50 Years Ago This Month: The Nixon Presidency Dies and Punk Rock is Born

[Menace Sockeyes]

The first one is a "where were you" moment for our old heads.

Gerald Ford is sworn in on August 9, 1974:



The Ramones make their CBGB debut exactly one week later on August 16, 1974:

The Ramones play their first public gig in Manhattan | March 30, 1974 | HISTORY

On March 30, 1974, the Ramones play their first New York City gig, launching a punk‑rock revolution. Five months later, on August 16, the four young men from Forest Hills, Queens, would make their more famous “debut” on the New York music scene, at the CBGB bar—often (incorrectly) identified as...

www.history.com

12th CBGB's, and the first to be recorded...


EDIT: Went with Ford's inaugural address since Nixon's resignation was covered here: https://iowa.forums.rivals.com/threads/nixon-resigned-50-years-ago-today.449045/

 

[bagdropper]

I was 12 at the time.

Nixon to Ford...wasn't a human being in this country that could truly escape that drama.

Punk rock though, given we were still effectively a 4 channel TV nation and payola radio dominated the dials across America - was infinitely more difficult to discover unless you lived in the biggest of cities.

 

[tarheelbybirth]

I was 12 at the time.

Nixon to Ford...wasn't a human being in this country that could truly escape that drama.

Punk rock though, given we were still effectively a 4 channel TV nation and payola radio dominated the dials across America - was infinitely more difficult to discover unless you lived in the biggest of cities.

I was 16 at the time. I recorded Nixon’s resignation speech on a little cassette recorder so my Dem no-pic mom could hear it. My dad was a Nixon guy but he wasn’t hardcore.

And no radio stations were playing anything “alternative” save the station at Wake Forest Univ. They had a late night program where they would do deep cuts and music nobody else played. I think I first heard the Ramones in ‘79 or ‘80 but it was Husker Dü a few years later that really hit me.

 

[Rifler]

Land Speed Record was a favorite of mine for a time....

 

[Aardvark86]

ironic, given sid vicious's death

 

[Menace Sockeyes]

ironic, given sid vicious's death

Yeah, I saw that obituary today and was like”Am I in a time warp?” Totally forgot about the WWE wrestler.

 

[jamesvanderwulf]

Nixon would be a better choice than what we'll have in November. Wish Nixon was alive and punk rock died...

 

[Menace Sockeyes]

Nixon would be a better choice than what we'll have in November. Wish Nixon was alive and punk rock died...

I can half agree with that. The GOP candidate is far worse. Harris is better than McGovern. Punk has morphed in a thousand different directions. And soccer has passed baseball (now the second most popular sport with young Americans) as the nations aging and ignorant boomer jingoists die off like the dinosaurs. So I guess the only thing that has gotten worse is the Republican Party.

 

[jamesvanderwulf]

So I guess the only thing that has gotten worse is the Republican Party.

Actually Nixon was tasked with trying to clean up the mess that the Democrats got us into in Vietnam, and then bailed on. ( " if nominated I will not serve " ). The D protestor and rioters then blame Nixon for Vietnam. So here we are today with the Ds demanding more intervention in Israel and Ukraine. Looks like the Donkeycrats have taken a turn for the worst to me...

 

[Menace Sockeyes]

So here we are today with the Ds demanding more intervention in Israel

Adios, any credibility.

I was 16 at the time. I recorded Nixon’s resignation speech on a little cassette recorder so my Dem no-pic mom could hear it. My dad was a Nixon guy but he wasn’t hardcore.

And no radio stations were playing anything “alternative” save the station at Wake Forest Univ. They had a late night program where they would do deep cuts and music nobody else played. I think I first heard the Ramones in ‘79 or ‘80 but it was Husker Dü a few years later that really hit me.

My mom years later said that, despite voting for him, Nixon was the first inkling of shame about being a Republican. As a fiscal Conservative and social moderate/liberal, Reagan’s second term and Reaganomics was even more of a death knell for her love of the GOP.

All that is very true. A guy that took me under his wing at The Gazette when I was a sportswriter in training back in the day, told me they heard the Sex Pistols on college radio late at night. One guy bought the record and they listened to in the dorm like an album that had arrived from another planet:

A lot of the biggest punk and grunge artists got the album basically unheard from watching The Today Show and subsequent nightly news reports on the American tour: