Cities have begun to reopen and some people are finding socially-distant ways to put on concerts, but the world of live entertainment as we know it is still far from back to normal. Since there's nothing to do, nowhere to go-oh, watch these concert videos we love of 10 pioneering '70s punk bands in their early (or only) years:
Ramones in Germany - 9/13/1978
I'm too young to have ever seen the Ramones, but I know from all the live footage that they were a beastly, impossibly cool, well-oiled machine who only stopped their fast-paced songs to give Joey enough time to yell the next song title and Dee Dee to yell "1-2-3-4!" The influence of the Ramones' live show is still felt on bands today, and I'm sure I'm far from the only person who's grateful we have videos to see for ourselves what the Ramones looked like in their prime. This is one of those videos. [Andrew Sacher]
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Blondie @ Convention Hall, Asbury Park 7/7/1979
Eat to the Beat was still a few months away, but Blondie ready to show some of it to the world at this Asbury Park show. They opened with "Dreaming," and then proceeded to roll through hits like "One Way Or Another," "Heart of Glass," "Hanging on the Telephone," and more. Debbie Harry, Clem Burke and the rest of the band are in peak form, even if the videotape this show was transferred from warbles a bit. [Bill Pearis]
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Talking Heads @ CBGB, 1975
Talking Heads played their first show in June of 1975 opening for the Ramones at CBGB. This video is not that show, but a few months later, still playing as a trio (Jerry Harrison didn't join till 1977). The sound on this is a little rough but it's still awesome to see David Byrne, Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz (all in thier mid-20s) playing tense and nervous takes on "Psycho Killer," "Tentative Decisions," "With Our Love" and more. [Bill Pearis]
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Dead Boys @ CBGB, 1977
Dead Boys' live show earned the title Young, Loud and Snotty even more than their album did, as immortalized by this legendary show that the Cleveland band played at CBGB in 1977. It's loud, rude, and punk af even by today's standards, let alone 1977's, and it's literally snotty. When punk split between new wave and hardcore in the '80s, the latter might've been pulling from the Ramones' power chord simplicity, but the attitude came straight from the Dead Boys. At this show, they were wild, reckless, and sometimes genuinely gross, and Stiv Bators (RIP) is pretty much everything you want from a punk frontman. (The sneering Cheetah Chrome on guitar is no small part of how intimidatingly cool they look either.) Stiv's feral performance obviously took some notes from Iggy Pop, so it couldn't have been more fitting that they closed this set with a red-hot cover of "Search and Destroy."
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Steel Tips @ CBGB, 1977
A little known but legendary chapter of CBGB history for those who experienced it, Steel Tips were known more for their shocking and violent live show than they were for their recorded output. This means they're mosty forgotten, except by those who were there like Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore who is known to bring them up. Footage is rare, so this firecracker-filled "Crazy Baby" clip from 1977 at CBGB is only 5 minutes, but it's action packed and unforgettable. They often shared bills with the equally unforgettable Dead Boys, and this was possibly filmed at the same show as the Dead Boys clip above because we realized while writing this that the Steel Tips video is also included as a bonus feature on a DVD of that Dead Boys show (both bands played Hilly Kristal's club many times that year though -- as did the Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, the Cramps, Televison, Suicide, Misfits, Richard Hell and the Voidods, The Dictators, Alex Chilton, The Shirts, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Patti Smith). In a blurb about Steel Tips' self-titled 1991 EP, Trouser Press wrote that "at a time when sado shock was an easily marketable commodity, this New York group trafficked in genuine physical assault, attacking their jaded tuff punk audiences... Frontman [Tom] O'Leary [was] a sociopathic biker with little but contempt for the thrill-seeking crowds..." Also in the group: painter, illustrator actor and performance artist Joe Coleman who was attending SVA (the School of Visual Arts) in NYC at the time. [Dave]
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X-Ray Spex @ The Hope & Anchor, London - 1978
London punk legends X-Ray Spex played this show at local pub The Hope & Anchor in 1978 before their now-classic debut album Germfree Adolescents came out, and it was taped alongside an interview with Poly Styrene for the The London Weekend Show. The footage is a little blurry, and some of the band's set is overdubbed with voiceovers from the show's narrator, but none of that stops this extremely rare footage from showcasing how much of a killer live band X-Ray Spex were during their short-lived initial run. And Poly's carefree interviews only make them seem even cooler. [Andrew Sacher]
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The Sex Pistols @ Winterland 1/14/1978
If you’ve never read 12 Days on the Road by Noel Monk, about the Sex Pistols’ first, and last, tour of the United States, I beseech thee to rectify this vacancy in your reading history immediately. Manager Malcolm McLaren had the idea to subvert the typical tour routes and bypass the major markets like NYC and LA in favor of an itinerary that would wind them through the deep south, including stops in places like Atlanta, Memphis, San Antonio, Baton Rouge, Dallas and Tulsa. As the tour slogged on, the myriad idiosyncrasies and problems that had been festering within the group began to seriously manifest. When the final gig of the tour hit San Francisco’s Winterland on January 14, 1978, the tiny thread holding them together finally snapped and the band split immediately after. Finally in a relevant market with a lot of hype in tow, the massively sold out show was simulcast on KSAN FM Radio and got a multi-camera recording which you can see below. Aside from Sid Vicious sounding like a three year old dicking around on a bass he found in the garbage, the rest of the band sounds pretty amazing and Johnny Rotten is in his purest form. [Jeff Bergstrom]
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The Avengers @ Winterland - 1/14/1978
The Sex Pistols broke up immediately after their January 14, 1978 show at San Francisco's Winterland, with Johnny Rotten famously remarking "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" The perhaps unenviable task of opening that show went to local punk greats The Avengers who delivered a terrific set under less than ideal, gobby circumstances, opening with "The American in Me" and ripping through 13 songs in a half hour, including a cover of "Paint it Black" and finishing with all three songs from their debut 7". The night may have ended on a sour note, but it sure started off great. [Bill Pearis]
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Wire on Rockpalast, February 1979
Filmed in February 1979, this performance -- shot for long-running German live music series Rockpalast -- finds Wire still climbing, almost changing by the second. Two years earlier they were banging out amazing, minute-long punk rippers and here they've incorporated gloomy soundscapes, electronics and pure pop into their ever-morphing repertoire. Many of the songs that would appear on the band's third album, 154 (released in October 1979), are here, including such greats as "The 15th," "A Single KO," and "Map Ref. 41°N 93°W," alongside "older" songs like "Pink Flag," "Practice Makes Perfect," and "Another the Letter." The band would go on hiatus a year later, this is them at their tense peak and the polite TV audience makes it all the more wonderfully strange. [Bill Pearis]
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Devo on Chorus, 1978
By the time of their 1978 debut album, Devo had it all figured out: the jerky art-punk sound, the Nuclear Family sci-fi look, the alienated lyrical bend. It all really came together in their manic, choreographed live show that was truly like no other at the time. And where else better to experience than on French TV where when they ask "Are we not men?" the entire audience, in an audible French accent, shout back "WE ARE DEVO!" Watch them burn though "Satisfaction," "Uncontrollable Urge," "Mongoloid," "Come Back Jonee" and more. C'est fantastique! [Bill Pearis]
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See also:
* 10 classic '80s post-punk concert videos
* 15 classic grunge and alternative rock concert videos
* 10 classic '90s punk concert videos
* 10 classic '80s hardcore concert videos
* 10 classic '80s thrash metal concert videos
* 15 classic '90s indie rock & shoegaze concert videos to watch right now
For more of our favorite live videos, head here.