Armed with a catalog of stripped-down two-chord songs inspired by the likes of the Stooges, the Who, Blue Cheer and the Pretty Things, New Brunswick, N.J.’s Figures of Light – a frenzied four-piece that embodied punk rock before the phrase existed – played its inaugural concert in the summer of 1970. Vocalist Wheeler Winston Dixon describes the ensuing chaos in the liner notes of the band’s debut album on Norton Records: “Our first concert was a wild one, in which we destroyed 15 television sets on the stage in Scott Hall at Rutgers University with pick axes and sledge hammers, along with some mannequins and some large mirrors. We started the performance by driving a motorcycle down the hallway on the stage and smashed a record player playing Gershwin’s ‘An American in Paris.’ ”

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