It’s been a bone of contention that’s been going on for 50 years or more; where and how did punk music start? Who was the most influential alternative band, what scene spawned the first truly rebellious bands who flew in the face of convention and forged a path for the plethora of great musicians and personalities that shaped music as we know it today?

I think you have to go back beyond the 60s, maybe beyond the 50s. Elvis could be considered a punk, such was his swagger and notoriety as a rebel among the white bread offerings of the time. Johnny Cash was another, and to take it even further back, the blues outlaws of the 1930s like Robert Johnson definitely qualified as outsiders… which is the real ethos of punk, is it not? Doing a deal with the devil and selling your soul for music is as punk as it gets, no? It’s an attitude rather than a musical genre.

This chart from design house Dorothy maps out the modern day punk family tree, taking its starting point from the infamous Sex Pistols show at the Lesser Free Trade hall in Manchester in July 1976. In the crowd were future members of Joy Division, the Buzzcocks, The Clash and The Smiths, often referenced in movies like Control and 24 Hour Party People. 

Designer James Quail used the schematic of a circuit board of a tranistor radio to track the evolution of some of the 20th centuries most important bands with his Alternative Love Blueprint—A History of Alternative Music. “Taking that (Sex Pistols) gig as a starting point, I tried to map out the bands who influenced each other in some way up to that point, from the early proto-punk and garage rockers, through CBGB’s era of punk. Then I mapped out where those scenes led through punk, post-punk, 2 tone & ska, hardcore, Riot Grrrl, Grunge, and so on.”

Whether you agree with the bloodlines or not, it’s a fascinating look at how music evolved within a scene and then spread out to a much bigger entity, and continues to spread its tentacles far and wide today. I’m just relieved that Radio Birdman take their rightful place.

*Hover over the image to zoom and buy the print here…