CBGB RADIO

I’ve been helping Jillian Jonas, a producer at WBAI Radio, to put together a massive radio documentary on the history of CBGB for many months now, and she’s doing a great job. She is interviewing almost everyone who ever performed there (even Manster! OMG!), and taking the best quotes from everyone involved from back in the day.

Jillian has plans to expand her history of the club into later years so these radio programs are something a lot of people will want to listen to. What’s kind of interesting is that, along with most internet content, it will be available for future generations. CBGB was definitely an important part of the NYC music scene throughout its history. Yeah, Patti, Ramones, T. Heads Blondie etc. Then in the 1980s hardcore bands like Bad Brains, Murphy’s Law, Reagan Youth performed at those hardcore matinees. Later on, the club hosted bands like the Beastie Boys, They Might Be Giants, White Zombie etc. So many musicians and bands performed there throughout its existence I could list a thousand band names here. (Sorry to leave anyone out, so listen to the radio show to find out more.)

If Jillian can gain a few supporters, it would be a big help in getting future episodes together. You can become one for $10-25 a month, each month for 12 months.

https://wbai.allyrafundraising.com/

We plan to help host her episodes soon on the punkmagazine.com Website. I’m hoping to make her programs more accessible since WBAI Radio has so much content that it can be difficult to find Jillian’s CBGB shows. We are also planning more collaborations in the future with Jillian and CBGB.

You can tune into WBAI any time at: www.wbai.org

Washington DC PUNK Comics event

My artwork will be on display at an underground-style PUNK & Comics Exhibition that opens on 9/11 in Washington DC! This is an exciting event for me, since the first-ever “PUNK ART” exhibition took place in Washington DC way back in May 1978. So this is almost full circle (although I’m hoping to put together a “50 Years of PUNK ART” event someday!). PUNK Comics are something else though. It is a thing. Whenever I visit a ComiCon, there are people promoting and selling “Punk Comics,” and a lot of them are pretty good!

It’s going to be mostly exhibition-only, I don’t think I will be selling stuff (busy lately!), and I’m not sure if I can attend the opening (since it’s on 9/11, which is kind of a High Holy Day for me) but it looks like a very interesting event.

THE CBGB FESTIVAL

We weren’t able to get it together to host a booth at last year’s CBGB Fest, but their team have graciously and generously given PUNK Magazine a free booth space for this year’s event.

We planned to do tour dates all summer, but things fell through, so this will be our first “Official Tour Date.” We have a tent, a bunch of clothing samples from Tokyo and the recent collaboration with Everlast and Overthrow, we will have a few back issues and we plan to give away a few things. So stop by our tent if you’re going to the CBGB Fest and say “Hello!” if you’re going!

Since the event takes place on September 26, we are still in the planning stages. But we hope to get a great display at the PUNK Tent, we will have some freebie stuff and maybe a special guest or two?

Any volunteers to help us with the booth out there? Please let me know. Free admission to the show! jholmstrom@punkmagazine.com (no direct link, sorry!)

HUDSON HALL

My new co-conspirator Nour Shalaby and I are putting together another “50 Years of PUNK” to close out the year. This will be a bigger exhibition than the Ki Smith gallery event and the smaller “50 Years” show which will be at MASS MoCa until the end of the year. I’m planning a special “Affordable Art” section that will offer prints of cartoons and comic strips from PUNK from over the years. I always like to say: “Fine art is large, expensive images on canvas. Comic strips are what people put on their refrigerator or bulletin boards.” We want to sell art more than we want to make money.

We are planning an opening event on October 17, and a special “PUNK Film Night” down the road that will exhibit a punk-related feature film, punk rock cartoons, some animated stuff by me, and some interesting artifacts. We will also be showing an interesting full-length film documentary. I would love to hear what any subscribers would want to see: “D.O.A.: A Rite of Passage,” “End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones” and many others are all possible. So, what is your favorite punk rock movie? I wanna know!

The show will run until the end of November, so stop by sometime if you can. And of course, we are hoping to get a music event together.

MASS MoCa

The “50 Years of PUNK” show is still on exhibition at MASS MoCa, and we finally got it together to make an event t-shirt, which will be on sale soon. There are a lot of punk rock-related books for sale in the gift shop, along with some back issues of PUNK! I am not sure when we will visit the space yet.

50 Years ago: The First Annual Sleaze Convention

Fifty years ago, Legs McNeil and I were invited to be “Special Guests” at the the First Annual Sleaze Convention in Wilmington, Delaware. It was one of the craziest weekends of my life! What made it interesting was that Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and Anya Phillips joined us for the event (and the insane stuff we experienced).

It was a wild weekend to be sure. Edith Massey was the “Guest of Honor,” and she was so wonderful. If you’ve ever seen a John Waters film, you’ll understand why she was so beloved. Chris Stein wanted to attend because he was a big Rondo Hatton fan (whose ugly face appears on the cover of Sleaze Digest #1, above). He loved “The Creeper” character he portrayed in the “House of Horrors,” film, when Rondo murdered a bunch of art critics who didn’t enjoy his artwork. (Chris didn’t like rock music critics very much…)

Chris Stein, of course, took a bunch of photos that weekend, and some of them have become iconic images, like this photo of Debbie and Anya from their hotel room. It has appeared in a lot of places (like a book cover and stuff).

Anya and Debbie both appeared in PUNK #6 as “Nazi Dykes” just a few weeks before the Sleaze Convention. This was our first attempt to create a “graphic novel” (aka Fumetti) with photos instead of drawings: “The Legend of Nick Detroit” (PUNK #6) It was a Film Nour script that starred Richard Hell in the lead role with a supporting cast of CBGB musicians like Bob Quine, Debbie Harry, David Johansen, the Tuff Darts, The Marbles, Helen Wheels, Lenny Kaye and a bunch of other CBGB people (a couple of bartenders, etc.). It was so well-received at CBGB after it was published that Legs was mobbed by a dozen or more girls one night at CBGB! That was the one and only time I saw that happen to anyone. People didn’t care, everyone was a star @ CBGB, etc. But this was different, especially since Legs hated the attention and soon afterwards quit his job as “Resident Punk.”

A few weeks later, the sales reports came in: The magazine bombed badly. Sales were reportedly the worst ever. PUNK Magazine went out of business… again! (No wonder Legs wanted to quit!)

Sorry to be offline for newsletter updates, so this is very late-breaking news: I went to a Shonen Knife show in NYC recently, and managed to meet them. Since they used their image that tributes the Ramones Road to Ruin LP cover that I drew, I thought I should try to meet with them. A friend (thanks, Mur!) bought a ticket for me but I didn’t think about going to the show before we went, so I didn’t make advance plans to meet with the band, but after seeing their performance, I wanted a meet and greet with them. Hey: They opened their show by doing a 20-minute set of Ramones songs! Gotta love that.

You might think that I could use “my name” to get access to backstage and stuff wherever I go, but in the end Mitch Cady (drummer for the Drac-ulas, who were a great opening band, and he has also drummed for Labretta Suede and the Motel Six, one of my new favorite bands—he even performed at the Joey Ramone Birthday Bash!), got me in contact with the “gatekeepers.” (Thanks to Pat Byrne, who helped cut through the red tape!)

In the end it didn’t matter much, since the band did a meet-and-greet with everyone who showed up to buy their merch! The club (le Possion Rouge, located on Bleecker Street and former home of The Village Gate, a legendary NYC music venue) had been warning everyone that the club would close ten minutes after Shonen Knife’s set, but graciously allowed them to take care of each and every fan who wanted a photo op and/or signed merch.

It was great to meet Shonen Knife since I am a huge fan of Japanese punk rock (as you know if you are a long-time reader).

I’m also glad to report that the CBGB Festival people have offered PUNK Magazine a free table at the upcoming on September 26th! And we are accepting it. Apparently Manic Panic and Trouser Press (our old rival from the 1970s) will also be there. I’m planning to roll out some new products, t-shirts, buttons, etc. and we will be selling a lot of samples of one-of-a-kind clothing from past licensing deals. As you know, we’ve been trying to set up tour dates for the summer and fall, but things keep going wrong! So hopefully this event will go smoothly: No rain!

So if you are planning to attend, stop by our booth. If you’re a subscriber, we will give you a freebie. (Nothing high-end, but a back issue will do).

Meanwhile, even with being offline for a while, this newsletter is close to hosting 1,000 subscribers! I’d like to thank all of you who bother to read my stuff and keep up with the latest news from PUNK Magazine. This is a big THANK YOU to everyone, especially all of you who give a like or comment to the newsletter.

Stay tuned: BIG NEWS ahead!

https://www.wornfree.com/search?type=products&q=Punk*

Cool t-shirts, quality t-shirts, so support our sponsor if you can.

Sorry I haven’t posted lately, but for some weird reason I was locked out of my Substack account. This happened a few times earlier but I was able to work around it and get back in with no problem. You know: You do the two-party thing, get a code sent to your phone, set a new password, and go back to normal. This time? Something weird was going on. I tried to reset the password and get in, but despite several attempts, nothing good happened. I tried chatting with an agent (I had to open a new Substack account to do so, since I couldn’t get into this one). I ended up talking with a bunch of AI bots who were all useless. All they did was parrot all the steps I had already taken. I finally got through to a human being, but they weren’t much help, either.

So, you know what? I have no idea how I was able to get back on here: Just suddenly I opened a different browser and got in. If this is a continuing problem, I might have to move the newsletter to a different platform. This was a very frustrating experience. I spent a lot of time trying to fix it and there are reasons a lot of people do not trust AI. It’s not working like our corporate overlords promised.

If I could have sent an update earlier, I would have sadly explained that we had to skip the San Diego ComiCon and the Warped tour in Long Beach. And now the planned appearance in Orlando, Florida is in question. The promoter who wanted to invest in and produce the tour got scared by the Iran situation (as I did!) because prices for travel and hotel got so high that it was doubtful that we could turn a profit, stuff like that. There’s more to the story, but I’ll save that for another day.

The good news is that several exhibitions are still on track:

1. There’s a big “Punk & Comics” event that will take open on 9/11 at the Lost Origins Gallery in Washington, DC’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood. I’ll be posting further details, but this could become a big deal, they are planning a huge catalog and have a lot of interesting artists lined up for the show. I might attend the opening, or else make an appearance at some point.

2. We are planning a huge show at the Hudson Hall in Hudson, New York that opens on October 17. This will be a bigger and better “50 Years of PUNK” exhibition than even the Ki Smith gallery show. The Hudson Hall is a huge art space, and best of all are very excited about hosting the show! We plan to showcase more artwork, illustrations and comic strips than previous shows. And we’re going to sell a lot of stuff for “affordable prices.” We are also planning a “Punk Rock Cartoon Night,” something that went over great at the Ki Smith gallery earlier this year.

3. We are looking into staging bigger “Punk Art” shows in the future: There’s a show planned for Sweden, meetings with people from Tokyo are lined up, stuff like that. I’ll post about it if anything serious happens (since meetings rarely turn into actual deals).

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   I have also been working on a big art project with a very interesting clothing company and am planning on publishing a few things later this year or next. So stay tuned, if you want more PUNK Magazine/John Holmstrom stuff!

Check out the biggest selection of PUNK Mag t-shirts on the Web: Just search for “PUNK Magazine” in the search bar. Or, just check out their wide selection of music t-shirts.

During the filming of the recent Hulu documentary about High Times founder Tom Forcade, I met up with RJ Cote, who worked on the High Times Website with me back in the day. He agreed to help me update and upgrade the punkmagazine.com Website (something I have been trying to do for over ten years). It’s taking a lot of time, and the Website is still “Under Construction,” but it’s looking much better now. It’s a huge relief for me, almost like a “Second Life!”

So far, RJ has done a lot of back-end work to fix a bunch of technical problems (that I can’t understand) but now we’ve been able to get to the fun part: Adding new content! We just uploaded PUNK #23, which chronicled the rainy Tompkins Square event, introduced cartoonists Imari Azzi and Mike Wartella to PUNK, and featured a great story about The Misfits by Bruce Carleton.

We previously uploaded PDFs of the last two issues (PUNK #24: The FUGS and PUNK #25: The Ki Smith Gallery Catalog). I have to say I am proud of PUNK #24, as it chronicled the other counterculture movements that took place in the East Village back in the day: Bohemians, Beatniks, Yippies and punk rock were all launched at Manhattan’s East Village (before the rents got too high and forced all the fun people out). There’s also a great centerfold poster: A map featuring East Village landmarks by Cliff Mott, another great cartoonist who has joined the PUNK staff.

If you haven’t seen the Ki Smith Catalog yet, I hope you check it out soon. It’s crazy how this (relatively) small art exhibition attracted thousands of visitors from November 2025 to January 2026, but we had great content! People really enjoyed the show. Now you can see a lot of it online.

Nest? I’m hoping to get hard-to-find recent issues (PUNK #22: The Iggy Pop Tribute, PUNK #21: The CBGB. Issue, PUNK #20: Sid & Nancy, and PUNK #19: The Bullys) up and running. When it comes to 1970s back issues? PUNK #3 is on the short list of back issues we can add. PUNK #6 (“The Legend of Nick Detroit” photo comic starring Richard Hell with appearances by Helen Wheels, Debbie Harry, Lenny Kaye, Anya Phillips and many others) and PUNK #15 (“Mutant Monster Beach Party”) should go online by the end of the year as well.

We plan to set up a print-on-demand option so people can print out copies of back issues. This way, people won’t have to pay hundreds of dollars for back issues (unless they want an original copy). So yeah, RJ is a very important team member and we will all enjoy the results of his work very soon.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to see a video of Mutant Monster Beach Party, it’s been online for a long time:

Thanks for your support! Keep reading, sharing, commenting and liking. This newsletter is just under 1,000 total subscribers and sometimes gets even more views! And although I have a gift shop @ punkmagazine.com. there’s a much bigger selection @ wornfree.com:

Wornfree.com sells a lot of great t-shirts, so check ‘em out when you can.

In other news, we were planning to set up a table at the upcoming Punk Island event: Giving away and selling stuff, and hopefully seeing some good punk rock bands. The problem? Well, it looks like we are facing the same problem I had with the September 2023 event at Tompkins Square Park: It’s supposed to rain all day on Saturday.

It’s a rain or shine event, so, like the ill-fated September 2023 event at Tompkins Square Park, we decided to pull the plug. We’re looking forward to the next Warped Tour event in Long Beach, California on July 25-26. I might stop off at the San Diego ComiCon the day before.

There are so many more events planned, this “50 Years of PUNK is huge! September through December 2026 look like they will be very busy. For instance, an online auction Website, JOOPITER. is hosting a huge “50 Years” event, like Crazy Eddie used to say: “These prices are insane!” There’s a lot of great stuff (including a complete run of PUNK back issues, currently seeing for an absurdly low $1,500). These look like high-grade issues, so someone out there probably will want to bid on it. There are a lot of other interesting collectibles on the Website, and since it ends very soon? Like tonight? Well, maybe they will extend the auctions?

I never expected the “50 Years of PUNK” campaign to take off like this, but it makes sense. So many anniversaries take place this year! And no, I never think that this celebration of our favorite music is all due only to PUNK Magazine. (Although we did spend all of 1976 trying to promote punk rock and the Ramones. And our efforts created the punk rock movement.)

I’ve been doing so many interviews I can’t keep track. More and more events are taking place. I was just invited to participate in an exhibition in Sweden! There’s a punk festival in Italy taking place soon. There are several other “50 Years” events taking place in Europe. Even the Sex Pistols are promoting “50 Years of PUNK” for their tours this year. (You gotta remember that they always rejected the term back in the day!)

Here’s the latest on the “50 Years of PUNK” Tour:

Sorry, but we had to cancel the planned appearance at the Warped Festival in Washington DC on June 13-14. It’s taking too much time to create dozens of new merchandise, take care of tour details (hotels, travel, etc.) to get everything together in time. It’s a shoestring operation: I don’t have a big corporate sponsor. The first confirmed dates take place on the June 26-29:

JUNE 26

“50 Years of PUNK” art exhibition opening at MASS MoCa:

Research & Development Store

1040 Mass MoCA Way

North Adams, MA 01247

massmoca.org

The art exhibition will be on display until December, and there is a sold-out, three day music festival featuring Wilco, The Breeders, Gang of Four and a bunch of bands that takes place from June 26-28. We won’t make a personal appearance there until later this year, but a lot of the art and photos from the Ki Smith gallery will be on display, and there will be some PUNK Magazine stuff available for purchase.

JUNE 27

PUNK Island

Randall’s Island, New York City

punkislandnyc.org

This looks like the most fun on the tour: It’s in New York City (the greatest city in the history of humanity), there’s a long list of punk rock bands, and it’s free! And all ages! We will be there in person, with a bunch of merchandise. We will be giving away some stuff and selling some items at cheap prices. So. Stop by if you’re in the area. I’ll be available to sign anything you bring or buy!

Later dates (unconfirmed, so stay tuned!):

JULY 23

San Diego ComiCon

JULY 25-26

Warped Tour

Long Beach, CA

We’re also planning several events later in the summer and September looks like we will be all over the place: so many music festivals! There is another big “50 Years” art exhibition taking place this fall, and another event at a major NYC institution that will celebrate the year “1976”!

That’s all for now: this tour is keeping me very busy. Sorry I haven’t been able to post newsletters lately, things are nuts! (But in a good way: Go Knicks!)

Just search for “PUNK” at WornFree.com:

They have a lot of PUNK Magazine t-shirts!

I’ve never done a tour before! So this will all be new to me. We are planning several tour dates for the rest of the year for the “50 Years of PUNK” show that opened at the Ki Smith gallery last November. PUNK Magazine is now booked for several tour dates that take place until the end of the year… And we’re considering venues and dates for 2027. I’m just not sure what to call it yet.

Our first tour date will take place in just a few weeks: the “Warped” tour in Washington, DC on June 13-14. It’s almost sold out now! There are some bands I’m interested in seeing myself (Suicidal Tendencies, GWAR, The Dollyrots and Thrice) but I will probably spend most of my time at the booth. It’s my job, you know.

After that? We’re looking to be at Camp Punksylvania the weekend of June 19-21, and New York City’s own “Punk Island”, an event I’ve always been curious to check out.

On June 26, the “50 Years of PUNK” exhibition that took place at the Ki Smith gallery will open at MASS MoCa, a very prestigious art space in Massachusetts that will run until the end of the year. And we are booking more dates on the Warped tour and at other venues, so stay tuned.

I hope you might understand how weird this is for me. When I started PUNK Magazine way back when, and tried to promote “punk rock” as a new music genre, it was an utter failure. The Sex Pistols rejected the term and even the Ramones refused to call their band “punk rock” until the early 1980s. No wonder we were forced out of business in 1979.

Then 20 years later, punk rock became a big thing! And it just keeps growing. Best of all, it is still an underground movement. Yeah, we do have some “punk rock millionaires” (who tend to be greedy fuckers, like most rich folk) but for the most part punk rock is still a way for many of us to express our creativity. So this is the first time in a long time that I might benefit from… You know, launching the punk rock movement, especially since most of the 1970s rock bands we called “punk rock” rejected the term back in the day. And although we have some Punk Rock Millionaires? I’m still mostly broke. So don’t believe the internet Websites that claim I have $9 million. (And thanks for your support!)

In other news, I met Imara Azzi, a French cartoonist who was recommended to me by Iggy Pop! We met at Dark Matter Coffee (You can see the “PUNK Magazine Door” they kept from the show Miss Debra and I put together for last year’s Joey Ramone Birthday pre-party behind her, and we went over the Best of PUNK Magazine book together.)

Imara Azzi is so punk rock! We agreed on everything when we talked about music—not just punk but also pub rock and everything else. Iggy is a huge fan of hers! And she is a PUNK Magazine cartoonist now! You just do not get more punk than that.

By the way, the punk magazine.com Website is still being renovated! The PDF file for PUNK #24 and PUNK #25 are both available at punkmagazine.com, just check out the New Issue links. We will be uploading more issues soon!

If you want a cool PUNK magazine T-shirt, check out WornFree.com above! They have a lot of exclusive PUNK t-shirts.

