The five greatest instrumental punk songs
Punk was supposed to be the firey rebuke against all that came before it. Gone were masturbatory guitar solos, ten-minute drum bores, and lofty suites of conceptual indulgences that clogged the charts before the musical ‘year zero’, despite glam’s best efforts to inject a bit of fun to the earnest hippie residue of the early 1970s.
It’s difficult to detail punk’s impact on popular music without regurgitating ‘learn three chords and start a band’ triteness (as important as that was) and lapsing into Winter of Discontent’s collective embellishments, but punk’s rejection of a stagnating musical and social climate was a rallying cry rather than a rigid dogma to be followed, after all, punk was about individual liberation.
While Johnny Rotten was wearing his infamous and misleading ‘I Hate Pink Floyd’ T-shirt, the Sex Pistols frontman was a huge fan of Van der Graf Generator and Peter Hammill’s solo work, rankling their manager Malcolm McLaren keen to maintain a narrow perception of the band. The Damned recruited Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason to record their sophomore Music for Pleasure LP (after initially reaching out to Syd Barrett), and the entire post-punk movement owed a debt to the kosmiche and krautrock that bubbled in West Germany, plus Hawkind’s street-grit space rock having an indelible influence.
The dreaded ‘instrumental’ still couldn’t shake off associations with prog excess, which shouldn’t have been the case. Rock ‘n’ roll boasted several electric instrumentals possessed by a proto-punk spirit, be it Link Wray’s 1958 skulker ‘Rumble’ or the slew of rockabilly stompers that would influence the subsequent psychobilly sub-culture.
While punk as a genre is immediately obvious yet categorically nebulous (the list collated below touches on post-punk, Latino garage, and ’80s college rock), punk today has found its way among a myriad of sub-genres, Chicago rap-duo Angry Blackmen, as much punk as anything by Dead Kennedys. With punk’s wide-open possibilities and contemporary manifestations, let’s explore the movement’s creative barrier breakers and the five greatest instrumentals from punk’s original blast.
The five greatest instrumental punk songs
‘Smash It Up Pt. 1’ (The Damned, 1979)
A core presence of the original Britsh wave of punk, ‘New Rose’ often credited as the first punk single, The Damned provided some cartoonish humour that was otherwise absent from the likes of The Clash or Pistols. This tagged them unfairly, with an initial perception that they lacked musical dimension and critical doubt as to any real longevity.
After their lacklustre second record Music for Pleasure, ’79’s Machine Gun Etiquette revealed their true creative chops and musical ambitions. As much psychedelic carnival ride as it is punk, their third LP documented a band loosening punk’s already confining straps, and indulging in their love of freakout and ’60s garage. Audaciously splitting ‘Smash It Up’ into two sections in true prog fashion, ‘Pt. 1’s introspective wander covers a surprising emotional traverse, perfectly lulling you deceptively before its ‘Pt. 2’ payoff.
‘Another Journey By Train’ (The Cure, 1980)
Always crafting a uniquely melodic counter to punk’s combative fury, The Cure singer from their very first ’78 single ‘Killin an Arab’ imbibed their punk offerings with dreamy hooks that would define the band from their mid-1980s pomp.
Before the big hair and smeared lipstick, The Cure was crafting taut, minimalist blasts of tense post-punk pulsing with sharp synths and metronomic drums. Releasing one of their signature and most-played singles, ‘A Forest’ in 1980, its B-side ‘Another Journey By Train’ is punk at its most evocative, a propulsive chiller that reaches for drama in its own, covert way.
‘The Thin Air’ (Magazine, 1979)
Howard Devoto never cared much for punk. While riding its revolutionary wave and sharing an affinity with its belligerent ethos, Devoto resigned from his duties as Buzzcocks frontman, leaving after recording their Spiral Scratch EP to forge the way headier and acerbic Magazine, releasing one of the greatest debut albums of all time with their intoxicating Real Life.
On the more challenging but equally rewarding follow-up Secondhand Daylight, Devoto’s and guitarist John McGeoch’s creative ambitions truly burst through, perfectly documented on their thrilling instrumental ‘The Thin Air’. Originally written with lyrics in mind, they instead opted to let the music do the talking, a bold and immersive mist of saxophone and glacial synths which compress Pink Floyd at their most cosmic into a four-minute post-punk package.
‘Reel Ten’ (The Plugz, 1984)
British filmmaker Alex Cox brilliantly captured the LA punk scene of the early ’80s. Before his Sid & Nancy feature and casting Joe Strummer in the western parody Straight to Hell, Cox cooked up an urban sci-fi tale of the city’s repo men chasing after a mysterious car with extraterrestrial junk in its trunk, starring Emilio Estevez in a role he’s never topped since.
With Iggy Pop providing its theme song, Repo Man boasted an impressive collation of LA’s punk bands of the era, including Circle Jerks and Fear. Latino garage band The Plugz was featured three times, but it’s the film finale soundtrack that’s their crowning achievement for the film. ‘Reel Ten’, scoring the movie’s majestic finale as the chased-after car’s alien energy takes over, is a glorious sunset of dusky guitar twang and stirring vocal choirs that illustrates Repo Man‘s off-kilter brilliance uncannily. Iggy Pop may have created the theme song, but The Plugz offered its most memorable piece.
‘One Step at a Time’ (Hüsker Dü, 1984)
Speaking to Steve Albini for Matter in ’83, Hüsker Dü frontman Bob Mould made clear their intentions for their upcoming album: “We’re going to try to do something bigger than anything like rock & roll and the whole puny touring band idea. I don’t know what it’s going to be, we have to work that out, but it’s going to go beyond the whole idea of ‘punk rock’ or whatever.”
With the following year’s Zen Arcade, Hüsker Dü consciously set out to abandon whatever expectations punk had by the end of its initial run, crafting a concept album of a boy’s escape from a broken home only to find society’s even worse. Replete with college rock cuts like ‘Something I Learned Today’ and ‘Turn on the News’, it’s the contemplative ‘One Step at a Time’ that grabs your attention the most. Brief, simple, yet enchanting, the gorgeous piano interlude points to punk’s cinematic potential.
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