Punk Rock Trivia
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130 free Punk Rock trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Punk rock was a word critics used for 1960s garage bands before it became a scene at a Bowery club, a national scandal on British teatime television and, eventually, a marketing slogan for a Subaru. This punk rock trivia quiz runs from the proto-punk of Detroit and the garage bands of the Nuggets era through the New York clubs, Patti Smith and the Ramones, to a shop on the King's Road, the Sex Pistols, the Grundy interview, the Damned, the Buzzcocks, the Clash and the Australians who got there first. It then follows the schism: hardcore in Southern California and Washington D.C., straight edge, Fear on Saturday Night Live, Crass and anarcho-punk, Oi!, D-beat, the 2 Tone ska revival, riot grrrl, and the 1990s explosion of Green Day, the Offspring, Rancid, Blink-182 and Sum 41 that had purists crying sellout. Easy questions open each era and the deep cuts follow. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's punk rock article, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 130 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Bowery club, opened by Hilly Kristal in December 1973, became the cradle of New York punk?
CBGB
CBGB stood for Country, Bluegrass and Blues, the music Kristal first meant to book; he called the bands that took over "street rock", but the word punk is the one that stuck.
Q 02By the end of 1974 the Ramones had played seventy-four shows, each lasting roughly how long?
17 minutes
17 minutes was a full Ramones set in 1974 because the songs were so fast and so short: most clocked in at under two minutes.
Q 03Which band formed from the audience of the Sex Pistols' June 1976 Lesser Free Trade Hall gig?
Joy Division
Joy Division began the next day, when Peter Hook borrowed £35 from his mother to buy a bass; he and Bernard Sumner played as Warsaw before taking the famous name.
Q 04The Damned's October 1976 single, regarded as the first UK punk rock single, was called what?
New Rose
"New Rose", released by Stiff Records on 22 October 1976, beat the Pistols' debut single to the shops by over a month; the Vibrators followed with "We Vibrate" in November.
Q 05The Sex Pistols' notorious 1976 Bill Grundy interview happened because they filled a vacancy left by which band?
Queen
EMI labelmates Queen dropped out of Thames Television's Today programme on 1 December 1976, so the Pistols were sent instead; the swearing that followed put punk on the front pages.
Q 06Which Sex Pistols instrumentalist did most of the swearing at Bill Grundy on live television in 1976?
Steve Jones
Steve Jones, the band's guitarist, let rip after Grundy told Siouxsie Sioux "we'll meet afterwards" and dared him to say something outrageous; Johnny Rotten had muttered only one swear word.
Q 07Where did the Sex Pistols play their first gig on November 6, 1975?
Saint Martin's School of Art
Saint Martin's School of Art was where bassist Glen Matlock studied, so he arranged the slot supporting Bazooka Joe, whose own bassist later found fame as Adam Ant.
Q 08The future Sex Pistols started out under which name, borrowed from a Roxy Music song?
The Strand
The Strand, named after Roxy Music's "Do the Strand", began with three teenagers; by their singer's own account, he and the drummer played on instruments he had stolen.
Q 09Which fashion designer ran the King's Road boutique Sex with Malcolm McLaren, dressing the early Sex Pistols?
Vivienne Westwood
Vivienne Westwood taught in a primary school until 1971, when she and McLaren opened their shop at 430 King's Road; renamed Sex in 1974, it became the future Pistols' hangout.
Q 10Which Sex Pistols single reached number two on the UK chart in June 1977?
God Save the Queen
God Save the Queen came out on 27 May 1977 and stalled at number two in Jubilee week behind Rod Stewart, amid claims the chart had been fixed to keep it off the top.
Q 11Who was arrested at the 100 Club Punk Festival in 1976 after a thrown glass blinded a girl in one eye?
Sid Vicious
Sid Vicious, who had drummed for Siouxsie and the Banshees the night before, was held at Ashford Remand Centre; press coverage of the incident hardened punk's reputation as a social menace.
Q 12Which Australian band was the first punk group outside the US to release a record, "(I'm) Stranded" in 1976?
The Saints
The Saints, from Brisbane, self-released "(I'm) Stranded" in September 1976; co-founder Ed Kuepper hated the first Ramones album because he knew his band would be labelled copyists despite playing that way for years.
Q 13Which Sydney band, named after a misheard Stooges lyric, built Australia's early punk scene around the Oxford Tavern?
Q 21Whose liner notes for the 1972 anthology Nuggets applied "punk rock" to 1960s garage bands?
