garage revival

Garage rock (sometimes called garage punk or 60s punk) is a raw and energetic style of rock and roll that flourished in the mid-1960s, most notably in the United States and Canada, and has experienced a series of subsequent revivals. The style is characterized by basic chord structures played on electric guitars and other instruments, sometimes distorted through a fuzzbox, as well as often unsophisticated and occasionally aggressive lyrics and delivery. Its name derives from the perception that groups were often made up of young amateurs who rehearsed in the family garage, although many were professional.

In the US and Canada, surf rock—and later the Beatles and other beat groups of the British Invasion—motivated thousands of young people to form bands between 1963 and 1968. Hundreds of acts produced regional hits, and some had national hits, usually played on AM radio stations. With the advent of psychedelia, numerous garage bands incorporated exotic elements into the genre's primitive stylistic framework. After 1968, as more sophisticated forms of rock music came to dominate the marketplace, garage rock records largely disappeared from national and regional charts, and the movement faded. Other countries in the 1960s experienced similar grass-roots rock movements that have sometimes been characterized as variants of garage rock.

During the 1960s, garage rock was not recognized as a distinct genre and had no specific name, but critical hindsight in the early 1970s—and especially the 1972 compilation album '' Nuggets''—did much to define and memorialize the style. Between 1971 and 1973, certain American rock critics began to retroactively identify the music as a genre and for several years used the term " punk rock" to describe it, making it the first form of music to bear the description, predating the more familiar use of the term appropriated by the later punk rock movement that it influenced. The term "garage rock" gained favor amongst commentators and devotees during the 1980s. The style has also been referred to as "proto-punk" or in certain instances "frat rock".

In the early to mid-1980s, several revival scenes emerged featuring acts that consciously attempted to replicate the look and sound of 1960s garage bands. Later in the decade, a louder, more contemporary garage subgenre developed that combined garage rock with modern punk rock and other influences, sometimes using the garage punk label originally and otherwise associated with 1960s garage bands. In the 2000s, a wave of garage-influenced acts associated with the post-punk revival emerged, and some achieved commercial success. Garage rock continues to appeal to musicians and audiences who prefer a "back to basics" or "do-it-yourself" musical approach.

Social milieu and stylistic features

The term "garage rock", often used in reference to 1960s acts, stems from the perception that many performers were young amateurs who rehearsed in the family garage. While numerous bands were made up of middle-class teenagers from the suburbs, others were from rural or urban areas or were composed of professional musicians in their twenties.

Referring to the 1960s, Mike Markesich commented "teenage rock & roll groups (i.e. combos) proliferated Everywheresville USA". Though it is impossible to determine how many garage bands were active in the era, their numbers were extensive in what Markesich has characterized as a "cyclonic whirlwind of musical activity like none other". According to Mark Nobles, it is estimated that between 1964 and 1968 over 180,000 bands formed in the United States, and several thousand US garage acts made records during the era.

Garage bands performed in a variety of venues. Local and regional groups typically played at parties, school dances, and teen clubs. For acts of legal age (and in some cases younger), bars, nightclubs, and college fraternity socials also provided regular engagements. Occasionally, groups had the opportunity to open at shows for famous touring acts. Some garage rock bands went on tour, particularly those better-known, but even more obscure groups sometimes received bookings or airplay beyond their immediate locales. Groups often competed in " battles of the bands", which gave musicians an opportunity to gain exposure and a chance to win a prize, such as free equipment or recording time in a local studio. Contests were held, locally, regionally and nationally, and three of the most prestigious national events were held annually by the Tea Council of the US, the Music Circus, and the United States Junior Chamber.

