garage rock

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 commonly in the United States and Canada, and has experienced a series of subsequent revivals. The style is frequently characterized by basic chord structures played on electric guitars and other instruments, often distorted through a fuzzbox, as well as sometimes unsophisticated or 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 grass-roots acts produced regional hits, some of which gained national popularity, 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.¶

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. Though it is impossible to determine how many garage bands were active in the era, according to various accounts their numbers were extensive and widespread. 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 allowed musicians 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.¶

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.¶

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 of 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 of 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.¶

Impact of the Beatles and the British Invasion

During the mid-1960s, garage rock ent…¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Garage rock”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

garage rock is subgenre of rock and roll music, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 19 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