Regional Scenes — Punk in Birmingham Birmingham's earliest punk rock bands preceded the emergence of the Sex Pistols in late 1976 and mainstream British punk, directly influenced by British glam rock, American garage rock, and German krautrock. The first band, Swell Maps, formed in 1972 by brothers Epic Soundtracks and Nikki Sudden, inspired by T. Rex, The Stooges, and Can. The band produced hours of home recordings on reel-to-reel tapes throughout the 1970s, with Sudden later recalling that when he first saw the Sex Pistols in April 1976, "my reaction was that they sounded just like what we were doing." Swell Maps "took seriously the punk premise of having no rules, doing it yourself, and destroying rock." Although they were never more than a cult hit, they would be highly influential in the emergence of the next generation of alternative rock, with Dinosaur Jr., R.E.M., and Pavement citing them as an influence, and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth writing that "Swell Maps had a lot to do with my musical education." Misspent Youth, formed in 1975, influenced by the New York Dolls and The Stooges, remained heavily involved in glam rock. Although only loosely connected to punk, they were considered Birmingham's best live band of the era and built a strong local following, becoming legendary throughout the city and surrounding areas, regularly selling out Friday nights at the city's premier punk venue, Barbarella's. Despite releasing a single in 1979 and appearing on BBC Television in 1980, they attracted little attention outside the city and disbanded a year later. However, by carrying the influence of glam through the punk era, they would influence Boy George, Duran Duran, and the birth of Birmingham's New Romantic scene. Birmingham's first punk band, The Prefects, considered by John Peel to be better than The Clash or the Sex Pistols, formed in 1975 influenced by the New York Dolls and Neu!, originally calling themselves Church of England, later The Gestapo, and finally The Prefects. The new band's first gig in 1976 ended in a riot when they played their first song, "Birmingham's a Shithole." In May 1977, they were supporting The Clash on their "White Riot" tour at London's Rainbow Theatre, perfecting a "clumsy, improvised" set that included the 10-second "I've Got VD", a highly original rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody", and their most highly regarded song, the 10-minute "The Bristol Road Leads to Dachau", an early example of the art-punk that would emerge later in the 1980s. The Prefects had no interest in making records; their only recorded output was a single released after their breakup and two Peel Sessions finally released in 2004 as the compilation album The Prefects are Amateur Wankers. The release of the Sex Pistols' first single, "Anarchy in the UK," in October 1976, sparked a wave of punk bands in Birmingham, as well as across the country. The Sussed released an EP in 1979, their self-deprecating style illustrated by their two most popular songs: the self-explanatory "We're Crap" and "WMPTE"—a tribute to the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive, the public transport service from 1969 to 2016. A 1978 review of The Sussed said, "Every city should have a band like The Sussed. Any city in trouble." Dansette Damage was best known for its classic debut single, "The Only Sound," which became a favorite of John Peel and its producer John Walters and was later discovered to have been produced by Robert Plant. The all-male Dangerous Girls began in 1978 with a Public Image Ltd-influenced post-punk sound, moving in an increasingly punk direction for their string of singles, re-released on three compilation albums in 2001 and 2002. Of greater long-term importance were The Killjoys, who were led by future Dexys Midnight Runners frontman Kevin Rowland. The success of their wild, raucous first single, "Johnny Won't Go to Heaven," in 1977 saw NME declare Rowland the successor to Johnny Rotton as the voice of punk protest, but Rowland was already expressing dissatisfaction with punk's uniformity, complaining that "The original idea of punk was to be different and say what you wanted... not just copy everyone else." By 1978, in an early sign of the uncompromising eccentricity of Rowland's later career, the Killjoys were inspiring the hatred of punk audiences by playing Bobby Darin covers and country and western music at punk venues like London's 100 Club. Dexys Midnight Runners (1978) is an English pop rock band from Birmingham with soul influences that achieved significant commercial success in the early 1980s. They are best known in the UK for their songs "Geno" and "Come On Eileen," both of which reached number one on the UK Singles Chart. "Come On Eileen" also topped the US Billboard Hot 100, and with extensive airplay on MTV, they are associated with the Second British Invasion. Birmingham's GBH were, alongside Stoke-on-Trent's Discharge and Edinburgh's The Exploited, one of the three dominant bands of the second wave of British punk, which emerged in the early 1980s. "Taking punk from the art schools to the council estates", reacting against the perceived commercialization of earlier punk to produce music that was "brutal, fast and very aggressive". GBH's influence helped codify the raw sound that would become known as street punk, becoming a key influence on the mid-1980s emergence of the thrash metal bands Metallica and Slayer. Alex