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Proto-punk (or protopunk) rose like a splinter in the side of rock’s comfort zone—raw, restless, and allergic to polish. Emerging between the mid-1960s and early ’70s, this gritty strain of guitar music built itself from jagged riffs, unvarnished energy, and an attitude that spat in the face of excess. It wasn’t a movement in the traditional sense—no unified manifesto, no shared geography—but a scattered signal from musicians who shared a hunger to push past the bloated indulgence of mainstream rock. Their songs were short and sharp, soaked in garage-bred grit and a distinct sense of agitation, laying the groundwork for what would erupt into punk later in the decade.
What united these trailblazers wasn’t style so much as spirit. Their approach—intentionally loose, defiantly unschooled—shunned the virtuosic precision of their contemporaries in favor of something immediate and unfiltered. Their sound was often skeletal, their themes confrontational or defiantly unrefined. Vocals sneered or barked, guitars buzzed like exposed wires, and drums pounded with a street-fight simplicity. Whether by accident or instinct, they gave rock its bloody nose again, reminding listeners that rebellion doesn’t always come dressed in slogans—it sometimes arrives disguised as a blown-out amp and a three-chord charge.
The Stooges snarled its way into rock history with feedback, boredom, and raw nerve. It didn’t invent punk—it just ripped the walls down and dared you to call it music. Still a glorious mess, still impossible to ignore.