Rich here, reminiscing on the fairly brief mid-Sixties phenomenon called Garage Rock, or "Punk" as Lenny Kaye referred to it in 1972 when he documented the highlights of the Garage Band movement in the now-classic double-album "Nuggets: Original Artyfacts of the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968."
Kaye's use of the word "punk" to describe this kind of amateurish rock music is believed to be the first occurrence of the label many years before the alternative bands of the late '70s started calling their music Punk Rock.
For the most part, these original punk bands were comprised of teenagers who barely had a rudimentary grasp of playing their instruments or writing songs. No major record label would sign these awkward sounding bands, all of whom had a burning desire, even if not the actual talent, to be the next Rolling Stones or Beatles or Bob Dylan. Their records were recorded fast and cheap . . . often in the self-styled studio of somebody's garage; ergo: Garage Rock!
Despite the non-professional performances and recordings of the Garage Rock bands, a fair number of them got a decent amount of airplay; for example: "Dirty Water" (The Standells), "96 Tears" (Question Mark & The Mysterians), "Gloria" (Shadows of Knight), "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" (The Electric Prunes), and "Pushin' Too Hard" (The Seeds).
And then there was one of my favorite garage rock songs of all by a band that wielded fizzy guitars and a fuzz-bass and were fronted by a snarling lead vocalist with an attitude (basically, he was angry that his girlfriend was pregnant and that it was ruining, get this, HIS reputation). So here's "Talk Talk" in its unbridaled glory by The black-clad and gloved Music Machine.
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