Garage Punk and Rock bands
Nowadays if you hear the words Garage or Garage bands you’re probably likely to associate it with urban music. This was not always the case. In the early Eighties up to the Noughties Garage bands were Punk or rock bands that, unsurprisingly, started out by practicing in their garages as they had no where else to do it.
I myself was part of a garage band in the early Nineteen Nineties. Suffice to say that Cocksure were never to grace the charts or even the stage of a sixth form battele of the bands. If we were to benefit from a Garage Conversions Cheltenham operation that could have changed our fortunes. Why not pop along to http://www.cotswoldgarageconversions.co.uk/ and have a look at what they can do for you. It’s a shame we didn’t as all we did was wake the night shift neighbour with our over loud drum machine (we didn’t know any drummers at the time) and a bit of studio sound proofing would have been great. We could have used egg boxes I suppose.
Before the urban appropriation of the name, (not that I mind as those DJs and Rappers basically also started out playing and practicing in their available garages as well so it’s a bit like a torch passing to the next generation) Garage bands referred to punk and new metal bands that had a very hard or frenetic edge to the their music. It was akin to Grunge bands later on but it’s birth was in the garage. In fact, there were several early compilation albums that were called “it came from the Garage”. These were very low fi production sounds singles and albums by bands that had basically shunned the high-end production value. That stuff was little better than pop.
The metal/rock scene had gone mainstream and opted for the MTV dollar. Bands like Whitesnake and Starship were starting to turn out radio friend pop numbers and even the more musically gifted artists like Van Halen were getting in on the act. Underground though punk lived on in the garage with bands like Minor Threat and Black flag producing rough but searing sounds that were all fuzz and feedback. Sonic Youth became the Velvet Underground of garage as their sounds descended into cacophony only to be dragged back unwillingly to melody at the end. Dinosaur Jnr were the pinnacle of the sound. Rough and semi poorly recorded there lead guitarist J Mascis made playing look easy. Meanwhile Steve Albini’s Big Black (who my band wanted to copy) eschewed a drummer and just featured Albini, Santiago Durango and Jeff Pezzati. The other pioneers were New York’s Husker Du featuring the great Bob Mould.
As the Eighties wore on a new force on the West coast of the USA rose to power with the birth of the SUB POP label in Seattle. Mudhoney, Tad, Catbutt, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam are all grunge bands, but they grew out of the garage movement. The most famous of course being Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. That is another story.
