Garage punk (fusion genre)

Last updated

Garage punk is a rock music fusion genre combining the influences of garage rock, punk rock, and other forms, that took shape in the indie rock underground between the late 1980s and early 1990s. [2] Bands drew heavily from 1960s garage rock, stripped-down 1970s punk rock, [1] and Detroit proto-punk, [2] and often incorporated numerous other styles into their approach, such as power pop, 1960s girl groups, hardcore punk, blues and early R&B, and surf rock. [3] [ verification needed ]

Contents

The term "garage punk" often also refers to the original 1960s garage rock movement rather than the 1980s-90s fusion style. The 1980s-90s style itself is sometimes referred to interchangeably as "garage rock" or "garage revival". [3] The term "garage punk" dates back as early as 1972 in reference to the original 1960s garage rock style, [4] although "punk" as it is known today was not solidified as its own distinct genre until 1976. Therefore, despite earlier references to 1960s garage rock as “garage punk”, the usage of the term “punk” in regard to the 1980s-90s “garage punk” fusion genre refers to the fusion of 1960s garage rock with the late 1970s-1980s genre currently and more commonly referred to as “punk rock”. [5] After the 1980s, groups who were labelled as "garage punk" stood in contrast to the nascent retro garage revival scene, moving past a strictly mid-1960s influence. [1] Associated bands from that period contributed to the development of stoner rock, a more psychedelic variation of the genre. [2]

Etymology and usage

The term "punk rock" was first used to describe the music of American garage bands of the mid 1960s, and was not solidified as a genre until 1976. [5] When referring to 1960s groups, the term "garage punk" is usually deployed interchangeably with "garage rock". [6] The earliest known use of the term "garage punk" appeared in Lenny Kaye's track-by-track liner notes for the 1972 psychedelic music compilation Nuggets [4] to describe a song by the 1960s garage rock band, the Shadows of Knight, as "classic garage punk". [7] The Guardian 's Michael Hann writes: "Look at the tracklisting for Lenny Kaye's original Nuggets album, the record that codified garage punk and you'll find an awful lot of music that would not now fit comfortably into the genre [psychedelic music]." [8] MTV 's Beverly Bryan says that "garage punk" may be used "more likely" to refer to "garage rock" or "garage revival". [3]

Development and characteristics

1960s: Original garage bands

The Sonics are sometimes considered to be the first garage punk band. Sonics.JPG
The Sonics are sometimes considered to be the first garage punk band.

Simon Reynolds traces garage punk to American garage rock bands in the 1960s. [10] He explains that mid-1960s garage punk was largely the domain of untrained teenagers who used sonic effects, such as fuzz tones, and relied heavily on riffs. [11] Hann locates the "golden years" of garage punk to 1965–67. [8] The Sonics are credited as a pioneering act in the genre. [9] [12] Critic Tim Sommer wrote: "The Sonics created the template for American garage punk, not to mention crafting the prototype for every punk rock band that thought that three chords and a horny shriek was enough to move a nation." [13]

1980s–2000s: Fusion with 1970s punk

In the 1980s, there began a revived interest in the music of the 1960s, starting with garage punk. [14] Labels like Crypt and Norton began reissuing the work of "lost mid-century weirdos", which led a new generation of punk musicians to rediscover older rock artists like Little Richard and the Sonics. [3] In contrast to the retro garage revival scene, bands who continued to draw heavily from stripped-down 1970s punk, rather than just mid-1960s styles, would be widely categorized as "garage punk". [1] [nb 1] According to the AllMusic guide, "Before the punk-pop wing of America's '90s punk revival hit the mainstream, a different breed of revivalist punk had been taking shape in the indie-rock underground. In general, garage punk wasn't nearly as melodic as punk-pop; instead, garage punk drew its inspiration chiefly from the Detroit protopunk of The Stooges and The MC5. [2]

Allan Rutter writes that the music is often fast-paced and characterized by dirty, choppy guitars and lyrics typically expressing rebelliousness and sometimes "bad taste", and may be performed by "low-fi" acts who are on independent record labels, or who are unsigned. [15] Bands are generally apolitical and tend distance themselves from hardcore punk and generally avoid strict adherence to the types of social codes and ideologies associated with the punk subculture. [16] However, there are exceptions like The (International) Noise Conspiracy, who played a highly politicised variation of garage punk.

