In April 1979, New York punk-scene weirdos the Cramps played at a Washington, DC venue called the LBJ Club, and that must’ve been some show. The Cramps hadn’t released their debut album yet, but they were already pioneering a gothy, theatrical, knowingly kitschy take on rockabilly. The crowd was full of teenagers like young Ian MacKaye and young Henry Garfield, and they were inspired by what they saw. Pretty soon afterwards, MacKaye started his band Teen Idles, and Garfield started his band State Of Alert. Those bands didn’t last long, but then MacKaye formed Minor Threat, while Garfield changed his name to Henry Rollins and became the longest-tenured singer of Black Flag. The DC punk scene evolved a sound that had basically nothing in common with the Cramps, but that show was a major early flashpoint that’s since been acclaimed in about a million scene histories.
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