"alternative rock is still based on the axioms of these 100 songs" (4 stars) -- Rolling Stone

"just about perfect" (4 stars) -- Blender

"the perfect Christmas gift for your Blink-182 loving nephew who thinks Green Day invented this stuff" (A rating) -- Entertainment Weekly

Skip the safety pins and put on the first definitive overview of punk's beginnings. Four CDs gathering 100 songs from a wide-ranging cast of characters. It’s got proto-punks like the New York Dolls and Iggy Pop; key figures like the Ramones, The Buzzcocks, and The Clash; as well as artists like Talking Heads and Blondie, who quickly outgrew the punk label. A thoroughly researched 116-page booklet includes liners, rare photos, track-by-track commentary by Trouser Press founders Ira Robbins and Dave Schulps, and personal tributes by Johnny Ramone, David Byrne, Joan Jett, and others.

When punk began it wasn’t so much a sound as an attitude. Before there was punk the genre -- narrowly defined by music that was loud, fast, and snotty -- there was punk the movement, where anything rebellious, intelligent, and unpretentious was embraced in the spirit of fun. That’s why you get well-dressed guys like Joe Jackson alongside fiends like The Cramps. What mattered was that, in their own way, these people all said “no thanks” to the rock pomp and disco camp that ruled the charts through much of the ’70s.