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History tends to simplify things.

When it comes to punk, that simplification usually starts and ends with New York and London. CBGB. The Sex Pistols. The Clash. Those stories are well-documented, mythologized, and repeated so often that they’ve become accepted as the full picture.

But that version leaves something out.

According to photographer Michael Grecco and legendary radio DJ Oedipus, there’s a critical piece of the story that rarely gets the attention it deserves: Boston.

“We had the most clubs… we had the most kids… and we had the very first show in the world in ’75,” Grecco says. “Boston was sort of the overlooked city.”

That’s a bold claim. But when you look closer, it starts to hold.

Before Punk Was Seen, It Had to Be Heard

To understand Boston’s role, you have to understand how music actually spread in the mid-1970s.

There was no MTV. No internet. No streaming. No algorithm pushing new sounds into your feed.

There was radio.

“Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, listened to the radio,” Oedipus explains. “Radio is where you discovered music… MTV didn’t exist.”

And here’s where Boston diverged from every other major city.

In New York, London, and Los Angeles, mainstream rock stations weren’t playing punk. They stuck to established acts, bands with record deals, label backing, and commercial viability. Boston had something different. It had a radio show that broke the rules.

Oedipus began playing emerging punk and new wave records on a small MIT station, WTBS, years before the genre reached broader airwaves.

“This was the only place… the only place you could hear this music,” he says.

That distinction matters more than most histories acknowledge. Because before punk could become a movement, it needed an audience. And before it could have an audience, it needed to be heard. Boston made that possible.

A Scene That Scaled

Boston had an entire ecosystem forming in real time: a radio show playing the music, clubs hosting live performances, record stores sourcing hard-to-find imports, fanzines documenting the movement, photographers capturing it, and a growing audience ready to show up.

Michael Grecco at the Punk Scene

And unlike New York or London, where scenes formed around specific venues or labels, Boston’s strength was its interconnectedness. Everything fed everything else.

Grecco describes it as symbiotic:

“You’d go into the Rat, hear a band, then want to buy the record… then hear them on the radio. It was all connected.”

That loop, discovery, experience, and reinforcement is what allowed Boston to scale.

Why Bands Came to Boston First

One of the most overlooked pieces of this story is how Boston functioned as a touring hub.

“Bands would route their shows through Boston to begin, not even New York,” Oedipus says.

Because Boston had something invaluable: a guaranteed audience.

With dozens of colleges and a dense population of young listeners already tuned into the music, bands knew they wouldn’t be playing to empty rooms.

“They knew there was a huge audience for them,” Grecco adds.

That made Boston a proving ground. A place where bands could build momentum before moving on to larger markets.

Cha Burns of the Fingerprintz photographed by Michael Grecco

The Paradox of Boston Punk

So if Boston had the audience, the infrastructure, and the early momentum, why doesn’t it dominate the punk narrative?

The answer is complicated.

Unlike New York or London, Boston didn’t produce as many globally dominant, myth-defining bands during that initial wave. While acts like The Cars broke through, many others didn’t reach the same level of commercial success.

“Many are called and few are chosen,” Oedipus reflects.

At the same time, the music industry itself was centered elsewhere, primarily in New York, where labels, media, and executives shaped the narrative of what mattered. That meant Boston’s contribution was less visible, even if it was foundational.

Rethinking the Origin Story

What Grecco and Oedipus are really arguing isn’t that Boston “invented” punk. It’s something more nuanced and arguably more important. Boston was one of the first places where punk was heard consistently, shared widely, supported structurally, and embraced at scale.

“You don’t learn about music by reading about it,” Oedipus says. “You have to hear it.”

And for a critical moment in the mid-1970s, Boston was where that happened. New York and London still deserve their place in the story. They produced iconic bands, defined aesthetics, and shaped the global identity of punk. But if the question shifts, from where punk started to where it was first truly experienced at scale, the answer becomes less obvious. And Boston moves from the margins to the center.