Performances often sounded amateurish, naïve, or intentionally raw, with typical themes revolving around the traumas of high school life and songs about "lying girls" being particularly common. The lyrics and delivery were frequently more aggressive than that of the more established acts of the time, often with nasal, growled, or shouted vocals, sometimes punctuated by shrieks or screams at climactic moments of release. Instrumentation was characterized by basic chord structures played on electric guitars or keyboards often distorted through a fuzzbox, teamed with bass and drums. Guitarists sometimes played using aggressive-sounding bar chords or power chords. Portable organs such as the Farfisa were used frequently and harmonicas and hand-held percussion such as tambourines were not uncommon. Occasionally, the tempo was sped up in passages sometimes referred to as "raveups".

Garage rock acts were diverse in both musical ability and in style, ranging from crude and amateurish to near-studio level musicianship. There were also regional variations in flourishing scenes, such as in California and Texas. The north-western states of Idaho, Washington and Oregon had a distinctly recognizable regional sound with bands such as the Sonics and Paul Revere & the Raiders.

Recognition and classification

In the 1960s, garage rock had no name and was not thought of as a genre distinct from other rock and roll of the era. Rock critic and future Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye remarked that the period "dashed by so fast that nobody knew much of what to make of it while it was around". In the early 1970s Kaye and other US rock critics, such as Dave Marsh, Lester Bangs, and Greg Shaw, began to retroactively draw attention to the music, speaking nostalgically of mid-1960s garage bands (and subsequent artists then perceived to be their stylistic inheritors) for the first time as a genre.

"Garage rock" was not the initial name applied to the style. In the early 1970s such critics used the term " punk rock" to characterize it, making it the first musical form to bear the description. While the coinage of the term "punk" in relation to rock music is unknown, it was sometimes used then to describe primitive or rudimentary rock musicianship, but more specifically 1960s garage as a style. In the May 1971 issue of '' Creem'', Dave Marsh described a performance by ? and the Mysterians as an "exposition of punk rock". Conjuring up the mid-1960s, Lester Bangs in June 1971 wrote: "then punk bands started cropping up who were writing their own songs but taking the Yardbirds' sound and reducing it to this kind of goony fuzztone clatter ... oh, it was beautiful, it was pure folklore, Old America, and sometimes I think those were the best days ever".

Much of the revival of interest in 1960s garage rock can be traced to the release of the 1972 album '' Nuggets'' compiled by Lenny Kaye. In the liner notes, Kaye used "punk rock" as a collective term for 1960s garage bands and also "garage-punk" to describe a song recorded in 1966 by the Shadows of Knight. In the January 1973 '' Rolling Stone'' review of ''Nuggets'', Greg Shaw commented: "Punk rock is a fascinating genre ... Punk rock at its best is the closest we came in the 1960s to the original rockabilly spirit of rock & roll." In addition to ''Rolling Stone'' and ''Creem'', writings about the genre appeared in various independent "fanzine" publications during the period. In May 1973, Billy Altman launched the short-lived ''punk magazine'', which pre-dated the more familiar 1975 publication of the same name, but, unlike the later magazine, was largely devoted to discussion of 1960s garage and psychedelic acts. Greg Shaw's seasonal publication, '' Who Put the Bomp!'', was influential amongst enthusiasts and collectors of the genre in the early 1970s.

Though the phrase "punk rock" was the favored generic term in the early 1970s, "garage band" was also mentioned in reference to groups. In ''Rolling Stone'' in March 1971 John Mendelsohn made an oblique reference to "every last punk teenage garage band having its Own Original Approach". The term "punk rock" was later appropriated by the more commonly-known punk rock movement that emerged in the mid-1970s and is now most commonly applied to groups associated with that movement or who followed in its wake. For the 1960s style, the term "garage rock" came into favor in the 1980s. According to Mike Markesich: "Initially launched into the underground vernacular at the start of the '80s, the garage tag ... slowly sifted its way amid like-minded fans to finally be recognized as a worthy descriptive replacement". The term "garage punk" has also persisted, and style has been referred to as 60s punk" and "proto-punk". "Frat rock" has been used to refer to the R&B- and surf rock- derived garage sounds of certain acts, such as the Kingsmen and others.

