Garage rock

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Garage rock (performed by garage bands, not to be confused with UK Garage, a genre of dance music) was a simple, raw form of rock and roll that emerged in the mid-1960s, largely in the United States. The term "garage rock" comes from the perception that many such performers were young and amateurish, and often rehearsed in a family garage (this stereotype also evokes a suburban, middle-class setting). Inspired by British Invasion bands like The Beatles, The Kinks, The Who and The Rolling Stones, these groups played a homespun variation on British Invasion rock. "Garage rock" was often musically crude, but nevertheless conveyed great passion and energy. Most of the bands used simple chord progressions, pounding drums, and short, repetitive lyrics.

Hundreds of garage bands popped up around America in the mid-60s, and a handful of them produced national hit records, including "Psychotic Reaction" by The Count 5, "Pushin' Too Hard" by The Seeds, "Gloria" by the Shadows of Knight, , "96 Tears" by Question Mark and the Mysterians, "Talk Talk" by The Music Machine, Louie, Louie by The Kingsmen, and "Dirty Water" by The Standells. The vast majority of such bands remained obscure and folded after a year or two.

The Nuggets anthology that was released in the early 1970s—assembled by guitarist and rock journalist Lenny Kaye—brought many of these mid-sixties bands to the attention of collectors for the first time. As rock music journalistists and collectors began to reconsider the garage bands of the sixties, they were labelled "punk rock" (the term was coined by the critic Dave Marsh, and it caught on among rock journalists). Since the "punk rock" of the later 1970s became widely known, these earlier groups are rarely called by that name any longer, though their work was clearly an inspiration for many of those later "punks."

Contents

Revivals

The first garage rock revival occurred in the mid-1970s, when bands such as The Dictators and The Unclaimed emulated the look and sound of sixties garage rock. Several of the "punk" bands that emerged in the later seventies, notably The Ramones, were heavily influenced by the sixties garage acts.

In the 1980s, another garage rock revival saw a number of bands earnestly trying to replicate the sound, style, and look of the '60s garage bands; this trend coincided with a similar surf rock revival, and both styles fed in into the alternative rock movement and future grunge music explosion, which was partially inspired by garage rock from Seattle like The Sonics and The Wailers.

This movement also evolved into an even more primitive form of garage rock that became known as garage punk by the late 1980s, thanks to bands such as Thee Mighty Caesars, The Gories, The Mummies, and The Devil Dogs. Bands playing garage punk differed from the garage rock revival bands in that they were less cartoonish caricatures of '60s garage bands and their overall sound was even more loud, obnoxious, and raw, often infusing elements of proto punk and 1970s punk rock (hence the "garage punk" term). Garage rock and garage punk coexisted throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s with many independent record labels releasing thousands of records by bands playing various styles of primitive rock and roll all around the world. Some of the more prolific of these independent record labels included Estrus, Hangman, Rip Off, In The Red, Telstar, Crypt, Dionysus, Get Hip, Bomp! and Sympathy for the Record Industry. Also in the early 2000s, a few bands playing garage rock actually gained mainstream appeal and commercial airplay, something that had eluded garage rock bands of the past. These included The Strokes, The White Stripes, and The Hives, all of which were highly influenced by Billy Childish who has recorded over 100 independent LP's in the true punk ethic. Other lesser-knowns such as The Detroit Cobras, The 5.6.7.8's, The Dirtbombs, The New Bomb Turks, the Oblivians, Teengenerate, The Makers, Guitar Wolf, Lost Sounds, and others enjoyed moderate underground success and appeal.

In the late '90s, Steven van Zandt ("Little Steven") became a torchbearer, spokesperson, and proponent for garage rock, promoting concerts and festivals in New York City and also, in 2002, starting a syndicated radio program called Little Steven's Underground Garage and also launching an Underground Garage channel on the Sirius Satellite Radio network.

See also

Original 1960s and '70s garage bands

1980s, '90s, and 2000s garage revival bands

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