Lenny Kaye
Lenny Kaye, who compiled the Nuggets double album for Elektra, used "punk rock" for the garage bands in his notes; he went on to play guitar in the Patti Smith Group for decades.
Q 22Which 1966 hit was Question Mark & the Mysterians' biggest song?
96 Tears
"96 Tears" topped the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1966; Dave Marsh later described the band as giving a "landmark exposition of punk rock" in Creem in May 1971.
Q 23Which garage-rock standard, once investigated by the FBI over its slurred lyrics, is often called punk rock's "ur-text"?
Louie Louie
Radio Birdman
Radio Birdman took over the running of the Oxford Tavern and renamed it the Oxford Funhouse; their own name twists a line from the Stooges' song "1970".
Q 14Which Ohio city's early-1970s scene produced Rocket from the Tombs, Electric Eels and later Pere Ubu?
Cleveland
Cleveland's scene billed its Rocket from the Tombs and Electric Eels shows as "Extermination Night"; Rocket guitarist Cheetah Chrome went on to the Dead Boys.
Q 15Devo spearheaded a movement named after which Ohio city?
Akron
Akron gave its name to the late-1970s "Akron sound" after Devo's success sent talent scouts combing the city; the Cramps also lived there before moving to New York in 1975.
Q 16The Stooges, fronted by Iggy Pop, came from which Michigan city?
Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor is where Iggy Pop had drummed in local bands as a teenager; the Stooges made their 1967 debut there at a Halloween party in their own shared house.
Q 17Which former Velvet Underground member produced the Stooges' 1969 debut album?
John Cale
John Cale, the Velvet Underground's viola player until 1968, produced The Stooges' debut in 1969 and later the Modern Lovers' demos that became their self-titled album.
Q 18What was the title of the MC5's influential February 1969 debut album?
Kick Out the Jams
Kick Out the Jams was recorded live at Detroit's Grande Ballroom; when Hudson's department store refused to stock it, the band's obscene newspaper ad against the store got them dropped by Elektra.
Q 19Which critic ironically called Iggy Pop "that Stooge punk" in the December 1970 issue of Creem?
Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs wrote it in a long Stooges essay that mocked more mainstream rock musicians; within months Creem writers were applying "punk rock" to mid-1960s garage acts.
Q 20Ed Sanders, quoted in the first known print use of "punk rock" in 1970, co-founded which New York band?
The Fugs
The Fugs were started in late 1964 by Sanders and fellow poet Tuli Kupferberg; his "punk rock" described his own solo album, a year before the critics usually credited with coining the phrase.
Louie Louie, in the Kingsmen's 1963 recording, baffled the FBI, which gave up after failing to make out the words; the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" was among the songs it influenced.
Q 24When William Shakespeare used the word "punk" in The Merry Wives of Windsor, what did it mean?
Prostitute
Prostitute was the Elizabethan sense of the word; it later shifted to mean a young hustler, gangster or hoodlum before rock critics attached it to music in the early 1970s.
Q 25Which instruction ended the famous fanzine drawing of three guitar chords?
Now form a band
Now form a band was the punchline of a three-chord diagram printed in the fanzine Sideburns, though it is often wrongly credited to the better-known Sniffin' Glue.
Q 26Which Richard Hell song, played in Television's early sets, became the anthem of the New York scene?
Blank Generation
Blank Generation was Hell's rewrite of a 1959 record, "The Beat Generation"; he took it with him when he left Television and made it the title track of his Voidoids' debut album.
Q 27Patti Smith's 1974 debut single, often called the first punk record, paired "Hey Joe" with which B-side?
Piss Factory
Piss Factory is a spoken-word piece about the alienation Smith felt working on a factory assembly line and her dream of escaping to New York; the single came out on her own Mer label.
Q 28Which band did Richard Hell form after Television, with ex-Dolls Thunders and Nolan?
The Heartbreakers
Hell formed The Heartbreakers in 1975 but left in early 1976 to found the Voidoids, described as one of punk's most harshly uncompromising groups.
Q 29"Chinese Rocks", co-written by Richard Hell and a Ramone, takes its title from a strong form of which drug?
Heroin
Heroin is what the song's addict goes out to score; the Ramones refused to record it because of its drug theme and did not put out their own version for years.
Q 30Which label released the Ramones' debut album in April 1976?
Sire Records
Sire Records, run by Seymour Stein, issued Ramones on 23 April 1976; the band had needed only seven days and about $6,400 to record it.