ABSTRACT
In midsummer of 1977, Sire Records released “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker,” a new single by the Ramones. That summer was the high-water mark of the punk era-an era that had begun the year before, when the first wave of New York underground club bands started getting record contracts, and would end, for all practical purposes, with the breakup of the Sex Pistols in January of 1978. After that, though punk survived, it was no longer a revolution. But that hadn’t happened yet. At CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City, the atmosphere was heady with confidence. Everyone was ready to believe that by the end of the year punk rock would have taken the Top 40 by storm, and brought the mainstream of the culture to submission in one quick and easy battle; it was the old fantasy of the American bohemian underground, of finally being accepted by the rest of the country-a dream much older than rock ’n’ roll itself. There was a sense that people all around you were doing fine things, in a way they might never have the chance to again. To be in New York that summer was to have some sense of what it might have been like to live in San Francisco in 1966 or 1967, or in London when the Beatles and the Stones first hit.
