Predating by a few years the Bay Area punk movement were the local situationists. The Situationist International had been established in 1957 by Danish artist Asger Jorn and French philosopher Guy Debord gathering various European avantgarde groups. The theoretical foundations (if any) were inspired by Marxism and anarchism, and the search for alternative "situations" was reminescent of Dada and Surrealism. The situationists were involved in the student protests that erupted in Paris in May 1968. The situationist philosophy percolated into Berkeley's intellectual milieu via the Council for the Eruption of the Marvelous, which existed for seven months (from January to July) in 1970 and had seven members, notably Isaac Cronin. They debuted with a satirical "intervention" titled 'Billy Graham Presents "Dead in Berkeley - a Benefit Dance for Jesus Christ and All Other Political Prisoners"'. At the end of the year Isaac Cronin and the anarchists Ken Knabb and Ron Rothbart formed Contradiction, which lasted until September 1972.

In the Bay Area, punk-rock was almost a direct consequence of conceptual art. Punk clubs shared music and art performances. Richard Kelly, a student of John Cage, and other New York exiles opened the Club Foot in 1980. Punk artists Bruce Gluck, Randy Hussong, Sabina Ott and Fredrica Drotos opened Jet Wave in 1979. Ness Aquino's Mabuhay Gardens, a Filipino restaurant and nightclub, started playing punk bands in 1976. Aquino partnered with promoter Jerry Paulsen, who in 1977 published Psyclone Magazine, a punk magazine that predated Los Angeles' Slash by a few months. Conceptual artist Bruce Conner became (already in his 40s) a key figure of this new punk scene.

Rock music in the Bay Area went through another major revolution when independent record labels started releasing albums from fringe bands. In a way, independent record labels were the musical counterpart to the alternative art spaces of the visual arts. The Residents jumpstarted the "New Wave" of rock music with their bizarre shows and demented studio-processed litanies, and in relative isolation, after the demise of the hippie movement and of acid-rock. The quintessential independent musicians of the era, they established their own music label, Ralph, and self-produced albums such as "Meet the Residents" (1974) and "Not Available" (recorded in 1974), which are basically the audio version of Pop Art, Funk and Abstract Expressionism. Chrome bridged acid-rock and punk-rock on albums such as "Alien Soundtracks" (1977), released on their own label Siren.

Punk-rock (fast, loud, short songs) came to San Francisco in 1977 via ephemeral bands such as the Avengers, the Nuns, and the Sleepers. Punk-rock was headquartered at the Filipino restaurant Mabuhay Gardens in the red-light district.

Search & Destroy was a San Francisco punk fanzine published in 1977-1979 by rock keyboardist V. Vale (born Vale Hamanaka in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans), originally funded by Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Important vehicles to divulge the punk scene were two other magazines: Puncture, started in 1982 by Katherine Spielmann and Patty Stirling, and Maximum Rocknroll, started in 1982 in Berkeley by Tim Yohannan.

At the same time, the Bay Area had new pop stars, like the Doobie Brothers (from San Jose). The British band Fleetwood Mac moved to San Francisco in 1974 and added guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and vocalist Stevie Nicks, the couple that led them to stardom. Some of the most influential artists of the 1960s settled in the Bay Area: British singer-songwriter Van Morrison moved to Marin County (north of san Francisco) in 1971, and Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young purchased a ranch near La Honda (south of San Francisco).

Meanwhile, the gay community of the Castro district patronized disco-music. Sylvester James, known simply as Sylvester, a Black member of the Cockettes in 1970, became a star in 1978 with the song "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)", thanks mostly to the electronic music of Patrick Cowley, and turned the Berkeley-based record label Fantasy (Creedence Clearwater Revival's label) into the main avenue for disco-music. The traditional gay meeting places, like the Stud, were joined by discotheques like the City, Toad Hall, one of the first bars to turn to tapes of continuous dance music instead of the live band, the I-Beam (in the Haight-Ashbury), opened in 1977 by Sanford Kellman, a former astronomer, and especially the Trocadero Transfer, which opened in 1977 that in 1978 hired the city's most legendary dj, Bobby Viteritti, who would play the soundtrack to all-night dance parties.