AllMusic adds: "Some of the first garage punk bands who appeared in the late '80s and early '90s (Mudhoney, The Supersuckers) signed with the Sub Pop label, whose early grunge bands shared some of the same influences and aesthetics (in fact, Mudhoney became one of the founders of grunge)." [2] Bands like New Bomb Turks, The Oblivians, The Gories, Subsonics, [17] The Mummies, The Dirtbombs, and The Humpers helped maintain a cult audience for the style through the 1990s and 2000s. [2] Associated bands from that period contributed to the development of stoner rock, a more psychedelic variation of the genre. [2]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ King Khan and the Shrines' Aris Kahn believes that the hybrid is not a revival, but a continuation of rock and roll's traditions, and that garage punk exists even in the 1960s. [3]

Related Research Articles

Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the blues and rhythm and blues genres of African-American music and from country music. Rock music also drew strongly from a number of other genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical, and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 4
4 time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political.

Garage rock 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.

<i>Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968</i> 1972 compilation album by various artists

Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era is a compilation album of American psychedelic and garage rock singles that were released during the mid-to-late 1960s. It was created by Lenny Kaye, who was a writer and clerk at the Village Oldies record shop in New York. He would later become the lead guitarist for the Patti Smith Group. Kaye produced Nuggets under the supervision of Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman. Kaye conceived the project as a series of roughly eight LP installments focusing on different US regions, but Elektra convinced him that one double album would be more commercially viable. It was released on LP by Elektra in 1972 with liner notes by Kaye that contained one of the first uses of the term "punk rock". It was reissued with a new cover design by Sire Records in 1976. In the 1980s, Rhino Records issued Nuggets in a series of fifteen installments, and in 1998 as a 4-cd box set.

Lenny Kaye American guitarist, composer, and writer (born 1946)

Lenny Kaye is an American guitarist, composer, and writer who is best known as a member of the Patti Smith Group.

Acid rock is a loosely defined type of rock music that evolved out of the mid-1960s garage punk movement and helped launch the psychedelic subculture. Named after lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), the style is generally defined by heavy, distorted guitars, lyrics with drug references, and long improvised jams. Much of the style overlaps with 1960s garage punk, proto-metal, and early heavy, blues-based hard rock.

Proto-punk is the rock music played mostly by garage bands from the 1960s to mid-1970s that foreshadowed the punk rock movement. The phrase is a retrospective label; the musicians involved were generally not originally associated with each other and came from a variety of backgrounds and styles; together, they anticipated many of punk's musical and thematic attributes.

American rock

American rock has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and country music, and also drew on folk music, jazz, blues, and classical music. American rock music was further influenced by the British Invasion of the American pop charts from 1964 and resulted in the development of psychedelic rock.

British rock music Rock music from the United Kingdom

British rock describes a wide variety of forms of music made in the United Kingdom. Since around 1964, with the "British Invasion" of the United States spearheaded by the Beatles, British rock music has had a considerable impact on the development of American music and rock music across the world.

Post-punk revival is a genre of indie rock that emerged in the early 2000s as musicians started to play a stripped down and back-to-basics version of guitar rock emerged into the mainstream. Inspired by the original sounds and aesthetics of garage rock, new wave and post-punk. The music ranged from the atonal tracks, to melodic pop songs and popularised distorted guitar sounds.

Neo-psychedelia is a diverse genre of psychedelic music and a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the 1970s. Its practitioners drew from the unusual sounds of 1960s psychedelia, either updating or copying the approaches from that era. It initially developed as an outgrowth of the British post-punk scene, where its alternative name acid punk was originated. After post-punk, neo-psychedelia flourished into a more widespread and international movement of artists who applied the spirit of psychedelic rock to new sounds and techniques.

Psychedelic music is a wide range of popular music styles and genres influenced by 1960s psychedelia, a subculture of people who used psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline, and cannabis to experience synesthesia and altered states of consciousness. Psychedelic music may also aim to enhance the experience of using these drugs and has been found to have a significant influence on psychedelic therapy.

