Garage rock
[27] 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.
Numerous young people were inspired by musicians such as Chuck Berry,[49] Little Richard,[50] Bo Diddley,[50] Jerry Lee Lewis,[49] Buddy Holly,[51] and Eddie Cochran,[52] whose recordings of relatively unsophisticated and hard-driving songs from a few years earlier[49] proclaimed personal independence and freedom from parental controls and conservative norms.
[44] 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.
[44] 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 ... [T]he indigenous popular music which functioned in this way ... was the proto-punk more commonly identified as garage rock".
[81] 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.
[108] The song's organ riffs and theme of teenage heartbreak have been mentioned as a landmark recording of the garage rock era and recognized for influencing the works of acts as diverse as the B-52's, the Cramps, and Bruce Springsteen.
[127] In 1964 and 1965, the impact of the Beatles and the British Invasion shifted the musical landscape, presenting not only a challenge, but also a new impetus, as previously established acts in the Pacific Northwest adapted to the new climate, often reaching greater levels of commercial and artistic success, while scores of new bands formed.
[139] Also from Boston, the Rockin' Ramrods released the distortion-driven "She Lied" in 1964, which Rob Fitzpatrick called "a truly spectacular piece of proto-punk, the sort of perfect blend of melody and aggression that the Ramones would go on to transform the planet with a dozen or more years later".
[141] Garage rock flourished up and down the Atlantic coast, with acts such as the Vagrants, from Long Island,[142] and Richard and the Young Lions from Newark, New Jersey,[143] and the Blues Magoos from the Bronx,[144] who got their start in New York's Greenwich Village scene and had a hit in 1966 with "(We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet", which appeared on their debut album, Psychedelic Lollipop, along with a lengthy rendition of the Nashville Teens' "Tobacco Road".
[146] In Riot on Sunset Strip, several bands make appearances at the Pandora's Box, including the Standells who are seen during the opening credits performing the theme song, as well as San Jose's the Chocolate Watchband.
[153] The Electric Prunes were one of the more successful garage bands to incorporate psychedelic influences into their sound,[154] such as in the hit "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)", whose opening featured a buzzing fuzz-toned guitar, and which appeared on their self titled debut LP.
[179][180] The Gentlemen from Dallas cut the fuzz-driven "It's a Cry'n Shame", which in Mike Markesich's Teenbeat Mayhem is ranked as one of the top two garage rock songs of all time,[181] second only to "You're Gonna Miss Me", by the 13th Floor Elevators.
[212] Nationally popular blues- and R&B- influenced beat groups included the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds from London, the Animals from Newcastle, and Them, from Belfast, Northern Ireland, featuring Van Morrison.
[227] The Equals, a racially integrated band from North London whose membership included guitarist Eddy Grant, later a popular solo artist, specialized in an upbeat style of rock—their 1966 recording "Baby Come Back" was a hit in Europe before becoming a British number one in 1968.
[230][231] From Amsterdam, the Outsiders, who Richie Unterberger singled out as one of the most important 1960s rock acts from a non-English speaking country, featured Wally Tax on lead vocals and specialized in an eclectic R&B and folk-influenced style.
[289] Increasingly throughout 1966, partly due to the growing influence of drugs such as marijuana and LSD,[290] numerous bands began to expand their sound, sometimes employing eastern scales and various sonic effects to achieve exotic and hypnotic soundscapes in their music.
[296][297] By the mid-1960s, numerous garage bands began to employ tone-altering devices such as fuzzboxes on guitars often for the purpose of enhancing the music's sonic palate, adding an aggressive edge with loudly amplified instruments to create a barrage of "clanging" sounds, in many cases expressing anger, defiance, and sexual frustration.
[299] The genre came into its peak of popularity at a time when a collective sense of discontent and alienation crept into the psyche of the youth in the United States and elsewhere—even in the largely conservative suburban communities which produced so many garage bands.
[302] Detectable in much of the music from this era is a disparate array of raw sounds and emotions, coinciding with surrounding events, such as the assassinations of major political figures and the ongoing escalation of troops sent to Vietnam,[303] yet certain commentators have also noted an apparent bygone innocence as part of the style's appeal to later generations.
[304] In 1965, the influence of artists such as Bob Dylan, who moved beyond political protest by experimenting with abstract and surreal lyrical imagery[305] and switched to electric guitar, became increasingly pervasive across the musical landscape, affecting a number of genres, including garage rock.
[306] The members of garage bands, like so many musicians of the 1960s, were part of a generation that was largely born into the paradigm and customs of an older time, but grew up confronting a new set of issues facing a more advanced and technological age.
[308] With the advent of television, nuclear weapons, civil rights, the Cold War, and space exploration, the new generation was more global in its mindset and began to conceive of a higher order of human relations, attempting to reach for a set of transcendent ideals, often expressed through rock music.
[53] While opening boundaries and testing the frontiers of what the new world had to offer, 1960s youth ultimately had to accept the limitations of the new reality, yet often did so while experiencing the ecstasy of a moment when the realm of the infinite seemed possible and within reach.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or the instrumental virtuosity of acts such as Jimi Hendrix or Cream, nonetheless managed to infuse esoteric elements into basic primitive rock.
[315] Certain acts conveyed a world view markedly removed from the implicit innocence of much psychedelia and suburban garage, often infusing their work with subversive political or philosophical messages,[316] dabbling in experimental musical forms and concepts considered at the time to be decidedly out of the mainstream.
[347] The Alice Cooper band (previously the Spiders) relocated to Detroit, where they began to gain success with a new "shock rock" image, and recorded 1971's Love It to Death, which featured their breakout hit "I'm Eighteen".
[357][358] The Electric Eels were notorious for mayhem at their shows and had a markedly nihilistic approach suggestive of later acts[357] and recorded a set of demos in 1975, from which the single "Agitated" b/w "Cyclotron" was eventually released in 1978, several years after the group's demise.
[379] In the early 1980s, revival scenes linked to the underground music movements of the period sprang up in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and elsewhere, with acts such as the Chesterfield Kings, the Fuzztones, the Pandoras, and Lyres earnestly attempting to replicate the sound and look of the 1960s garage bands.
[398] Elsewhere, acts such as Billy Childish and the Buff Medways from Chatham, England,[399] the (International) Noise Conspiracy from Umeå, Sweden,[400] and Jay Reatard and the Oblivians from Memphis, enjoyed moderate underground success and appeal.
[414] In 1998, Rhino released a four-CD box set version of Nuggets, containing the original album and three additional discs of material, that included extensive liner notes by some of garage rock's most influential writers.
