Oi! Division - The Roots of Post Punk
Punk is dead. It was strangled in its infancy by the same people who busted it out of the hangover of the hippie generation.
One of the things that immediately turned me on to punk as a kid was that built into its very DNA is a contradiction that drives change. Nothing is punk and everything is punk. That's why mere moments after bands like Buzzcocks and the Sex Pistols sneered their way onto the stage at their first gigs in 1976, their frontmen grabbed suitcoats and headed for gloomier realms in post punk bands. The Buzzcocks' original singer, Howard Devoto, formed the seminal post punk group, Magazine, in 1977 and Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols returned to being just John Lydon and started the "anti-rock" group Public Image, Ltd. in '78.
Maybe my favorite example of this, though, is the transition of the band Blitz. Formed in 1981 on the outskirts of Manchester, the first Blitz record was about as salt-of-the-earth punk/Oi! as you can get. All boots and braces, the lead singer growling about such heady topics as "fighting", "drinking" and "being the boys" over buzzsaw whining guitars and straightforward, uptempo drumming.
But then something strange happened. For their next single, presciently titled, "New Age," the boys in Blitz ditched the leather jackets and shit guitar tones in favor of black button downs and reverbed drums. The working class growl still remains, but it's clearly the sound of a band in the midst of an identity crisis.
At this point, apparently, there was an impasse between the street punk members of the group and the ones who wanted to go further down the post punk/New Romantic avenue. The post punks eventually won out, and, despite not sounding anything like the first iteration (which was probably the one that most suited a band named "Blitz") they hung on to the name and put out an album called Second Empire Justice which could have just as easily been written by the Cure or Joy Division as a bunch of ex-skinheads.
While Blitz had maybe the most direct, overt transformation from snarling street punks to glowering post punks, plenty of bands blurred the lines between punk and post punk. Blitz' Mancunian neighbors, Dub Sex, brought plenty of growl to post punk instrumentation, while Modern English - most well known for the thoroughly New Romantic weeper, "Melt With You," started out with a considerably rougher, darker sound.
England wasn't the only place where punk almost immediately bled into post punk, either. France's Edith Nylon, Brazil's As Mercinarias and San Francisco's Romeo Void all brought edge to their post punk. At the same time, some more traditionally punk bands dabbled in some post punk sounds: check out the later half of Pacific NW punk pioneers, The Wipers', sprawling "Youth of America" or cockney Oi! mainstays Cock Sparrer's contemplative "Out on an Island" - punks indulging in drawn out, bass-heavy song structures and even the occasional synth or two.
Every style invites reactions, shifts, evolutions, deaths and rebirths. Just like everything else, punk just did it faster.