1958–1964: Origins

Regional rock & roll, instrumental, and surf

In the late 1950s, the initial impact of rock and roll on mainstream American culture waned as major record companies took a controlling influence and sought to market more conventionally acceptable recordings. Electric musical instruments (particularly guitars) and amplification were becoming more affordable, allowing young musicians to form small groups to perform in front of local audiences of their peers; and in some areas there was a breakdown, especially among radio audiences, of traditional black and white markets, with more white teenagers listening to and purchasing R&B records.

Numerous young people were inspired by musicians such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, and Eddie Cochran, whose recordings of relatively unsophisticated and hard-driving songs from a few years earlier proclaimed personal independence and freedom from parental controls and conservative norms. Ritchie Valens' 1958 hit " La Bamba" helped jump-start the Chicano rock scene in Southern California and provided a three-chord template for the songs of numerous 1960s garage bands. By the end of the 1950s regional scenes were abundant around the country and helped set the stage for garage rock the 1960s.

Guitarist Link Wray has been cited as an early influence on garage rock and is known for his innovative use of guitar techniques and effects such as power chords and distortion. He is best known for his 1958 instrumental "Rumble", which featured the sound of distorted, "clanging" guitar chords, which anticipated much of what was to come. The combined influences of early-1960s instrumental rock and surf rock also played significant roles in shaping the sound garage rock.

According to Lester Bangs, "the origins of garage rock as a genre can be traced to California and the Pacific Northwest in the early Sixties". The Pacific Northwest, which encompasses Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, played a critical role in the inception of garage rock, hosting the first scene to produce a sizable number of acts, and pre-dated the British Invasion by several years. The signature garage sound that eventually emerged in the Pacific Northwest is sometimes referred to as "the Northwest Sound" and had its origins in the late 1950s, when a handful of R&B and rock & roll acts sprang up in various cities and towns in an area stretching from Puget Sound to Seattle and Tacoma, and beyond.

There and elsewhere, groups of teenagers were inspired directly by touring R&B performers such as Johnny Otis and Richard Berry, and began to play cover versions of R&B songs. During the late 1950s and early 1960s other instrumental groups playing in the region, such as the Ventures, formed in 1958 in Tacoma, Washington, who came to specialize in a surf rock sound, and the Frantics from Seattle. The Blue Notes from Tacoma, Washington, fronted by "Rockin' Robin" Roberts, were one of the city's first teenage rock & roll bands. The Wailers (often referred to as the Fabulous Wailers) had national chart hit in 1959, the instrumental "Tall Cool One". After the demise of the Blue Notes, "Rockin' Robin" did a brief stint with the Wailers, and with him on vocals in 1962, they recorded a version of Richard Berry's 1957 song " Louie Louie"—their arrangement became the much-replicated blueprint for practically every band in the region, including Portland's the Kingsmen who went on to achieve a major hit with it the following year.

Other regional scenes of teenage bands playing R&B-oriented rock were well-established in the early 1960s, several years before the British Invasion, in places such as Texas and the Midwest. At the same time, in southern California surf bands formed, playing raucous guitar- and saxophone-driven instrumentals. Writer Neil Campbell commented: "There were literally thousands of rough-and-ready groups performing in local bars and dance halls throughout the US ''prior'' to the arrival of the Beatles ... e indigenous popular music which functioned in this way ... was the proto-punk more commonly identified as ''garage rock''".

Frat rock and initial commercial success

As a result of cross-pollination between surf rock, hot rod music, and other influences, a new style rock sometimes referred to as ''frat rock'' emerged, which has been mentioned as an early subgenre of garage rock. The Kingsmen's 1963 off-the-cuff version of "Louie Louie" became the de facto "big bang" for three-chord rock, starting as a regional hit in Seattle, then rising to No. 1 on the national charts and eventually becoming a major success overseas. The group unwittingly became the target of an FBI investigation in response to complaints about the song's alleged use of profanity in its nearly indecipherable lyrics.

Though often associated with Pacific Northwest acts such as the Kingsmen, frat rock also thrived elsewhere. In 1963 singles by several regional bands from other parts of the United States began appearing on the national charts, including " Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen from Minneapolis, which essentially fused together parts from two songs previously recorded by the Rivingtons, " The Bird is the Word" and " Papa Oom Mow Mow". " California Sun" by the Rivieras, from South Bend, Indiana followed, becoming a hit in early 1964. Frat rock persisted into the mid-1960s with acts such as the Swingin' Medallions, who had a top twenty hit with " Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)" in 1966.

1964–1968: Peak years

Impact of The Beatles and the British Invasion

During the mid-1960s garage rock entered its most active period, prompted by the influence of The Beatles and the British Invasion. On February 9, 1964, during their first visit to the United States, the Beatles made an historic appearance on '' The Ed Sullivan Show'' watched by a record-breaking viewing audience of a nation mourning the recent death of President John F. Kennedy. For many, particularly the young, the Beatles' visit re-ignited the sense of excitement and possibility that had momentarily faded in the wake of the assassination. Much of this new excitement was expressed in rock music, often to the chagrin of parents and elders.

In the wake of the Beatles' first visit, a subsequent string of successful British beat groups and acts achieved success in America between 1964 and 1966, often referred to in the US as "the British Invasion". Such acts had a profound impact, leading many (often surf or hot rod groups) to respond by altering their style, and countless new bands to form, as teenagers around the country picked up guitars and started bands by the thousands. In many cases, garage bands were particularly influenced by the increasingly bold sound of a second wave of British groups with a harder, blues-based attack, such as The Kinks, The Who, The Animals, The Yardbirds, Small Faces, Pretty Things, Them, and The Rolling Stones often resulting in a raw and primitive sound. Numerous acts sometimes characterized as garage rock formed in countries outside North America, such as England's the Troggs. Their 1966 worldwide hit "Wild Thing" became a staple in countless American garage bands' repertoires. By 1965, the influence of the British Invasion prompted folk musicians such as Bob Dylan and members of the Byrds to adopt the use of electric guitars and amplifiers, resulting in what became termed folk rock. The resulting success of Dylan, the Byrds, and other folk rock acts influenced the sound and approach of numerous garage bands.

Height of success and airplay

In the wake of the British Invasion garage rock experienced a boom in popularity. With thousands of garage bands active in the US and Canada, hundreds produced regional hits during the period, often receiving airplay on local AM radio stations. Several acts gained wider exposure just long enough to have one or occasionally more national hits in an era rife with "One-Hit Wonders". In 1965 the Beau Brummels broke into the national charts with "Laugh, Laugh", followed by " Just a Little". According to Richie Unterberger, they were perhaps the first American group to pose a successful response to the British Invasion. That year, Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs' " Wooly Bully" went to No. 2, and they followed it up a year later with another No. 2 hit, "Little Red Riding Hood". Also in 1965, the Castaways almost reached ''Billboard'' top ten with " Liar, Liar", which was later included on the 1972 ''Nuggets'' compilation. Featuring a lead vocal by Rick Derringer, " Hang On Sloopy" became a No. 1 hit for Indiana's the McCoys, topping the ''Billboard'' charts in October 1965. They were immediately signed to Bang Records and followed up with another hit in 1966, a cover of " Fever", originally recorded by Little Willie John.

It is generally agreed that the garage rock boom peaked around 1966. That April, the Outsiders from Cleveland hit No. 5 with " Time Won't Let Me", which was later covered by acts such as Iggy Pop. In July, the Standells from Los Angeles almost made it into the US top ten with " Dirty Water", a song now often associated with Boston. "Psychotic Reaction" by the Count Five went to No. 5 on ''Billboard''s Hot 100 and was later memorialized by Lester Bangs in his 1971 piece "Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung".

"96 Tears" (1966) by Question Mark and the Mysterians, from Saginaw, Michigan, became a No. 1 hit in the US. The song's organ riffs and theme of teenage heartbreak have been mentioned as a landmark recording of the garage rock era and r