William_the_Bloody

This stupid argument again. The first punk band of course is the Sex Pistols. They are the reason the whole genre got labelled punk in the first place. The term may have been used in obscurity before the Pistols, but it was Caroline Coon's use of the term punk to describe the British scene, that got picked up by the media and turned into a widespread phenomenon.

The Sonics, MC5, Death and all that 60's so called proto punk is not punk, its psychedelic garage rock. The closest thing was Iggy and the Stooges, and they were still a drugged out hippy garage rock band. No one in 68 was walking around saying "hey lets form a punk band."

I suppose you could argue that the Ramones were the first punk band in sound, but again without the Pistols the New York scene would have been nothing but a few art school college kids with limited impact (Blondie Aside)

The Pistols brought the nihilistic sound, attitude and look, and the politics and violence that attracted millions of imitators in the UK and the US to form bands like Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, Misfits, Discharge, The Exploited, Green Day, Offspring ect, ect. Without the 70's there would have been no 80's, without the 80's no 90's.

Anyways punk is irrelevant now. It was a youth culture movement that existed when big urban centers like London and New York had large inhabitants of urban white kids running around, rebelling against arena rock. Try finding that today. Grime and hip hop are the punk of today, punk is dead, no more, get with the times.