When I first discovered the existence of this book via a review in the latest UGLY THINGS I almost gagged on my Wheezies! Gosh all doggum, GARAGE BAND ROCK, that nicer Siamese twin of punk rock and starting point for many a rock 'n roll movement o'er the years, FINALLY getting an entire tome devoted to it! Talk about dying and thinking you went to heaven!
Now, that brain-blasting concept (a book on garage band rock, not going to heaven) was something I kinda thought woulda happened a good thirtysome years ago during the big under-the-counterculture paisley underground et. al. revival movement which gave the entire garage rock idea a voice outside a few smatterings of activity here and there, but better late 'n never I always say! And for such a (really!) Herculean task as defining, describing and layin' on the line what was so important about garage band rock in the pantheon of rock 'n roll (later just "rock") as that big biz moneymaking scheme made off the backs of unaware teenbo neo-thugs author Bovey does a pretty snat job of it. And he does swell enough even if he ain't the Lester Bangs or R. Metzer who woulda been more suited to such a rockist-related doody giving the subject matter a whole lot more body than is usually tossed into such works, but at this late date why should ANYONE complain?
Of course some sticklers will rant on because some group they've cherished o'er the years has gone missing in these pages from the Seeds to the Young Fanablas who you remember from down the street especially the time the local toughs decided to sheep dip 'em at the slaughterhouse, but while the former omission might seem like a careless faux pas we can't expect every group no matter how much they meant to your own suburban slob upbringing to appear in these pages. An' sure I coulda used a whole lot more snaps but if they're the kind we've seen thousands of times before like, why bother? It ain't like I was expecting the Taj Mahal inna first place...just a read that gave us new and interesting details while commemorating just a facet of those exciting times we had either as radio listeners or purveyors of word-of-mouth hype passed on like those rumors about the fast girl in school or the kid who skidded his shorts in basketball.
I find no bouef with FIVE... even if I kinda think that Bovey might be making a few not quite substantiated statements regarding what might or might not be considered garage rock here and there. At least his concept and idea of such a vague "all over the place" term to describe a "style of rock 'n roll" (which is even vaguer than pinpointing the whole punk rock and heavy metal idioms which were so blurred together in the early-seventies yet struck up polar opposite [or so it seemed] factions a good decade later) sure reads a whole lot smoother than it did in the days when Anastasia Pantsios would blab on about Rush being the quintessential garage band or something equally idiotic. (I could only see that being factual if Rush did indeed sound like the New York Dolls as some early observer once mentioned...otherwise eh!) After all these years the basic thrust and feeling behind the simple concept of kidz inna garage or basement or attic for that matter clanging out a set and maybe going somewhere with is has been somewhat detailed in a book, and I sure do cozy up to the idea of entire forests being chopped down and turned into paper so that tomes for the time like this can be printed 'stead o one of those NY TIMES best sellers that nobody seems to remember a few months after the fact.
And this book you will remember, probably for better 'stead of worse!
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1 comment:
The very first garage band, Nathan & The Nationalists, was formed in 1939 in Munich. The had two 78s on the Krautderzinglephoonüe label. Very difficult to find. No one, that I know of, has given 'em a re-ish.
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