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Punk '77: An Inside Look at the San Francisco Rock n' Roll Scene, 1977
More than just a new direction in music, punk rock ignited a cultural revolution. Its intense, exciting emergence in the Bay Area is captured in Punk 77. In more than 100 searing, fully-captioned photos — including early shots of The Damned, The Ramones, Blondie, Nico, and Devo — the book traces the punk movement in San Francisco from its earliest days through the January 1978 Sex Pistols concert. Interviews and behind-the-scenes anecdotes from the Dils, Penelope Houston, Negative Trend, the Nuns, Dirk Dirksen, V. Vale, and others provide insights and illumination into both the music and the social, political, and economic factors punks rebelled against. While many of these colorful early adopters have died, their influence is still felt in the music of East Bay artists like Green Day and Rancid, and their incendiary thoughts live on in this inspiring, essential historical document — a counterculture manual for subversion.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
33 people want to read
About the author
James Stark
80 books1 followerJames Stark is a singer, vocal instructor, and musicologist with a deep interest in vocal pedagogy. He has taught for over twenty-five years at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. His work focuses on the history and techniques of singing, particularly in relation to the bel canto tradition. His book, Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy, is a significant study that explores historical singing methods and analyzes them using scientific research, making it a valuable resource for vocalists and scholars.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 9, 2017
I have the 1999 edition of this book, and it's a fairly comprehensive oral history of the early Mubahay Gardens scene in San Fransisco. Great photos, the people talking for the most part don't take themselves or the scene too seriously or self importantly. And it was nice to see some different names (like Jennifer Miro) in this book--a lot of oral histories have the same cast of characters. Still, the production value isn't great (lots of typos in my edition), and I left wanting more.
November 4, 2025
Sad to say, this isn’t much of a book. Other than brief intro paragraphs for each chapter, the text is comprised solely of snippets of interviews with some of the big names of early SF punk (Jennifer Miro, the Kinman brothers, several of the Avengers, the egregious V. Vale, etc.).
The book follows a roughly chronological thread that just peters out in early 1978, positing the final Sex Pistols gig as some sort of unspecified turning point for the scene. Stark, the nominal ‘author’ of the book, was actually a photographer. My guess is that his good pictures ran out at about this point.
This is particularly galling because 1978 would turn out to be the most harrowing and consequential year any American city had had since 1968. The Milk-Moscone assassinations and the mass suicide of the People’s Temple were epoch-defining events in the history of San Francisco, but neither is even mentioned herein. In fact, almost nothing that took place outside the battered doors of the Fab Mab and a couple of other venues is mentioned. You would never know, for example, that gay people were exercising political power as a group for the first time in human history, just about four miles west of the Mab.
The usual obligatory declamations of the end of a golden age are of course sprinkled atop the sloppy, misshapen cake. These golden ages invariably end when other, less cool people than the interviewee start to join the scene. (New York, London, L.A., later in Seattle: ‘twas ever thus.) Even the Dead Kennedys, by far the most famous SF punk band and the only one of any national stature, are cast as arrivistes, harbingers of the despoliation of a thriving creative Mecca.
The back jacket copy promises some sort of juicy tell-all & score-settling, but there’s very little detail that would raise an eyebrow (or a voice in a bar). Who was gay? Who was gay but still closeted? When did heroin make its tedious appearance, and with whom? Were Crime fascists? Racists? Rapists? Dark murmurings appear, but nobody actually says anything. A photo of Johnny Strike (Crime) is accompanied by a quote from Jennifer Miro: “We all know about Johnny of Crime.” That “we,” unfortunately, will not include the reader of this book, as absolutely nothing is said about what if anything lay behind this dark image.
Ultimately, it’s a sloppy mishmash. The photos aren’t striking enough (or reproduced at big enough scale) to count as a photo book, there’s no expository text longer than a paragraph, and the interviews are disconnected. (The last chapter is particularly bad in this regard.)
The book follows a roughly chronological thread that just peters out in early 1978, positing the final Sex Pistols gig as some sort of unspecified turning point for the scene. Stark, the nominal ‘author’ of the book, was actually a photographer. My guess is that his good pictures ran out at about this point.
This is particularly galling because 1978 would turn out to be the most harrowing and consequential year any American city had had since 1968. The Milk-Moscone assassinations and the mass suicide of the People’s Temple were epoch-defining events in the history of San Francisco, but neither is even mentioned herein. In fact, almost nothing that took place outside the battered doors of the Fab Mab and a couple of other venues is mentioned. You would never know, for example, that gay people were exercising political power as a group for the first time in human history, just about four miles west of the Mab.
The usual obligatory declamations of the end of a golden age are of course sprinkled atop the sloppy, misshapen cake. These golden ages invariably end when other, less cool people than the interviewee start to join the scene. (New York, London, L.A., later in Seattle: ‘twas ever thus.) Even the Dead Kennedys, by far the most famous SF punk band and the only one of any national stature, are cast as arrivistes, harbingers of the despoliation of a thriving creative Mecca.
The back jacket copy promises some sort of juicy tell-all & score-settling, but there’s very little detail that would raise an eyebrow (or a voice in a bar). Who was gay? Who was gay but still closeted? When did heroin make its tedious appearance, and with whom? Were Crime fascists? Racists? Rapists? Dark murmurings appear, but nobody actually says anything. A photo of Johnny Strike (Crime) is accompanied by a quote from Jennifer Miro: “We all know about Johnny of Crime.” That “we,” unfortunately, will not include the reader of this book, as absolutely nothing is said about what if anything lay behind this dark image.
Ultimately, it’s a sloppy mishmash. The photos aren’t striking enough (or reproduced at big enough scale) to count as a photo book, there’s no expository text longer than a paragraph, and the interviews are disconnected. (The last chapter is particularly bad in this regard.)
February 3, 2010
I continue to thin out my book collection and Punk '77 is one I had to read one more time before passing it on.
What I love about this book is that it captures the genesis of the San Francisco underground music scene very clearly through photos and quotes from the people who were there. You get to see who these people were and read what they had to say. These were the people in the Bay Area who were taking new from the old and challenging everything they possibly could. This was happening simultaneously all over the world (New York, L.A., London, etc.) and these cultural explosions would, in many ways, be the last of their kind. After all, the events that led to "punk" will not likely exist in this world again, for better or for worse. You get to find out about the bands that were around before "punk" and really see the differences as it got popular.
I think Punk '77 also neatly illustrates how long gone this thing really is and how co-opted "punk" has become. It hasn't been what it was in these pages since the late 70's. I mean, by the time you know what a movement looks like, the party's over. Jennifer Miro (The Nuns) states it well, "Then, you could feel you were creating something new. It was scary, because people reacted to you negatively. You got a lot of negative comments when you walked around looking like that. Now you can go to the supermarket and no one pays attention."
Punk '77 is kind of the perfect encapsulation of the cultural shift that took place in the Bay Area in the 70's. An excellent archive of a place in time.
What I love about this book is that it captures the genesis of the San Francisco underground music scene very clearly through photos and quotes from the people who were there. You get to see who these people were and read what they had to say. These were the people in the Bay Area who were taking new from the old and challenging everything they possibly could. This was happening simultaneously all over the world (New York, L.A., London, etc.) and these cultural explosions would, in many ways, be the last of their kind. After all, the events that led to "punk" will not likely exist in this world again, for better or for worse. You get to find out about the bands that were around before "punk" and really see the differences as it got popular.
I think Punk '77 also neatly illustrates how long gone this thing really is and how co-opted "punk" has become. It hasn't been what it was in these pages since the late 70's. I mean, by the time you know what a movement looks like, the party's over. Jennifer Miro (The Nuns) states it well, "Then, you could feel you were creating something new. It was scary, because people reacted to you negatively. You got a lot of negative comments when you walked around looking like that. Now you can go to the supermarket and no one pays attention."
Punk '77 is kind of the perfect encapsulation of the cultural shift that took place in the Bay Area in the 70's. An excellent archive of a place in time.
May 8, 2010
Very cool! Some of the info is not meticulously researched (along w photo captions) but the new edition addresses these issues in an afterward, and these folks were there, likely drunk and we all know how bad memory is...Excellent photos, and a great read for those who 'were' there or for those looking into the history of one of the great punk scenes in America, the San Francisco/Bay Area underground circa 1977.
October 29, 2009
I had a lot of fun reading this because of the historical content and anecdotes which were interesting or funny. It had some great black and white photography, as well! I bought it for half-price at APE right from the RE/Search publishing table and read it during school; since it was just quotes and photos it was easy to get through but still educational.
May 29, 2007
My favorite US early punk scene. Great pics of the Nuns, Crime, Weirdos, etc.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews