In the G’rage (Part Duh)

When I first started getting into music, my friends and I had one of our first jam sessions in the sweltering heat of my parents’ garage. If I remember correctly, it started out with my mangling a rough rip off of Weezer’s 2001 hit “Hash Pipe,” while my friends Greg and Ben joined in with trashy drums and a screaming anti-lead guitar line. Ah, those were the days…

We’d later form a (slightly) more proficient ensemble in our last couple of years of high school, but in those formative years, the garage was our home. It was barren, metallic and almost entirely unsympathetic to any kind of creative work, but it was a place where we could lay into our instruments with an embarrassing level of earnestness and make a god-awful noise that was completely ours. Greg’s garage had hanging carpets rigged up to give the effect of a soundproofed studio, and deep inside this shag rug womb we would blast-off on double-tempo renditions of Nirvana, Green Day, and occasionally some classic rock like Zeppelin and the Eagles. I would hang an old karaoke mic from the ceiling and scream myself hoarse over songs like “In Bloom,” “Church on Sunday,” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll.” When we finally opened the big clanging door we were a reasonable high school band.

When I got a little older I started getting into the history of garage rock and started to re-listen to British Invasion bands like the Kinks, the Stones, the Beatles, the Zombies, and the Who. While these groups obviously exhibited a certain amount of polish and a knack for finely crafted melodies, it was the un-tutored, raw knuckleheaded-ness of stuff like “All Day and All of the Night” and “Get Off My Cloud” that really grabbed me by the guts as a teenager. Reading about garage rock more recently, I was reminded of a host of other groups I had heard on oldies radio as a kid that had championed that crude garage sound, such as The Troggs, ? and the Mysterians, the Kingsmen, and Steppenwolf. All of these groups had great pop hits that could be played with minimal technical ability and only required that the performer bring to the song a raucous enthusiasm and complete disregard for cool-handed composure. The kind of anti-elitist ethos that these brilliant songs represented really helped push me along to write my own tunes and start playing in front of people.

The Trashmen were a great garage rock group from days gone by. Here’s a very appropriate video for their hit “Surfin’ Bird.”

In the G'rage... (Part One of ?)

Yesterday I finished up a semester interning at a lit agency, and as a going-away present I was allowed to take a couple of promo copies of books they have in stock from publishers. One of those books is Rolling Stone’s now out-of-print Alt-Rock-A-Rama. So far, I’ve only read through a few of the pieces compiled in the book, but I was inspired by one of the features, “The Original Punks: The Greatest Garage Recordings of the Twentieth Century,” by Robot A. Hull (no joke, guy goes by Robot), to do a post on a great garage-rock group of whose history and musical output I know almost nothing. They’re called The Loved Ones, and they’re from Melbourne, Australia.

I got the following track, “Surprise, Surprise,” from a blog post over on Aquarium Drunkard, a cool blog based in LA, that was part of a series on rare garage rock from the 1960s. Dig the metalic fuzz of the song’s opening—it’s a bit like the Rolling Stones’ early singles, but it doesn’t have any of the big corporate rock connotations they’ve gained by being stars for almost half a century. The Loved Ones aren’t nearly as obscure as some of the stuff Robot Hull talks about in his piece, such as The Memphis Goons (who sound pretty awesome, considering they referred to themselves as “Xavier Tarpit, Jackass Thompson and Vanilla Frog”), The Godz, or the Shaggs, but their material also isn’t as widely known as their more successful contemporaries such as ? and the Mysterians (“96 Tears”), The Kingsmen (“Louie, Louie”), or the Troggs (“Wild Thing”).

For these reasons, I thought I’d post “Surprise, Surprise” for your listening enjoyment. It’s got elements of the Kingsmen, the Beatles’ early releases, and the Stones for sure, but ultimately it’s just a damn good nugget of garage rock greatness. It might not be as perfect as the Trashmen’s cacophonous “Surfin’ Bird,” (“B-b-b-bird bird bird, bird’s the word") but it’ll be stuck in your head for at least the rest of the day.

“Surprise, Surprise” – The Loved Ones

Check ‘em out on Amazon.

Circa '62

“Don’t waste your precious breath explaining that you are worthwhile.”

Pavement are the greatest garage band of all time. It's a bold statement to make, and it's probably not true, but I want to make it anyway.

Initially comprised of Steven Malkmus (SM) and his buddy Scott Kannberg (later known as Spiral Stairs) in the very, very late '80s, the band released early EP with titles like Slay Tracks (1933-1969) and Perfect Sound Forever. They were recorded by the basically incompetent and insane Gary Young, who "engineered" and "played drums" on the band's debut album, Slanted and Enchanted. Still, it was this ostensibly unbearable combination of obnoxious slackerdom and erratic hippie nonsense that sired a sound that would inspire a big pile of teenage rawk bands in the next decade-and-a-half.

A word on my decision to use the distinction "garage rock." Pavement is garage rock because it was recorded by suburban kids in a garage. It's about as simple as that, and any other labels, amusing as they may be, are basically irrelevant. Drawing on the scatterbrained, shambolic aesthetic of bands like The Fall and coupling it with the drama of Echo & the Bunnymen, Malkmus wrote the kind of unbelievably catchy songs that bounce around in your head like quarters in a washing machine.

Anyway, this is the first of what will invariably be a series of posts on Pavement, the best garage band ever. Say what you will about their musicianship, this is a band that could really play. You can argue about whether ol' Gary Young was a better drummer than Steve West (he wasn't), or whether Bob Nastanovich is really a necessary part of the band (he is), but at the end of the day, Pavement are just what they set out to be: a bunch of brainy loser-types playing gloriously rudimentary rock for a bunch of other brainy, if utterly useless, loser-types.

Okay, that's an exaggeration to some extent, but really, Pavement is all about exaggeration. It's the heart of garage rock, finding a little bit of humor or grasping for some meaning in the mundane pointlessness of suburban life. It's just a series of attempts, successful or unsuccessful, to make something out of nothing.

Or something like that, anyway.

Now listen here: "Stereo" - Live @ Shepherd's Bush, UK ('97)