This was like the opposite of a “No Kings” rally: It was a celebration of the greatest “King” that the USA has ever produced: Jack “King” Kirby! The event took place on May 11, 2026 at the corner of Essex and Delancey Streets in the Lower East Side, where Jack Kirby grew up as a kid: a fact that a lot of the speakers referred to.

Read more

I just finished the poster for the upcoming Joey Ramone Birthday Bash: It’s been kind of crazy since we just did the “50th Anniversary of the Ramones First LP” at 313 Bowery (the former location of the CBGB Art Gallery) so I’ve been very busy lately. The celebration went great! We sold some art for the Joey Ramone Lymphoma Foundation, Craig Leon (who produced that first LP) spoke via ZOOM, and I joined Andy Shernoff and Richie Stotts for a panel discussion.

And did you see the new CREEM Magazine? They did a nice job covering the whole”50 Years of PUNK” thing, And my artwork from PUNK #3 was used for their magazine cover! This is kind of crazy, since I tried to do work for CREEM back in the day, and learned about “punk rock” because I was reading CREEM for their coverage of Punk Rock in the early 1970s.

Meanwhile I am working with an old friend to put together a PUNK Magazine US Tour this summer. So far we have secured dates for the upcoming Warped Tour:

June 13-14: Washington DC

July 25-26: Long Beach, California

November 14-15: Orlando, Florida

We are also booked to appear at the next Punk Island event on June 21.

And MASS MoCa, a prestigious art museum in Massachusetts, will be hosting a “50 Years of Punk” exhibition in North Adams, Massachusetts. This will be like a mini-exhibition of the fine art lithographs and photos we featured at the super-successful “50 Years of Punk” exhibition at the Ki Smith gallery that took place in November through January that most of you have probably heard too much about. But this show really kicked off the whole “50 Years of PUNK” thing that’s now taking place all over the world! For instance:

https://www.bonhams.com/auction/32329/50-years-of-punk/

Many more dates will be announced soon, so stay tuned if you are interested. I will be available to sign stuff and we will have a booth with a bunch of new t-shirts, some other merch, maybe a new issue, who knows. PUNK Magazine has never done a tour before so I am just hoping anyone might be interested to visit our booth.

I am also in discussions with a lot of magazines, art institutions, venues etc. for more events and so forth. To be honest, it’s all kind of crazy. This will go forward into 2027, since so many places book events way in advance.

So stay tuned! Many more things will be announced soon. And let me know if anyone you now might want to book an event in your area. I am so old now that it is probably the last time I’ll be doing a tour.

WornFree.com has been selling exclusive PUNK Magazine t-shirts since 2001, so check out their designs, it helps me to pay the bills.

I saw a Dictators/NYC show at the Bowery Electric several years ago that featured Handsome Dick Manitoba on vocals and “Ross The Boss” Friedman on lead guitar. HDM was a great frontman as always, but the guitar work by Ross blew my mind. He was so good that night that I told him that his work was up there with all of the greats I’ve seen live: Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Buck Dharma (BOC). Yeah, he was that good. He had the biggest smile after I told him that. And it wasn’t the first time that I was totally impressed with Ross’s guitar work. He’s forever in my personal Top Five of guitarists.

I planned to write this before hearing about when guitarist extraordinaire Ross “The Boss” Friedman was dealing with ALS and couldn’t perform anymore. He passed away after that diagnosis was publicly revealed: So sad. I ran into HDM shortly before Ross died, he said he was going to visit him. I wish I had asked for details so I could visit, especially since his death was announced just a few days later.

This is very sad new for me because The Dictators, more than any other band, were the biggest inspiration for me to start PUNK Magazine in November 1975. The Dictators Go Girl Crazy, the Dictators first LP, was released in March 1975. That and Patti Smith’s “Piss Factory” 45 rpm single that I bought at East Side Books on St. Mark Place back in the day convinced me that there was a new music movement happening in New York City.

I saw the advertisement for the first Dictators’ LP in CREEM Magazine and took a chance. (Back then, you had to rely on record reviews in magazines and word-of-mouth, you couldn’t listen to a band’s music for free online: Duh! And vinyl records were expensive!)

At the time I was a huge Alice Cooper Group and Blue Oyster Cult fan, and since the BOC’s management (Sandy Pearlman and Murray Krugman) got the band signed to Epic Records, I was very interested in this new act! (Blue Oyster Cult were huge contributor to the early punk rock scene: Patti Smith, Richard Meltzer and Helen Wheels all wrote lyrics for the band. Blue Oyster Cult has never received the recognition they deserve for their contributions to punk rock.)

I bought that first album and it’s a record I have often listened to ever since. It helped to form my ideas for creating a magazine about punk rock. At the time (before the Ramones redefined it and before the Sex Pistols took it to a new level), punk rock was all about the MC5, The Stooges, the New York Dolls, Brownsville Station, Sweet etc. In the early 1970s, most of the “punk rock” bands that people now call “proto-punk” were trashy glam rock or, as they called it back in the day: “Heavy Rock.” By late 1974-75 it was obvious that glam rock had run its course and there was an opportunity to start a new scene and a new sound. It was an interesting time for music: No rules! It was time to start a new music movement.

Ancient Punk Rock History 101: Over the summer of 1975, I was working for Ged Dunn, Jr. in Cheshire, Connecticut for his painting business. On weekends, we worked with Eddie McNeil on his short film The Unthinkables. I went back to Brooklyn (where I shared an apartment with a Grateful Dead/Allman Brothers fan) to pick up The Dictators Go Girl Crazy album I bought a few weeks earlier. When I explained to Ged Dunn, Jr. and Eddie McNeil that punk rock was going to be “The Next Big Thing” they bought into it. (Sort of: they weren’t into punk rock as much as I was… Another story for another day). We would play that record and after a few beers mimic the lyrics, like “The Air Guitar” thing. (C’mon, admit it: We have all done that at one time or another, right?) That Dictators record changed our worldview! And this was what kickstarted PUNK Magazine. A few weeks later, Ged decided to work with me to start a magazine about punk rock. Which was mostly about The Dictators: not the Ramones. But when I saw the Ramones at CBGB in late August 1975? I thought they were more punk than The Dictators. (I guess I was right?)

I have to give Andy Shernoff a shout-out here, since as the Dictators writer, he was the main man responsible for the Dictators music. He’s one of the most underrated and unappreciated figures in the history of punk rock. He contributed so many elements to the eventual “Punk Rock Blueprint”: The humor, the references to 1960s pop music, and the attitude!

Creem magazine (my other biggest influence when it came to starting PUNK Magazine) once said it was the best punk rock LP ever, and I have to agree: Back in 1975? Before the Ramones? The Dictators set the stage for this new music movement, similar to how the New York City glam scene had created a new rock ’n’ roll aesthetic in the early 1970s. A few years before punk rock started at CBGB, the New York Dolls influenced a lot of bands on New York City music scene: The Magic Tramps, The Brats, The Harlots of 42nd Street, Ruby and the Rednecks, Sniper, Teenage Lust, even KISS! The Dictators? Apparently the only band they had an effect on was the Ramones. And sadly, the Ramones didn’t influence any New York bands until hardcore came along. Instead, punk rock bands started up all over England and the west coast! And they usually followed the Ramones formula. Not the Dictators.

Okay, just my opinions here, but as the editor of PUNK I am speaking from experience: This is why I still think of the Dictators as “The First New York City Punk Rock Band.” Their songs were so politically-incorrect, so much the exact opposite of glam rock, their lyrics were so offensive, and the music was so accessible that I thought we could develop a new rock music movement together.

It was all in good fun! PUNK took its inspiration from bands like The Doors, Alice Cooper, Suicide and whoever were so offensive that they could empty a club in a few minutes. That was the formula for success from the 1950s to the early 1970s. Elvis swinging his hips was censored by early TV shows. The Beatles haircuts shocked the nation after “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” was released. The Rolling Stones were much scruffier and ugly, which helped sell records. Hendrix? “Purple Haze” freaked people out, and the hippie bands outraged the country with their long hair, drug use and communal living. Alice Cooper and David Bowie shocked people in the early 1970s by promoting the gay lifestyle. Unfortunately for us? The way rock ’n’ roll relied on public outrage and offensive looks and lyrics had outlived its usefulness by the time post-Watergate America happened. We lost the Vietnam war (although our government still refuses to admit it). The USA wanted “normalcy” in 1975: “Happy Days” TV, mindless disco music etc. Anything but more rock bands being outrageous and testing cultural norms.

I saw a recent story with John Waters where he embraces punk rock:

https://www.brooklynvegan.com/punks-are-my-people-john-waters-on-sex-pistols-l7-stiv-bators-his-80th-birthday-tour-mosswood-meltdown-more/

I have to agree with the guy. Since punk rock was founded on the ashes of glam/glitter rock? Yes, the drag queen/Cockettes/glam culture had a huge influence on what became punk rock.

Rosie (aka Marc Rosenthal, a CBGB regular who later gained fame as the head of DC37, NYC’s largest union—that’s a story for another day) was one of those guys who hung out at CBGB and was involved in the scene. He put up the money for PUNK #11, “as long as you put The Dictators on the cover.” You kidding me? Of course we wanted to do a story on the band. In retrospect, the issue holds up well: We had some great content in there. A lot of stuff was happening in the summer of 1977.

Back to Ross “Funicello” of The Dictators: Andy Shernoff wrote great songs but it was Ross The Boss who really put them over, in a similar way that Clem Burke’s heavy drumming style brought their music to a new level. It is beyond sad to me that we’re losing everyone lately, but what can you do? Death is a part of life, we are all doomed in the end, but to me when we support artists and musicians after they are gone, we are doing the right thing. (I always loved that Spike Lee’s 1996 film “Do The Right Thing.” If there is any message to that very influential movie? It is to just “be cool.” Don’t be an asshole, etc.

Sadly, this means the Dictators will probably never perform together again. Add this loss to Clem Burke’s passing and to me, the whole 1970s punk rock scene has passed on. We had a great run. Yeah, the Sex Pistols are touring without Rotten, the Damned are still around, and a lot of bands that formed after the initial scene formed are still touring. But the scene is moving on. Welcome to the 21st century!

