No Wave (NYC 1977–80)

Five years, maybe thirty bands, and an entire new vocabulary for what rock music could be. Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Contortions, DNA, Mars — Lydia Lunch at twenty wielding a slide guitar like a knife, James Chance playing saxophone like James Brown being electrocuted. No Wave rejected everything at once: rock tradition, punk tradition, tune-your-instruments tradition. Brian Eno's No New York compilation documented four of the key bands in 1978 and it was pretty much over by 1980. But every noise rock band that followed for forty years — Sonic Youth, Swans, Jesus Lizard, half the AmRep roster — was standing on the shrapnel.