labeled as part of American punk thing

Said DeVille, “We were doing Little Walter stuff, we were doing Elmore James stuff. The only stuff we were doing that people had heard was ‘ Please, Please, Please ‘ by James Brown . We used to do an Apollo thing. We played CBGBs for three years, and all of the sudden word got out, and then came this word Punk, which where I come from is a bad word. A punk is somebody who picks a fight with you and then never shows up.” In 2007, Willy DeVille said about the bands that played CBGBs, “We were all labeled as part of this American punk thing but I really didn’t see any of us having much in common.” “Every f—-n’ art student that plays out of tune gets a record deal,” he said dismissively in 1981, when asked about the punk scene.