Genre: Garage Rock

Rockabilly died almost as abruptly as it emerged when its main icons were either dead, in jail or in the army. Rock was not dead however; countless ambitious teens (mostly in the UK) got hooked on the sound and started forming their own Rock bands. More often than not, they rehearsed in the garages of their parents. The result was a very raw, amateur, lo-fi sound of Rock ‘n’ Roll and the first experiments with distorted guitars. Garage Rock is a genre where the “fuzz” distortion effect is used intensively (which makes the guitars sound fuzzy) and it helped spread “the Fuzz sound” across other genres. Such dirty distortion fits nicely with Garage Rock’s recurring content of anger and frustration about dealing with heartbreak, cheating and other negative love experiences. Although positive love madness could just as well be an inspiration. Because most Garage Rock musicians couldn’t afford decent audio equipment, there was often no budget for voice amplification, resulting in wailing, screaming singers. It wasn’t until the great British Invasion of the mid sixties that Garage Rock truly broke loose, with even more bands and crossovers to Psychedelic Rock as a result. As Garage Rock shares lots of overlapping with Psy Rock, the conjoining term Garage-Psych was conceived and later also included Shoegaze.

Garage Rock’s big teenage rebellious attitude and sound inspired Punk Rock itself, as well as contemporary artists who felt a revival was well deserved. After all, Garage Rock is the embodiment of sleaziness, roughness, and Rock’s nonchalance in all its galore.