Vabosity's Third Anniversary Review Of The Thread - Post #17.
Originally Posted by Vabosity:
“Vabosity's Third Anniversary Review Of The Thread - Post #16.
This ^^ is a new one on me. I really like it, possibly because it’s an almost perfect example of a subgenre of American music, prevalent in the mid and late sixties, that has retrospectively been labelled Sunshine Pop.”
Garage Rock was very different from Sunshine Pop, but just like the latter, the former was also a predominantly American subgenre, was also prevalent in the mid-sixties and also acquired its subgenre name retrospectively. There’s been a plethora of good, raw Garage Rock tracks on this thread over the last three years, so the likelihood is that this will not be the only post in the
Third Anniversary Review to feature this subgenre, and that one or more such posts will follow in the future.
The five Garage Rock tracks I have selected for this post can be found below.
? and the Mysterians - 96 Tears (1966)
First submitted to the thread in May 2010.
This was the most commercially successful Garage Rock track of the sixties, topping the U.S. singles charts in late 1966. Unfortunately, it was only a very minor hit in the UK. Fortunately, because it was only a very minor hit in the UK an absolute classic was eligible for this thread
The Sonics - Have Love Will Travel (1965)
First submitted to the thread in May 2010.
The Sonics were arguably the best of all the American sixties garage bands. Commercial success eluded them during the sixties, but cult status was attained in later decades.
Have Love Will Travel was originally a Doo-wop song, written and recorded by Richard Berry in 1959. Despite being a massive fan of Doo-wop music I have to say that I much prefer the Sonics’ Garage Rock cover version to the original.
The Kingsmen - Louie Louie (1963)
First submitted to the thread in January 2011.
Louie Louie, like the aforementioned
Have Love Will Travel, was originally written and recorded by the fifties Doo-wop artist, Richard Berry. The song has been covered more than a thousand times, but the cover version by the Kingsmen is unquestionably the most well known; so well known, in fact, that many people may be surprised to learn that it was only a minor hit in the UK. It fared somewhat better in the band’s home country, peaking at #2 on the U.S. single chart, making it the second most commercially successful Garage Rock track of the sixties after the aforementioned
96 Tears by ? and the Mysterians.
Thee Unusuals - I'm Walkin' Babe (1965)
First submitted to the thread in May 2011.
Randy Gibbons has contributed the overwhelming majority of Garage Rock tracks to this thread, so it’s only fair that a
Third Anniversary Review post about Garage Rock should include at least one track originally submitted by him. I spent much of last night re-listening to many of the Garage Rock tracks that Randy submitted to the thread (a time consuming, but not unpleasant task) and eventually chose this one for inclusion in my post because I rather like the band name - the additional
"e" in the definite article is
unusual (pun intended). Oh, and I also chose this one because it’s a superb track.
The Debutantes - A New Love Today (1966)
First submitted to the thread in October 2011.
Another track originally submitted by Randy Gibbons. The word
unusual can be applied here too, inasmuch as that the Debutantes were an all-girl Garage band, which was very unusual in the sixties. The song’s melody is slightly reminiscent of the Everly Brothers’ chart topping single,
Temptation, although it’s hardly plagiary. All in all, an excellent track.
) R’n’B or Rhythm ‘n’ Blues is still a very difficult genre to define. Perhaps the most accurate definition is that it’s not a genre in its own right, but is a generic term for several styles of Black American music that have come our way since the forties, including Jump Jive, Doo-wop, Soul and very early Rock ‘n’ Roll. Of course, there is another, very much narrower definition that states that Rhythm ‘n’ Blues is precisely what the name suggests, i.e. Blues with rhythm.
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