IN OTHER NEWS

I am looking forward to being a part of this event! I will be part of a panel discussion with Andy Shernoff , Richie Stotts and Delphine Blue to talk about how the first Ramones album changed the world and I hope to describe how that Roberta Bayley photo shoot resulted in the creation of their first album cover. Danny Fields has also generously agreed to allow us to exhibit some of his photos from the recording session at Plaza Sound back in the day. But the Big Event will be a ZOOM event with Craig Leon, who produced the first album with Tommy, along with Rob Freeman who engineered that first LP. As a long-time Ramones fan, I’m looking forward to this.You won’t be disappointed if you attend the event. Between this and the Arturo Vega event Howl (just around the corner from 313 Bowery), the neighborhood is doing a great job honoring the 50th Anniversary of Punk!

You know the drill: Please like, share, subscribe, visit Wornfree (a PUNK Magazine sponsor for decades!)… Hope to see you soon! We will be doing PUNK Magazine tour this summer!

I bet no one saw this coming: A cover image from PUNK Magazine on the cover of CREEM Magazine fifty years after the first Ramones album was released?

Check it out: https://www.creem.com/archive/issue/20260301

I haven’t received a copy yet, but it looks like there’s some interesting stuff in this issue of CREEM: An unpublished interview with Joey (conducted three years after the band broke up), interviews with Joan Jett and Martin (Suicide) Rev, and there’s something about me in there that I’m curious to read. It’s called: “‘WHAT IS PUNK?’ It was John Holmstrom’s magazine, stupid!” Yes! It was! Legs was just hanging out at the Punk Dump, to be honest. I did all the work: Ged and Legs? If either of them could have contributed more, PUNK would have survived the 1970s.

OK, here’s the back story on the CREEM Magazine cover:

Our good friend Nico Malvadi (who was an indispensable part of the Ki Smith gallery’s “50 Years of Punk” show) set up a meeting with CREEM editor Fred Passaro, and plans were made to do a story on the gallery show. Fred invited me to draw a cover illustration for their next issue. Great, right? They sent me three possible cover ideas, one was on Britpop/Oasis/etc. Well, I don’t know anything about Oasis or Britpop, but they also had a story called “How To Spot an AI band.” Perfect. Everyone I know is complaining about the shitty content AI is posting everywhere, it’s a hot topic, definitely fertile ground for a humorous cover illustration.

The first thing I do when I receive a commission is to create as many rough sketches as possible, but I’m out of practice so my sketches suck and I end up spending a lot of time fixing things in the finished drawing (as you will see):

We went back and forth on the sketches, so I tried more ideas:

We all decided that this image would work best, but it wasn’t easy! There were a few elements to the illustration that we both wanted to make work better… I don’t remember who came up with the idea, but we decided it would be a good idea for “The Guy” in the drawing was wearing a Ramones-style AI t-shirt, so… Yeah! Cool!

CREEM sent me the “Design Template” for their cover images, is I sent a rough sketch with the CREEM logo:

CREEM didn’t like the screen image for the “AI Guy”, so I tried a few other things. Anyway, this was the final result:

Y’know, I really liked the way it came out, and I was surprised when CREEM ultimately rejected it. Well, that’s life when you do commercial art. Some times your client likes it, sometimes they don’t. Anyway I was surprised they didn't’t repurpose it as an illustration for the article. 

They said at the time they rejected it that they wanted to use something else in the future, which turned out to be the Joey Ramone PUNK #3 illustration, which is one of my most famous drawings. (Side Note: It pisses me off that I donated the original drawing to the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame, but they’ve never exhibited it anywhere.)

I could do another long newsletter about what went into making that cover and all the drama that followed… To this day! So remind me if you want to hear the details, okay?

Meanwhile, I need to tell you about my busy month ahead:

CREEM Magazine:

CREEM “goes online” today, but I’m not sure what it means. I think they have an arrangement where current issues appear online for free, but then you need to buy a subscription once it goes off-sale. I kind of like that as a business model, and now that we will be publishing back issues online at punkmagazine.com soon?

LINK: https://punkmagazine.com/new-issue/

I’m curious to know what people would be willing to pay and for what they wanna pay for. So feel free to send me your thoughts. BTW, CREEM International goes live on social media on 4/13.

Tom Forcade Documentary

In my humble opinion Tom Forcade was the most important person in the history of PUNK Magazine. He picked up the printing bills for PUNK #6, PUNK #12, PUNK #14, PUNK #15, PUNK #16 and PUNK #17. He paid for Roberta Bayley and I to go on the Sex Pistols 1978 US tour and produced D.O.A.: A Rite of Passage A short documentary filmmaker about him appears on HULU on 4/20, part of a four-part film series about cannabis.

I like to think that Tom would approve of this film. Although he protected his privacy with a vengeance back in the day, his efforts to legalize marijuana (and support punk rock and all alternative culture) needs to be remembered. PUNK Magazine went out of business shortly after he died. No one else cared about keeping the magazine alive at that point since “punk” was all about Sid, Nancy, heroin and death.

I truly hope the short documentary does justice to his legacy. Meanwhile, if you want to learn more about Forcade, buy the book:

Ramones 50th Anniversary event

There are big plans for a 50th Anniversary celebration of the release of the first Ramones LP! You can sign up here, but tickets will sell out very soon! So sign up ASAP if you’d like to attend the event:

joeyramone.com

Mickey Leigh is still putting together plans, but it looks like there will be a great line-up of people who will share stories about making the first Ramones album. I will be available to talk about shooting the first Ramones record covers (for the LP and the first 45 rpm single), Craig Leon will describe what it was like to produce that first record, and a bunch of us will be there to talk about how that first album changed the world. (For instance: Television was supposed to be the most successful band to emerge from the CBGB scene, but that Ramones album changed the scene and the world! And there’s great story about Michael Bolton doing background vocals!) So I hope you can make it. Of course, I’ll be available to sign stuff, so bring whatever if you can attend the event.

I will have a lot more news soon! Things are really coming together for the”50 Years of PUNK!” So please stay tuned!

ROBERT ROMAGNOLI’S BLOG! He’s been to biggest contributor to PUNK Magazine since the very first issue and still contributes great stuff! His food blog is amazing! Check it out:

https://www.newyorkcity-eats.com

PUNK Magazine cartoonist Danny Hellman has published a great hardcover book that parodies Jack Chick booklets: Jacked Tracts. Since I make an appearance I’d like to tell you all about it.

Ever heard of Jack Chick? If you’re a cartoonist or a Jesus Freak, probably yes! If you’ve never seen a Jack Chick pamphlet, where have you been all your life? These little comic strip booklets were (and still are) distributed by the millions all over the USA by Christians looking to save your soul from the burning pits of Hell. The “Yeah, but!” enters the picture when readers think the Jack Chick strips are totally insane and silly, making them a ripe target for parody.

If I remember correctly, the first time I saw a Jack Chick booklet was when my friend Rick Brennan and I hitchhiked to Macon, Georgia for the Atlanta International Pop Festival in the summer of 1970. We went down there mostly because Jimi Hendrix was going to perform, and saw a lot of the Woodstock performers like Ten Years After and Richie Havens. It was the first time I saw an open-air market where you could buy any drug you wanted and I think it was the first time I heard “cocaine” being sold: back in those hippie days it wasn’t nearly as well known as psychedelics or pills. But there was also a small contingent of “Jesus Freaks,” determined to save us from sin!

Here’s an animated version of “This Was Your Life,” the best-selling Jack Chick booklet:

LINK to Jack Chick Comic Strips:

https://www.chick.com/products/tract?stk=0001

Danny published Jacked Tracts with a crowdfunding goal that was reached after only a couple of days and the campaign brought in almost 3X the goal. It is a beautiful hardcover book that will be treasured by many comic Danny Hellman, comic strip and Jack Chick fans.

Just in case you want to check out his campaign here’s a LINK to it:

https://zoop.gg/c/jackedtracts

Here’s my )small) contribution:

The book features comic strip drawings by over 70 cartoonists and comic strip artists, some famous (like Steven Cerio, whose work with The Residents is included in the permanent collection at MOMA), Dean Haspiel (Emmy and Ringo award winning cartoonist), and Cliff Mott (art director for Cracked magazine back in the day and illustrator for Marvel, Playboy, and even PUNK Magazine!), and some infamous (like Mike Diana, who became the first artist to be convicted of obscenity in 1994), Rick Trembles (who R. Crumb called a “pathetic fucker), and Danny Hellman himself, who has been embroiled in many controversial exchanges over the years (notoriously with Art Spiegelman and his supporters in the 1990s). There are also a lot of cartoonists and people who have worked in publishing that you probably never heard of. It’s an interesting mix.

There are only a few copies left! If you want to purchase one:

https://dannyhellman.bigcartel.com/product/jacked-tracts-boos-for-beelzebub-comic-tract-combo

Danny says he’s thinking of publishing another edition, so I will keep you posted if and when this happens.

ABOUT DANNY HELLMAN

Danny started his art career doing posters for deerfrance’s band Floor Kiss. deerfrance was the first person hired to work at PUNK Magazine! She worked with us as Ged Dunn Jr.’s receptionist/secretary until she quit after a few months, then became a door person at CBGB, sang backup for John Cale, started Floor Kiss, and has been involved in many creative projects over the years. It wasn’t long before Although Danny worked for a lot of mainstream publications, he always kept one foot in the underground. For instance, he always points out in his biographical info that he worked for The Wall Street Journal, Time, Fortune, and Screw (Al Goldstein’s infamous porno rag).

Danny’s first contribution to PUNK was an illustration for a “Legs McNeil Famous Persons Interview” with The Brady Bunch in PUNK #0.

More recently, Danny contributed to PUNK #22 (The Iggy Pop Tribute). Some of these drawings were displayed at the recent group show at the Ki Smith gallery, so if you are interested in buying some of the original artwork, contact the gallery: info@kismithgallery.com

Danny drew the cover for PUNK #23 that highlighted the disastrous Tompkins Square Park concert that was (sort of) rained out in 2024. We were hoping to sell some posters at the show, but the rain made it impossible. Yeah, I’ve always been hesitant to do outdoor shows, and this was an example of why I’m not crazy about them. Too much can go wrong. But you gotta do them sometimes. Know what I mean?