Nuggets is a series of compilation albums by Elektra Records, continued by Rhino Records.

Post-punk is a broad genre of rock music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from the raw simplicity and traditionalism of punk rock, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-rock influences. Inspired by punk's energy and DIY ethic but determined to break from rock cliches, artists experimented with styles like funk, electronic music, jazz, and dance music; the production techniques of dub and disco; and ideas from art and politics, including critical theory, modernist art, cinema and literature. These communities produced independent record labels, visual art, multimedia performances and fanzines.

Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments with the basic elements of the genre. Artists aim to liberate and innovate, with some of the genre's distinguishing characteristics being improvisational performances, avant-garde influences, odd instrumentation, opaque lyrics, unorthodox structures and rhythms, and an underlying rejection of commercial aspirations.

Music history of the United States in the 1960s

Popular music of the United States in the 1960s became innately tied up into causes, opposing certain ideas, influenced by the sexual revolution, feminism, Black Power and environmentalism. This trend took place in a tumultuous period of massive public, unrest in the United States which consisted of the Cold War, Vietnam War, and Civil Rights Movement.

The Bees was an American garage rock and psychedelic band from Covina, California, that was active in the mid-1960s, and was best known for the 1966 paranoiac anthem "Voices Green and Purple". The song has been mentioned as an innovative example of early protopunk.

Voices Green and Purple

"Voices Green and Purple" is a song by the Bees, an American garage rock and psychedelic band from Covina, California who were active in the mid-1960s. It has been mentioned as an innovative example of early protopunk and has become highly prized by various garage rock collectors and enthusiasts.

A microgenre is a specialized or niche genre. The term has been used since at least the 1970s to describe highly specific subgenres of music, literature, film, and art. In music, examples include the myriad sub-subgenres of heavy metal and electronic music. Some genres are sometimes retroactively created by record dealers and collectors as a way to increase the monetary value of certain records, with early examples including Northern soul, freakbeat, garage punk, and sunshine pop. By the early 2010s, most microgenres were linked and defined through various outlets on the Internet, usually as part of generating popularity and hype for a newly perceived trend. Examples of these include chillwave, witch house, seapunk, shitgaze, vaporwave, and cloud rap.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Markesich 2012, p. 43.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "Garage Punk". AllMusic. Retrieved 23 July 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Bryan, Beverly (4 February 2013). "Please Explain: What is Garage Punk?". MTV Iggy . Archived from the original on 3 April 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  4. 1 2 Nobles 2012, p. 32.
  5. 1 2 Austen 2005, p. 168.
  6. ↑ Aaron 2013, p. 52.
  7. ↑ Kaye, Lenny (1972). Nuggets (booklet). Various Artists. United States: Elektra Records.
  8. 1 2 Hann, Michael (30 July 2014). "10 of the best: garage punk". The Guardian . Guardian News & Media. Retrieved 18 June 2016.
  9. 1 2 Ansill, Laura (14 April 2015). "The Sonics – Here Are The Sonics". mxdwn.com.
  10. ↑ Reynolds 1999, p. 138–139.
  11. ↑ Reynolds 2012, p. 150.
  12. ↑ Pehling, David (11 May 2015). "Garage-Rock Godfathers The Sonics Get Feral at the Fillmore". SF Weekly .
  13. ↑ Sommer, Tim (15 November 2016). "The Musicians Who Actually Deserve a Spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame". The Observer .
  14. ↑ Reynolds 2005.
  15. ↑ Rutter, Alan (September 2006). "Bluffer's guide: Garage punk". TimeOut London. TimeOut Group Ltd. Archived from the original on 12 December 2008. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
  16. ↑ Bovey, Seth (2006). "Don't Tread on Me: The Ethos of '60s Garage Punk". Popular Music & Society. Routledge. 29 (4): 451–459. doi:10.1080/03007760600787515. S2CID   143841415.
  17. ↑ "Clay Reed on Outsight Radio Hours". Archive.org. Retrieved 2 December 2012.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.