Ear Piercing Punk (Various Artists) (1979): Most people hadn’t heard of “punk rock” until the mid-1970’s, when bands like Ramones, Patti Smith Group, Sex Pistols, the Dead Boys, and Talking Heads hit the airwaves. But others had used the term at an earlier date, notably Lenny Kaye (later the guitarist for Patti Smith Group) who helped compile and also wrote the liner notes for Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968 (1972), the seminal compilation album of 1960’s American garage rock and psychedelic rock songs, which Kaye called “punk rock”. Several years later, in 1978, Greg Shaw of Bomp! Records started a series of albums featuring even more obscure garage rock and psychedelic rock songs called Pebbles. So, Bomp! Records decided to have some fun and clandestinely released an album that would have fit right into the Pebbles series, but the cover art featured Day-Glo colors and typed strips of paper that were seen on genuine punk-rock compilation albums in that period. The idea was to try to interest fans of 1970’s punk rock in earlier forms of that music. Well, the album totally fooled me, and I wasn’t a bit unhappy when I figured out what was actually on the album. Ear Piercing Punk includes songs by the Trashmen (famous for “Surfin’ Bird”), Bohemian Vendetta (one of the Under Appreciated Rock Bands that I wrote about on Facebook posts years ago), and the Ugly Ducklings (one of the best 1960’s Canadian garage rock bands); and there are also alternate versions of classic 1960’s songs like “”, “Jailhouse Rock”, “Mister, You’re a Better Man than I”, and “Little Black Egg”.