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PUNK #24 is online… And free to read!

In other news: We posted the recent PUNK #24 issue in its entirety online! We haven’t added advertiser links yet (that’s our next step), but we are already working on posting more issues and new content on the Website soon, so stay tuned! We will be posting PUNK #25: The Ki Smith Gallery Catalog, very soon!

LINK to PUNK #24 online:

https://punkmagazine.com/new-issue/

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“All Good Cretins Go To Heaven”

Jennifer Beckwith, a good friend (and a huge Ramones fan), has published a book about the Ramones and their music. I don’t know if there are any other books being published that celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Ramones first album (or even the “50 Years of Punk”), but she went ahead and did it. And it’s a good one!

https://www.diwulf.com/products/all-good-cretins-go-to-heaven-the-enduring-spirit-of-the-ramones-by-jenn-l-beckwith

Also, there will be a special “invite only” event taking place of April 23 near the Bowery and Bleecker Street (you know: near the former CBGB location) to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the release of the Ramones first album! Contact me if you’re interested:

jholmstrom@punkmagazine.com

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Finally? CREEM Magazine will publish a drawing I did for their new issue that arrives on April Fool’s Day (my favorite holiday!). I think there might be an interview with me as well! This “50 Years of Punk” thing is going to be big, I tell ya! So stay tuned! April will be a big month!

LINK to PUNK t-shirts: https://www.wornfree.com/search?type=products&q=punk*

You can support this newsletter when you buy a t-shirt—and you get a cool shirt!

As most of you know, I do a lot of work and events at the Metropolis vintage clothing store (located on Broadway, just above 11th Street). I’ve been working with the owner, Richard Colligan, for many years now and we’ve created a lot of interesting stuff together.

He contacted me recently about creating an image for a Ralph Lauren Polo event he’s putting together at Metropolis this Sunday (March 15). The Metropolis store will be hosting 12 other vintage clothing outlets in the store basement, and they will all be selling Polo clothing. Dark Matter Coffee (located at East 1st Street and the Bowery, where they hosted our Joey Ramone Birthday Bash “pre-game show” last year and produced the PUNK Magazine Coffee) will be on hand giving out coffee and their amazing coffee. Miss Debra “Raffles” Tripodi and I will also be attending at some point.

Richard asked me to draw a parody of the Polo logo: The Metropolis “Motorcycle Guy” on a Polo horse. I don’t understand whatever psychological disturbance cartoonists are afflicted with, but this was like raw meat to a hungry dog. Have a bit of fun with a famous fashion brand? Of course I was in.

It was more challenging than I expected, but I like to think the end result came out OK. Anyway, Richard Colligan likes it and when it comes to producing “commercial art,” that’s all that matters. My father was a freelance artist, so this was drummed into me at an early age.

Unlike fine art (when an artist produces images for themselves), commercial art depends on the whims and desires of the company (or person) who pays a fee, and usually describes and determines what the final product will look like. It’s like being a session musician who gets paid for playing on a recording, but doesn’t benefit from song royalties. But if the money is okay? Especially if it’s a high-profile thing that will promote your artwork? Yeah, you give up a few rights and royalties.

But having run a business? As much as I dislike the situation as a creator. businesses need to use work-for-hire contracts, otherwise the accounting stuff alone can get ridiculous. It’s one reason PUNK Magazine is unable to use our covers and content for most usage: We need to make deals with creators, artists, and photogs to make stuff happen. It’s like trying to create stuff while wearing handcuffs if former contributors want top bucks for their work, while (ironically) PUNK Magazine was a big reason why their images are worth so much money now. On the other hand, it sucks for an artist: I signed a work-for-hire deal with the Ramones for my work on Rocket to Russia, and they made millions from the sales of my artwork. There are always two sides to a story, right?

It all began many years ago, when the Metropolis vintage store was celebrating its 10 year anniversary. Richard contact a few artists to create a drawing for some small stickers. (Avi Spivak and Mort Todd also contributed artwork for the stickers). Richard liked my drawing so he asked me if he could use it for the store sign. I was okay with it, since I’m always jealous whenever other East Village artists get commissions like this. It’s an “Ego Thing.” Getting your artwork displayed anywhere in the East Village is a big deal! Soon it was being used in advertisements and online.

It was so much fun to be able to walk down the street and see my artwork all over a local store. Then Metropolis began to use it on shopping bags and stuff. Great! My artwork was getting out there in a way I never anticipated!

After several years, Richard asked for an update to the “Motorcycle Guy.” (Yeah, we should have come up for a name by now, right?). I was eager to do it, especially since people were asking me if that was supposed to be Johnny Ramone on the motorcycle. “NO!” I would tell people, who were mistaking Johnny’s “helmet hair” as an actual helmet.

When Metropolis moved from Third Avenue to their new location on Broadway near 11th, Richard asked me to create a door for their new dressing room. He liked it so much that he pasted my artwork all over the room! Check it out if/when you visit New York City! It’s the last door on the right.

LINK: https://www.amny.com/news/this-east-village-artist-eyes-reviving-comic-strip-while-also-looking-back-on-covering-ramones-albums-and-high-times/

I started working with Miss Debra “Raffles” Tripodi a few years ago, we had been co-hosting the Joey Ramone Birthday Bash since the beginning, and since she’s a “biker chick,” it seemed natural do do an image of her on a real motorcycle (she was able to borrow one for the photo shoot). It’s now a t-shirt design that’s available at the Metropolis store.

This latest collaboration (which is still in progress) has been fun for me. People seem to enjoy it, and I hope anyone who likes Polo stuff and my artwork will stop by Metropolis soon… It’s like my second home. We love all of the employees there, they are all amazing people with very interesting “night jobs,” so this is a place we need to support!

The latest issue of PUNK (#25) is the Catalog for the Ki Smith gallery show. This issue is like a “Best-Of” magazine since it highlights the most prominent contributors to PUNK over the last 50 years. It’s still available to purchase on the Ki Smith gallery Website, but since only 500 copies were printed… If you’d like one? You better move fast:

Link to Ki Smith Catalog (PUNK #25) for purchase ($50!):

https://www.kismithgallery.com/product-page/punk-25-catalog

1. Future Exhibitions?

There are a few cultural centers/art galleries planning exhibitions that involve PUNK Magazine, and there are ideas and plans for more shows in 2027. These events need a lot of advance planning, so I’ll be posting more details as things develop. But if you live in upstate New York, Vermont or Massachusetts? Looks like we will have something for you before long. June.

2. Art Commissions?

Once in a while I get offers to create new artwork. Since it takes me a long time to do a drawing and most people offer small payments (where I would end up doing work for less than minimum wage!), I turn down most requests. When an interesting gig comes along? A fun drawing, or something that might make some money? I’ll go for it.

For instance, I am creating a new drawing for Metropolis, New York City’s biggest vintage clothing store. I’ve been working with Richard Colligan (the owner) for over ten years. He even devoted a dressing room to my artwork! And they sell several t-shirts that feature my artwork. He’s now working with a big name brand and I will be creating a new drawing very soon for an event at the store on March 15. We will have more details soon! But mark March 15 on your calendar.

I’m in discussions with Tish and Snooky to design something for their 50th Anniversary! As you can see. (above), we worked together on their 40th Anniversary. We are already brainstorming on images, cross-promotion, and all the good stuff.

I always enjoy working with Manic Panic. Tish and Snooky were hanging out at CBGB before it was CBGB! They were in Blondie before they were “Blondie”! They were in the Sic F*cks, one of the “Second Wave” CBGB punk rock bands! After they opened Manic Panic on St Marks Place and created one of the most successful punk rock brands of all time (their hair dye), they hired a lot of people from the punk rock scene. (My close friend Aid MacSpade, who creates Hep Cat comic strips with me also worked with them).

Like Hilly at CBGB (who took great care of his employees), and Ray Goodman at Trash & Vaudeville (ditto), they are one of the original punk rock businesses that never sold out: They all started a successful business that takes care of their employees and their customers. This is the thing about small corporations like this: They often care about and take care of employees. It’s one of the good things about capitalism and corporations: They aren’t all evil.

This is an under-appreciated part of punk rock and the rock ’n’ roll scene in general: The jobs it creates. Wouldn’t you rather work at CBGB, Trash and Vaudeville or Manic Panic (admittedly for less money) than some boring corporate job that pays a little more?

3. A New Issue of PUNK?

I’m always eager to publish new issues of PUNK Magazine: It’s Fun! So I am looking into the possibility of printing another new issue soon, hopefully in time for the Ramones upcoming anniversary of their first LP on April 23. But a lot of things will have to come together by then. Stay tuned if you are interested. Sadly? It might have to be another newsprint issue. It’s not so much the economics of printing and distributing in this “New Economy.” Shipping costs are ridiculous. So maybe I might be forced to produce the first “Digital Edition”?

I’m also working on some side projects that have come up since the Ki Smith gallery event. I’m grateful that we were able to put PUNK Magazine back on the cultural map! A lot of things are now happening, thanks to the success the “50 Years” show generated. Thanks Ki Smith!

4. Website Upgrade

I’ve been spending most of my time lately on this: The punkmagazine.com Website was badly out of date, It needed a major upgrade but after spending too much time trying to find a new Webmaster (I went through DOZENS of candidates over the last ten years!), I finally found someone I can work with. With our new amazing Webmaster, we will soon be able to exhibit back issues online in PDF format, and eventually give people the ability to print back issues! We are working on this technology now. If you’ve been visiting punk magazine.com you’ll see how the upgrade is taking place over the next few weeks. We are in the early stages of upgrading it, so please be patient, but if you’d like to watch it develop: Check it out!

4. Publicity!

The “50 Years of PUNK” show at the Ki Smith gallery created a nice wave of publicity.

Artnet: The leading online resource for the international art market, and the destination to buy, sell, and research art online:

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/punk-magazine-ki-smith-gallery-new-york-2724150

The Soho Grand Hotel: Not just a great luxury hotel, but also an art destination: Their gallery has hosted many great photo exhibitions:

https://www.roxyhotelnyc.com/stories/punk-magazines-50th-anniversary/

EV Grieve: This is the best local news Website, devoted to events in and around the East Village:

https://evgrieve.com/2025/11/a-look-at-50-years-of-punk-opening.html

Want more? Here’s everything EV Grieve has posted about PUNK Magazine:

https://evgrieve.com/search?q=punk+magazine

Above: Wornfree.com features a lot of t-shirt designs that aren’t available via punk magazine.com, so check ‘em out!

To me, punk rock lost its edge a long time ago. There seems to be a comfortable formula: Bands follow conventions instead of destroying them. There’s now a “punk rock formula.” Back in the 1970s, we were fighting against the record industry establishment and music traditions, but now it seems like most “punk” bands conform to a formula to create success in the alternative music scene.

You know, think about it: When is the last time that a punk rock band caused a commotion? Aren’t we supposed to “kick the establishment’s ass?” What, Green Day just performed at the Super Bowl. Is this progress for punk rock? Or are Green Day corporate stooges now, so their whole “American Idiot” thing is just a pose, and not a serious statement?

I always thought that my opportunity to interview Lou Reed at CBGB at a Ramones performance in November 1975 (that became the cover story for PUNK #1)) was the most fortunate event of my life. Not only did this give me the opportunity to put a famous rock star on the cover of the first issue of my new magazine, but he was the most controversial celebrity in the world at the time. He was Johnny Rotten before Johnny Rotten: Rude and hostile to the media at a time when most creative people kissed ass to the media and were always super-nice to reporters and journalists. Lou was the opposite: He would ridicule interviewers when they asked stupid questions. Since the media always loves controversy and people love watching a train wreck this worked in his favor, he was getting a lot of attention.

Click on the link below to listen to Metal Machine Music and let me know if you can listen to it all the way through:

Lou Reed was also being dissed and dismissed by the media for his odd behavior. People thought he was losing his mind! His girlfriend was “Rachel”: a transsexual. The media was not kind to LBGTQ back then. He cut his hair short and shaved iron crossed into his haircut. He was taking a lot of drugs at the time (alcohol and speed, as we pointed out in PUNK #1, when we called Metal Machine Music a “Methamphetamine Love Letter”).

Back in 1975 Lou Reed was famous for his hit records (“Walk on the Wild Side” from Transformer, the live concert LPs Rock ’N’ Roll Animal and Lou Reed Live), and “Sally Can’t Dance”, a disco parody that became his best-selling recording, and a recording that he had very little influence on.) The theory that he was unhappy with his managers led to the “conspiracy theory” that he produced Metal Machine Music only to get out from under a bad management deal.

Here’s my take on Metal Machine Music: Whether it was recorded to get out of his management deal or he just felt like creating an experimental album, it doesn’t matter. There was already a precedent for recordings that didn’t follow standard song structure. Some of these experimental “Noise Rock” records were hugely successful! There were a lot of precedents, here are just a few:

The Beatles: “Revolution #9”

This “sound collage” from the Beatles’ 1968 self-titled LP was (and still is) one of their most controversial recordings. The music sucks (like most of that double LP, which also featured some of the worst Beatles songs, like “Piggies”, “Rocky Raccoon”, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”, and “Honey Pie”), but also some of their best (“Dear Prudence”, “Martha My Dear”, and… um… Well, some of the other songs are OK I guess). However, “Revolution #9” set the stage for a lot more “Noise Rock”.

Yoko Ono: Live in Toronto

This is an interesting example of what I’m calling “Noise Rock.” I think you have to appreciate that John Lennon and Eric Clapton contributed to this insane “music” (which why I kind of like it—It humanized those two “Rock Gods,” revealing that they could make stupid creative decisions). Like, would you believe that Live Peace in Toronto the LP that the above track appeared on, went Top Ten on the Billboard charts in 1969, and the album even went gold? (Admittedly, the first side of the album contained some great rock ’n’ roll covers, but the entire second side featured Yoko Ono and her vocals). Anyway, this recording gave “commercial credibility” that unusual music could be acceptable to a large audience. And since punk rock was such a radical form of music (similar to “Noise Rock”) I think it encouraged musicians to explore more radical forms of music.

Jimi Hendrix: “And The Gods Made Love”

I have a funny story about this: After I bought the Electric LadyLand LP and played it on the family record player, my father freaked out! He thought I was destroying the record player! He entered my room and tore the record off the turntable! He was stunned once I explained that it was just music. I think this incident inspired my enjoyment of “Noise Rock”:

It pissed off my parents!

The Stooges: “TV Eye”

Yeah, this is one “Noise Rock” (I hope) most of us enjoy: Iggy and his band going nuts. All of Funhouse (one of the greatest albums of all time) is on the edge of insanity, but the last track sends them over the cliff. Great song

I could find other examples, but the thing about 1960s and 1970s music is that it was more experimental. Musicians took chances. People who bought music were more open to supporting weird stuff.

I was aware of Lou’s reputation as a difficult interview, so when Lou saw the first issue of PUNK at a newsstand, bought a copy, and loved the comic strip interview? It led to a close friendship over the next few years, until after PUNK Magazine ceased publication in 1979. He became a mentor, often giving me advice about what I was doing right or wrong, and even contributed articles.

For instance, in late 1976 Lou asked me to print some drawings he had drawn. Like, who would turn down a request like this, right? I published his Metal Machine Music “artwork” in PUNK Magazine #7, which is a weird story that I wrote for PUNK #25. Both the issue and the original photostats I made with Lou are available at the Ki Smith gallery, in case you are interested in buying them. Looking back, I think Lou wanted me to publish the artwork to build his case against Steve Katz. I think this added to PUNK Magazine’s support of Lou as a great artist. (Well, he wasn’t a great visual artist, but his music might be remembered for many years to come. Which makes something “ art”. (Art is long, life is short)

Oddly enough PUNK Magazine was somehow able to support Lou Reed in his lawsuit against Steve Katz. This was a very important case to support artistic freedom. If Lou had lost this case it would have set a dangerous precedent giving more power by corporate figures over control of artistic freedom by a musician. PUNK Magazine’s support for Metal Machine Music oddly had a huge impact on the lawsuit.

Funny story: Steve Katz called me on the phone after the lawsuit settlement and congratulated me on the win! So PUNK #1 had a powerful impact on securing artistic freedom and our rights to our work. This was especially gratifying to me since I always hated the guy for taking control of Blood Sweat and Tears away from Al Cooper, but that is a story for a different day.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support.

Hey: WornFree has been a supporter of PUNK Magazine since the early 2000s, they make great t-shirts, so if you can buy a t-shirt from them? It supports the newsletter. And they have a lot of exclusive t-shirt designs for sale! So check them out, and see if they have a PUNK t-shirt to your taste.

The “50 Years of PUNK” gallery show was an unqualified success: Thousands of people attended events at the Ki Smith gallery, most artists and photographers sold stuff, and the event got some nice publicity. Here’s some of the media coverage that the show generated:

Artnet.com: How PUNK Magazine Helped Shape a Global Movement

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/punk-magazine-ki-smith-gallery-new-york-2724150

In-Depth Interview with Yours Truly:

https://valeriesimadis.wordpress.com/2026/01/06/celebrating-50-years-of-punk-an-interview-with-john-holmstrom/

Richard Boch (author of the Mudd Club history) covered the show for the Roxy Hotel:

https://www.roxyhotelnyc.com/stories/punk-magazines-50th-anniversary/

EV Grieve: “A look at ‘50 Years of PUNK,’ opening tonight at the Ki Smith Gallery”

https://evgrieve.com/2025/11/a-look-at-50-years-of-punk-opening.html

And: “50 Years of PUNK This January”

https://evgrieve.com/2026/01/50-years-of-punk-this-january.html

Gary Lichtenstein Editions: “50 Years of PUNK”

https://www.gleditions.com/50-years-of-punk

Morrison & Co, Tokyo: “PUNK Magazine’s 50th Anniversary!”

https://morrison.co.jp/en_topics/283.html

Say Art: Ki Smith Gallery Opens ‘50 Years of PUNK’ Exhibition Celebrating Iconic Magazine’s Legacy

https://sayart.net/news/view/1065593405497922

So, what’s next? I’m sorting out a lot of offers and possibilities. Can we open more “50 Years of PUNK” events in other art venues in other cities? Sure, we’re even looking at a possible tour later this year, maybe even do something overseas. But I have to be careful, it’s too easy to lose money on tours nowadays. So stay tuned on whatever we might do over the summer.

As an aside, in a way it’s hilarious to me that this “50 Years of PUNK” thing happened at all. For one thing, back in the day most people at CBGB thought it was a stupid idea and hated the name. Not many people would have voted back then to call the CBGB scene “punk.” For another? All the so-called “critics and experts” later claimed that punk rock died in 1979. So what is punk rock doing, hanging around alive and well 50 years later? Ha ha ha! Sorry, but I took SO MUCH SHIT from people back in the day for calling it all “punk”… I needed to vent for a minute. Sorry.

——————————————————————————————————————

So, what’s next? More 50th Anniversaries, of course.

For one thing, the Ramones 50th Anniversary of their first LP, released on April 23, 1976. I’ve heard about a few different places planning the anniversary. Stay tuned for details! This should be good.

The Sex Pistols are also, oddly enough, planning a world tour to celebrate “50 Years of Punk” even though they hated the term and avoided calling their band punk rock for most of the last 50 years. No hard feelings, guys! Welcome to the Punk Mag Club! And I bet you’ll see many more events like this:

https://events.bl.uk/events/punk-50-years-of-rebellion-creativity-and-raw-e

https://blabbermouth.net/news/sex-pistols-featuring-frank-carter-announce-50-years-of-punk-celebration-shows-for-summer-2026

The Damned are also doing their Damnedest to promote the 50 Year anniversary:

https://parade.com/news/the-damned-summer-in-the-city-cover-50-years-punk

Even though punk rock didn’t really take off until 1977 for most bands, and throughout most of 1976 the Ramones were the lone punk rock band? It will be interesting to watch a lot of bands claim to have been punk rock back in 1976, since most of them didn’t release a recording until 1977. The exceptions are (as reported by Wikipedia):

1. The Saints

With their debut single “I’m Stranded,” released in September 1976, they became the first punk band outside the US to release a record, ahead of the first UK punk releases from the Damned, the Sex Pistols and the Clash.

2. The Damned

“New Rose” was the first single by the English punk rock band the Damned. It was released on 22 October 1976 by Stiff Records.

3. The Sex Pistols

The band’s first single, “Anarchy in the UK”, was released on 26 November 1976.

——————————————————————————————————————

Something always bothered me about “The 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop”: It celebrated the “conception” of rap music instead of its actual “birth.” To me, a birth signifies the creation of something: a baby, or a product (like a record, book or magazine). Hip-Hop jumped the gun by claiming that the movement began when DJ Cool Herc debuted his technique of playing funk breaks to a roomful of teenagers in the South Bronx. But if this standard was applied to punk rock, then the birth of punk rock would have started with The Stooges first LP in 1969, or the Ramones first performance at CBGB in 1974, or maybe even earlier.

That’s why I feel that the “Punk Movement” began when PUNK Magazine was published in 1976. The Dictators 1st LP had come out in March 1975, and the Stooges LPs came out years earlier, but they weren’t seen by anyone as launching the punk rock movement. The “birth of punk rock” came a few months later, when the first LP was released in April, 1976.

Anyhow, this is what I believe: Punk rock began with the Ramones and PUNK Magazine in early 1976. We produced the first punk zine, they made the first true punk rock record. This was the true birth of punk rock.

On January 14 at the Ki Smith gallery (that’s tonight!), Danielle Eden will be presenting an adaptation of a film script I wrote years ago about my time on the Sex Pistols tour. I’ve told the story before in many formats (most recently in this newsletter—check back issues to read all of them), but this is the first time the script will be showcased in public. Danielle has hired several actors and rewrote the script to make it simpler and easier to understand. This will be the last PUNK Magazine event there: The “Creating PUNK #1” event with Mary Harron, Robert Romagnoli and Liz Kurtzman went great! And Sunday night’s show with Vamanos! and Labretta Suede & the Motel Six was a lot of fun with two very solid and professional punk rock performances.

Tickets for the Pistols script reading and artwork are for sale at the https://www.kismithgallery.com/

Yes, there is artwork for sale! (It’s not just on exhibition!) So if you see something you like, hurry up and buy! There might be another opportunity to buy some of these images down the road but you never know.

The highlight of the show are 10 fine art lithographs created by Gary Lichenstein, one of the nation’s top print-makers. Many of them have been signed by the artist and /or photographer, but also signed by the subject of the photo, like the Chris Stein photo of Debbie Harry, also from PUNK #4:

NOTE: I am posting the original images that the lithographs used for reproduction: The final art prints look bit different.

I think the Debbie Harry lithograph is almost sold out, so if you want one you’d better hurry up and buy it!

I can’t show all ten images here, it would take up too much space, but below is. teaser:

So visit kismithgallery.com to see everything in the show (and then some!).

There’s a lot of iconic photos and art on the walls—especially in the basement! My personal favorite of my own work is the print of Ron Asheton calling Moe Howard. It’s on sale for only $15! So content me or the gallery if you’d like to buy one.

The Closing Party on January 18 should be fun: Ilegal Mezcal will be on hand to give away their amazing drinks. I’d like to give them a special shout-out here, they’ve supported the Ki Smith gallery with a sponsorship that made the event lots of fun. So thank you, everyone at Ilegal Mezcal! I hope we can work together again soon. And if you haven’t tried it yet? I I pity the fool...

So what’s next, people are asking me? Is there another new issue on the way? What’s next for the “50 Years of PUNK” art exhibit?

I’m thinking about our next steps:

1. The Website upgrade is ongoing. We hope to have a new launch in early February. RJ Cote, who I worked with back in the 1990s at High Times magazine, is the new Webmaster. Check it out if you like, it’s the first update in over ten years!

punkmagazine.com

2. “50 Years of PUNK” will travel to new venues, just not sure when nor where. Hey, do you have a venue near you that would be perfect? Let me know:

   johnholmstrom@punkmagazine.com

3. As far as a new issue goes, I’m putting together some new ideas and hoping that maybe I can bring something out for the spring/summer. But there’s a lot more to plan for the “50 Years” stuff and the Website. Like we’re hoping to make some back issues available there.

Anyway, you won’t be hearing much about the Ki Smith gallery for a little while: One more for the road, then I’ll get back to revisiting the history of the magazine in 1976 and explaining why “Punk Attitude” is just the old “New York Attitude.”

THE BAD NEWS:

Due to the Holidays and the bad weather screwing everything up, we’ve been forced to move the Sex Pistols script reading to January 14th.

THE GOOD NEWS:

The “50 Years of PUNK” event at the Ki Smith gallery is being extended by one week! The new Closing Party will take place on January 18: Free admission!

Want tickets? Visit:

Ki Smith Gallery Events

https://www.kismithgallery.com/events-2

This is the new line-up:

January 9, 2026: Creating PUNK Magazine #1

I will host a panel discussion about how the magazine came together, and what went into putting everything together. Mary Harron (who wrote the article about the Ramones), Liz Kurtzman (PUNK Fashion Editor and daughter of MAD Magazine Creator Harvey Kurtzman) and Robert Romagnoli (the only other person who has contributed to every issue of PUNK Magazine) will all have some crazy stories about the early CBGB scene, the “PUNK Dump” and what it was like back in the day.

We will have some reprints of PUNK #1 for sale at the event, as well as PUNK #25 (The Catalog for “50 Years of PUNK”) and free copies of recent issues. And if you want anything signed by us, this would be the best time! So stop by! Bring or buy stuff you want signed by the founders of PUNK Magazine!

January 11, 2026: Labretta Suede and the Motel and Vamanos! PARTY!

This was to be the “Closing Party” until the show was extended by a week. Vamanos! were the original inspiration for the Tompkins Square event (see PUNK #23), but due to the rain they couldn’t perform that day. Labretta Suede and the Motel Six started the show during the worst of the rain and did a sizzling set. So this is kind of a do-over. I’m hoping to hist another event with Toxic Tito and Licks in the spring (who were also part of the Tompkins Square event)).

A good time is guaranteed for all.

Want tickets? Visit:

Ki Smith Gallery Events

https://www.kismithgallery.com/events-2

January 14, 2026: Sex Pistols script reading

This is an updated script based on my experiences on the Sex Pistols 1978 US Tour, which describes the challenges I faced. A lot of weird stuff happened. The script will give you an idea of what it was like back in 1978 when High Times Magazine was attempting to bring PUNK Magazine to national prominence. So he hired a film crew to document the tour, but the Pistols record company tried everything to stop him from making the film D.O.A.: A Rite of Passage, which can be seen for free on TUBI.

D.O.A.: A Rite of Passage IMDB page

Want tickets? Visit:

Ki Smith Gallery Events

https://www.kismithgallery.com/events-2

January 18, 2026: Closing Party (for real this time)

Free admission! This will be the last chance to see the “50 Years of PUNK” show at the Ki Smith Gallery. There are plans to exhibit a lot of the content at alternative sites in the future, but nothing will top the current exhibition at Ki Smith (and the prices will increase, so if you want to buy anything, do it soon!)

In other news, keep an eye out for the punkmagazine.com update, we are planning some big changes there: new content, old stuff, and more frequent updates: Should be up by the end of the week!

https://www.wornfree.com/search?type=products&q=PUNK*

Above: The Catalog for the Ki Smith Gallery “50 Years of PUNK” show. This is the ultimate issue of PUNK! Believe me, you want to buy a copy: It’s a limited edition of (only) 500 copies! So get one before they are gone! Yes, it costs $50, but this is the real deal: A true collector’s item!

How to buy:

https://www.kismithgallery.com/product-page/punk-25-catalog

Sadly, the “50 Years of PUNK” Ki Smith gallery show will soon come to an end. So here are the last few events I’ve planned to try to give everyone a good reason to check it out before it’s gone forever.

Many years ago I decided to write a film script based on my experiences during the Sex Pistols’ 1978 US tour. I figured that since it is the one event that I’ve been interviewed and asked about the most over the last 48 years, I had to write everything down before I forgot what happened. Most questions I get asked about are about Sid Vicious, who was a rising star before he passed away on Groundhog Day, 1979: His “My Way” video was going viral and he was the most charismatic Sex Pistol. Yeah, he couldn’t play bass guitar but he stole the show whenever the band played. I think of him as “The Punk Elvis,” in the way that Jimi Hendrix was “The Hippie Elvis” and Madonna was “The MTV Elvis.” All four of them dominated the music scene at the time. I ran into Sid a few times during the Pistols’s tour, but he wasn’t the most interesting character on that tour: Tom Forcade was.

Tom Forcade was the founder of High Times magazine, and he financed the underground film documentary that became D.O.A.: A Rite of Passage. The Sex Pistols and their Warner Brothers tour crew successfully suppressed his attempts to film during the tour, breaking cameras and physically assaulting the camera crew. Ironically, many years later the Pistols used footage from D.O.A. for their own documentary (The Filth and the Fury) without clearing the rights, which granted High Times the opportunity to get their film rights for D.O.A. Forcade introduced a new level of weirdness to the Sex Pistols tour, especially when the rumor that he kidnapped Sid Vicious during the tour and shot him up with heroin.

Then there was Noel (The Mad) Monk, Warner Brothers’ hand-picked Tour Manager, who was tasked with keeping the Sex Pistols under control and away from the media. Right: This was the biggest news story in the world during the tour (slow news weeks!), dozens of writers, photographers and TV news crews showed up at every show, and Warner Brothers didn’t allow any interviews and barely any coverage.

Finally, Malcolm McLaren was quite a character. I actually liked him a lot: He had an interesting take on things. But it was painful to see how he lost control of the band he managed as Warner Brothers took control of the tour. The Sex Pistols 1978 US tour killed the 1970s punk rock movement, and the Sid & Nancy incident buried it later that year. By 1979 Tom Forcade committed suicide, Nancy was found dead at the Chelsea Hotel and Sid died from a heroin overdose after spending time at Rikers Island. Here’s an interesting story from the New Musical Express in October 1978:

http://www.philjens.plus.com/pistols/pistols/press_cuttings_rikers.html

The film script was co-written with Richard Belfiore, who had a film deal that fell through (as they usually do), so we shopped it to several producers over the years, but it’s been in limbo ever since. There is a prominent actor who is looking it over now, so we’ll see what happens next/

Danielle Eden is rewriting the original film screenplay and adapting it for a stage play. I think a stripped-down version might be more comprehensible, since the tour was total madness. Hey, maybe we can put together a stage production in 2026? I hope you can attend! Tickets are available through the Ki Smith gallery (who have a great stage in the downstairs area):

https://www.kismithgallery.com/event-details/sex-pistols-tour-play-reading-by-john-holmstrom

Two days later, I’ll be hosting a very special panel discussion about what it was like to put together the first issue of PUNK Magazine. I’m really looking forward to this event: Several people who worked on PUNK Magazine #1 will share stories about how it all came together. Our Special Guest is Mary Harron, who wrote the article about the Ramones that appeared in the centerfold of the magazine. After Danny Fields suggested that I could talk with Lou Reed, he gave me such a great interview that I knew I had to make it the backbone of the first issue, so Mary stepped up to write a great article about the then-unknown and unsigned brudders.

Mary went on to have one of the most interesting post-PUNK careers: She became a film director, best known for American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol, Charley’s Girls, The Notorious Betty Page and many others. I’m very happy that she’s available to join us. (Eddie McNeil, who was also with us that night, is busy directing and producing his own films).

Liz Kurtzman will also be on hand: She was one of my first hires and became PUNK Magazine’s Fashion Editor. She helped out with the dirty work of physically putting together the actual magazine: which required days and days devoted to folding and collating 4,000 magazines for distribution. Her first article for PUNK, published in PUNK #2, featured a photo of Debbie Harry with The Marbles, which led to our work with Blondie, who appeared in PUNK Magazine more than any other CBGB band.

Robert Romagnoli will also be on hand: He’s the only other person (besides me!) who contributed to every issue of PUNK! He quickly became the most popular contributor to the magazine. Since we met during Harvey Kurtzman’s Cartoon Class at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 1973, there will be some discussion about how Liz Kurtzman’s father inspired us to create “The MAD Magazine of Rock ’n’ Roll.”

Here’s a link to tickets if you’re interested (they will probably be available at the door since I doubt we will get hundreds of people on a cold January night):

https://www.kismithgallery.com/event-details/creating-punk-the-first-issue-live-at-ki-smith-gallery

Hey! It’s my birthday! I rarely celebrate it (every “January Baby” understands that it’s the shittiest time of year to go for it), but when Labretta found out about it, she insisted on performing at the Ki Smith gallery, since she was born on January 12th (just like Mary Harron!).

This show will present two bands that were involved in the ill-fated, rain-delayed Tompkins Square Park (TSP) that took place on September 28, 2024. Vamanos weren’t able to perform, so since they were the inspiration for me to put that event together, I’m really glad I’ll get to see them again. Meanwhile, Labretta Suede and the Motel Six ended up winning that Battle of the Bands (along with Toxic Tito, hopefully I can put together a show with them and Licks, who were also unable to perform at the TSP rainout. All the bands put on a great show that day, in spite of the rain.

You might want to buy advance tickets for this event if you want to attend, Labretta has a fairly large following in New York City:

https://www.kismithgallery.com/event-details/labretta-suede-and-the-motel-six-vamanos-live

The Clothing Sale

Several people have asked me how the Clothing Sale went a few weeks ago, and I’m happy to say that it went really well. We didn’t get hundreds of people bidding thousands of dollars on PUNK merch, but there was a steady stream of people who found something they liked. We sold everything from clothing samples from Japan to Joey Ramone Birthday Bash merch to a few items from the Overthrow/Everlast/PUNK Magazine collaboration. Hey, we might even do another clothing sale soon, so let me know if you’re interested. (But I will probably want to wait until the weather gets better!)

Meanwhile, I am planning to expand the online PUNK Mag store and the punkmagazine.com Website, thanks to the successful Ki Smith gallery show. I’m planning to roll out some special 50th Anniversary swag soon!

As many of you know, I have a licensing deal in Japan with Morrison & Co. (who I met at a “Save CBGB” event back in the day at the CBGB Gallery). They sold a lot of CBGB t-shirts back in the day, and made licensing deals with Godlis and Roberta Bayley as well. Once upon a time we were all “Big in Japan,” but things slowed down over the last few years due to COVID, changing tastes in fashion in Tokyo, and other influences. So much cool PUNK Magazine merch has been produced over the years thanks to our collaboration with them back in the day! I’ve held onto most of it for the last 10-20 years, so I decided to sell some of it during this amazing Ki Smith Gallery exhibition. (You know, I am getting old and “can’t take it with me,” right? But I would be happy to be buried with it!) I have so many boxes of this stuff in my small apartment that it can’t hold all of it, so although I hate to let go of it? Like they say: “My loss is your gain!” So check it out, it is amazing stuff:

I’d like to give some background since this is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime event! I have been holding onto a lot of “Made In Japan” swag, and this’ll be your first opportunity to see, and possibly buy, some of it.

Working with Morrison and Co. was always a lot of fun. I even did some LP covers for an amazing JaPunk band thanks to them: “The 50 Kaitenz”! (Their name means “50 RPMs,” meaning that they are faster than your average single record!)

These guys are one of my favorite punk bands of all time. They put on a great show and are totally devoted to American rock ‘n’ roll, punk, garage… You name it. My dream is to bring them to the USA in front of a large audience with other great Japanese punk bands like Peelander-Z, Jiro, (and hopefully Guitar Wolf).

The PUNK Magazine merchandise deal in Tokyo, Japan has always been surprising: Always interesting and innovative! Many different companies in Tokyo produced a lot of great merchandise, and promoted it like crazy. Chubbygang, one of my favorites, created a lot of high-quality, PUNK-branded stuff:

A lot of the clothing samples I received that were produced in Tokyo through many of the clothing deals Morrison & Co. put together will be available for sale at the Ki Smith Gallery (170 Forsyth Street in NYC) on 12/13. Most of these will all be one-of-a-kind items (although there will be some designs in different variations and colors).

We will be serving coffee and chocolate (courtesy of Dark Matter, who produced the PUNK Magazine coffee for the Joey Ramone Birthday Bash last year). You will want to stop by to sample their chocolate: It’s has received multiple awards! And our PUNK Magazine Coffee received rave reviews.

Currently Dark Matter is selling Marky Ramone and Bad Brains coffee. Check them out: www.darkmattercoffee.com

The event promises to be a lot of fun. Tish & Snooky will attend and give away Manic Panic product samples, and we also have a THC product that will be given way, and some free Mezcal courtesy of Ilegal (now my favorite alcoholic drink: No BS!).

This isn’t just a “Sample Sale,” it’s going to be a party! So I hope you can attend. If not? Spread the word to family and friends.

Here are some more images of the stuff that will be available for sale:

Stay tooned! We will have many more interesting PUNK Magazine items available for sale. Het, do you want to bid on the “PUNK Rug?” If you want it, you can walk away with it! I have a lot of interesting stuff available.

Ki Smith gallery, 170 Forsyth Street, December 13 between 2:00 and 6:00 pm.

Free coffee and chocolate courtesy Dark Matter coffee!

Free Manic Panic samples!

Free copies of PUNK #24!

And more interesting stuff will be taking place. Check out my Instagram and keep an eye on the “Official Punk Magazine” account on Instagram for updates.

Hope to see you there!

Hello again!

It’s been a while since I have been able to do a post. This upcoming gallery show has been taking all of my attention! And it is becoming a phenomenon. The advance publicity it is receiving is amazing. The RSVP list now has around 1,000 people! (So forgive me if the event gets out of control and you can’t get in due to the huge crowd: The gallery doesn’t hold that many people!)

I’ve never seen the level of excitement and anticipation that this show has created. Most of the artists and photographers understand the importance of this moment. This time: November 28 to January 11, is when the first issue of PUNK was put together. I interviewed Lou Reed and the Ramones on the Sunday after Thanksgiving weekend. And I had dinner with R. Crumb at MAD Magazine Creator Harvey Kurtzman’s house on Thanksgiving a few days before with Robert Crumb!!! And I am beyond thrilled that he agreed to be in the show. He even signed lithographs of his drawing of Helen Wheels. (I have an interesting story to tell after the show closes). To tell you the truth, after meeting the G.O.A.T. of underground comics? Interviewing Lou Reed, a notoriously difficult person to talk with back then—he was like the original Johnny Rotten) for PUNK #1 was no big deal.

I am amazed by what Ki Smith has done with this exhibition and excited by today’s show opening. This show cements the fact that PUNK Magazine launched the punk movement in January 1976, and do not ever forget that. The motherfuckers who call PUNK Magazine “proto-punk” can all rot in hell as far as I am concerned. Iggy and the Stooges inspired the punk rock movement, the Ramones provided the formula, and PUNK Magazine promoted it and turned it into a new music movement.

And beyond that? We printed a lot of cool stuff. Yeah, we made many mistakes, but that’s because we took chances, while today’s culture avoids. Which why mainstream culture sucks so bad. The 1970s were all about making crazy content that pissed people off. Too many wimps making content nowadays.

That said? I hope you will choose to attend the tribute to JD King to Saturday’s event. He recently passed away so there will be a nice tribute to his art. BTW, he was a great guy to work with. (Unlike two other guys at PUNK who shall remain nameless here).

If you want to attend both events? That’s good with me! The more events being planned that you can visit? The better. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I’m not sure if there will be a 51st not a 60th event like this. Hey, the 50th Anniversary event is a big deal. The 40th Anniversaries were nice and all, but this one seems to be (finally) getting attention.

The gallery will be so crowded on the Friday opening, and if you stop by on Saturday night I will be available to hang out and talk and/or sign stuff. We are having a few technical problems getting everything together, but in my opinion it will be the best time to check out the show.

If you would like to support this newsletter (and buy a cool t-shirt!), please support my advertisers: