Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were an influence on early punk rock

Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were an influence on early punk rock

The Beach Boys' sunny sound profoundly influenced early punk acts, such as the Ramones, who took Brian Wilson's sugary hooks and ramped up the tempo. In the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, California pop-punk acts such as the Descendents, Green Day and Blink-182 continued the tradition.

Brian Wilson wrote the Beach Boys' 'Don't Worry Baby' for the Ronettes, but the legendary girl group rejected it.

Brian Wilson originally wrote the Beach Boys' classic 'Don't Worry Baby' for the Ronettes, but the legendary girl group rejected it.

The Beastie Boys started as a punk band

Before they became a legendary rap group, the New Yorkers played fast, scrappy hardcore in the style of Bad Brains. Still, they were fans of the explosion of hip-hop culture in their city and recorded a jokey track in 1983, which led to a record deal and conversion to hip-hop.

Bad Brains sped up punk, creating hardcore

Punk was already fast, but Washington’s Bad Brains pushed the tempo even further, creating music that would come to be known as hardcore, influencing acts like Minor Threat, Nirvana, and countless others. The band was hardly one-dimensional. Their self-titled debut bounced between blistering hardcore and slow-burning reggae about Rastafarianism.

The Velvet Underground is often considered a starting point for punk rock

The band blended Warhol’s Pop Art with Beat poetry, early rock ‘n’ roll and the European avant-garde, creating a sound that was often chaotic, noisy and abrasive. The band’s debut album, “The Velvet Underground and Nico,” sold poorly, but (supposedly) everyone who purchased a copy started a band.

The song 'Hungry Heart' was written for punk icons the Ramones

After seeing the groundbreaking punk band in Asbury Park, Springsteen went home to write them a song. When his manager, Jon Landau, heard "Hungry Heart," he told Springsteen he couldn't give it away, especially after seeing the success of "Because the Night," another Springsteen composition that became a massive hit for Patti Smith.

The Buzzcocks' 1975 self-released EP inspired a DIY ethos for punk

Punk sought to dismantle the self-importance of mainstream rock, favoring simple arrangements, short songs, and raw passion over sophistication or expertise. When the Buzzcocks struggled to find a label to release their debut record, “Spiral Scratch,” they took that do-it-yourself approach and applied it to business by releasing it themselves.

Death, early innovators of punk, were unknown for decades

The band of three brothers from Detroit recorded a 1974 demo that predicted the punk explosion that would arrive just a few years later with the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. But the band, Death, were complete unknowns until collectors rediscovered their music in the 2000s.

Blues was a major influence on early rock

Early rock ‘n’ roll had a straightforward sound, relying mostly on guitar, bass, drums, piano, and saxophone playing up-tempo 12-bar blues. In subsequent decades, the form evolved and splintered into countless subgenres that used more diverse sounds, instruments, and lyrics.

Girl groups had a profound influence on the Beatles

The legendary Liverpool group cut their teeth playing girl group hits at the Cavern Club (including the Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman," which appeared on 1963's "Meet the Beatles) and even invited the Ronettes to join them on their world tour in 1966.

Springsteen's first band was called the Castiles

Springsteen joined a local garage rock band at 16. The band was influenced by British Invasion acts like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, as well as the burgeoning American psychedelic scene.

CBGB, the breeding ground for punk, was intended to be a country bar

Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, Blondie, and many other bands got their start at CBGB. But its owner, Hillel “Hilly” Kristal, didn’t intend for it to be a punk rock venue. CBGB stood for “Country Bluegrass Blues,” though he included “OMFUG” (for “Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandizers”) on the venue’s marquee.

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

The Beat Generation inspired significant parts of 1960s counterculture

The Beat Generation championed the transformative power of psychedelics, rebelled against the post-war social order, and called for more radical politics. With a strong foothold in San Francisco, it's no surprise these themes were carried over to the city's 1960s counterculture, informing the larger national hippie movement.

In 1984, Dylan began experimenting with punk

When Bob Dylan was asked to appear on David Letterman’s relatively new late-night show, he decided to call an audible. He’d been intrigued by LA’s exploding post-punk scene and had spent time jamming with one of its bands, the Plugz, whom he decided to bring to Letterman as his backing band. The appearance sounds unlike anything else in his catalog and is one of his more fascinating creative reinventions in a career loaded with them.

The Ramones' debut album went gold 38 years after it was released

The 1976 album from the influential New York band featured classic tracks like “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “Beat on the Brat.” That didn’t translate to sales, though, at least not for many decades: The album didn’t sell more than 500,000 copies (earning gold certification) until 2014.

The origins of the Rolling Stones

Founded by Brian Jones, the Rolling Stones emerged during the massive shifts taking place in the 1960s. From the start, they were the edgier version of the Beatles, and their complex reputation gave them a unique profile in the public eye.

The Bakersfield Sound challenged the music's creeping respectability

As country music leaned towards the slick Nashville Sound in the 1950s, several artists operating outside that city reacted with rougher sounds more reminiscent of honky tonk and early rock ‘n’ roll. It came to be known as the Bakersfield Sound, reflecting the California agricultural region.

The early Los Angeles punk scene found a home in Chinatown

Acts like Black Flag, X, and Circle Jerks performed in unconventional venues like Madame Wong’s and the Hong Kong Cafe—restaurants in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood that became an integral part of the nascent scene.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Gary Panter designed punk flyers before building the surreal world of Pee-wee Herman

The illustrator’s anxiety-ridden comics adorned flyers for LA punk bands, defining a distinctive aesthetic for the burgeoning genre. That work caught the eye of Paul Reubens, who was staging a late-night show with his persona Pee-wee Herman.

'New wave' was coined for listeners put off by punk's ethos

The term was a reference to New Wave cinema, an iconoclastic, largely French form. Sire Records' Seymour Stein is believed to have pushed to use it to describe the label's bands, many of which came from the CBGB's scene, to avoid the negative associations with "punk rock." Sire ran a promotional campaign named "Don't Call It Punk" that made that message clear.

Rick James and Neil Young both played in a band that was signed to Motown

The Mynah Birds were a short-lived Canadian rock group active before either artist's career took off. In 1966, the band signed to Motown Records and released a single. That same year, they were dropped by the label after it was revealed that James had settled down in Canada to avoid US military service.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

Band names often fit into 'semantic spaces'

Linguist Chi Luu explains that we often understand and identify with band names, even if they're odd (or nonsensical) word combinations, based on their associations with other words. For example, bands that begin with "The" often nod to 1960s garage rock; heavy metal bands often rely on morbid or funereal words.

Seo Taiji and the Boys are considered the first 'true' K-pop idols

This article explains how the success of a rebellious '90s boy band inclined an industry to capitalize on that success and meticulously craft new generations of stars. While BTS exhibits major talent and charm, their rise may partially result from a formula for mass appeal that music executives cultivated.

The 'Movie Brats’ ushered in a new era of Hollywood

"The Movie Brats" is a name used to describe a generation of directors who blended classic cinema with the rebellious, crowd-pleasing spirit of rock ‘n’ roll. The figures most often associated with the tag are Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Brian De Palma.

The Parents Music Resource Center criticized rock 'n' roll's lyrics in the 1980s

The group, spearheaded by Tipper Gore, the wife of then-Senator and eventual Vice President Al Gore, argued that rock music, especially heavy metal, was having an adverse effect on the country, particularly young children. One of the group's fiercest critics was musician Frank Zappa. In the video below, he appears on a 1986 episode of "Crossfire," arguing about the proposed ban of so-called obscene music.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Coral reefs get their colors from zooxanthellae—microorganisms that line corals' digestive tracts and provide them with sugars in exchange for a home within this protective tissue.

Planarian flatworms are small, aquatic worms with exceptional regenerative capabilities. When cut, the worms can regenerate multiple bodies in a matter of weeks.

The power and influence of the American presidency have expanded significantly over time—far beyond what the founders envisioned.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.