Now form a band
In the winter of 1976 a British fanzine called Sideburns printed a small drawing: three guitar chord shapes, labelled 'This is a chord. This is another. This is a third. Now form a band.' It became the most quoted line in punk, because it contained the whole idea. You did not need lessons, expensive equipment or a record company. You needed a THREE CHORD song and the nerve to play it in front of people.
Punk arrived as a REBELLION against rock that had grown slick and enormous, full of twenty-minute songs and stadium light shows. The Ramones answered with songs that rarely reached two and a half minutes, played LOUD, FAST and RAW, and made their first album for a reported few thousand dollars.
The do-it-yourself machine
DIY was punk's real invention. Bands recorded their own singles and released them on labels run out of bedrooms: the Buzzcocks made their first record in a few hours in late 1976 and put it out themselves, which showed every other band in the country that it could be done.
Fans built the rest. A ZINE was typed, cut up, glued together and run off on a borrowed photocopier — Britain's first punk zine, Sniffin' Glue, was written by a bank clerk in 1976. Gigs happened in a BASEMENT, a pub back room or somebody's GARAGE. The clothes followed the same logic: a SAFETY PIN, SPIKES, studs and a homemade MOHAWK. It was cheap on purpose, and the point was that anyone could join in.
The pogo and the unwritten rules
Punk needed its own dancing, because older moves did not suit music this fast. The POGO — jumping straight up and down on the spot — is said to have been started by a Sex Pistols fan who simply wanted to see over the crowd. Out of it grew the MOSH pit, the churning crowd at the front that looks like a brawl and mostly isn't. It runs on one unwritten rule, still enforced at gigs today: anyone who goes down gets hauled back up immediately.
Two minutes is plenty
Punk treats song length as a challenge. The Ramones' first album fits fourteen songs into under half an hour, and the band counted themselves in — '1-2-3-4!' — with barely a pause between tracks, so the record runs like one long sprint.
Others took it further. The record for the shortest song ever released belongs to the grindcore band Napalm Death, whose 'You Suffer' lasts about one and a third seconds: a riff, a SNARL and it's over. Play it and you will almost certainly miss it.
What punk left behind
As a chart phenomenon, punk burned out quickly. As an idea, it never stopped. Its DIY habits shaped independent labels, GRUNGE, and the riot grrrl bands who made their own zines in the 1990s, and they are the ancestor of every act that now records at home and releases music without asking anyone's permission — which is to say most of them. The ATTITUDE outlasted the SPIKES.