Garage Rock

The crackling spark of Garage Rock's raw invention can be traced to the moment when guitarist Link Wray blew is stack and started stabbing holes in the speakers of his guitar amp to push the 1958 single "Rumble" beyond the bounds of convention. The gritty distortion that was actually intentional. It ignited a movement of fuzzy, D.I.Y. expressionism that roared to life in the early '60s, when guitar-wielding amateurs in basements and garages across America turned up the fuzz and gave a good shaking to the sanctity newly minted suburbs. No longer did pop songs have to sound so buttoned up. No longer did they have to be played by straight laced professionals. Garage Rock liberated pop music, and put it in the hands of amateurs. Purists see genre's apex in the ear-ringing period between 1963 and 1968, when simple pop structures came unhinged thanks to genre fathers like The Animals, The Kinks, The Squires and The Troggs, but, as the brilliant box Nuggats box sets would illustrate some years later, the period boasted intensely autonomous regional scenes with bands who enjoyed little commercial success. A small revival began in the 80s, with smoldering hubs in Detroit, Columbus, Memphis and New York, eventually influencing a commercially palatable crop of garage rockers who are exemplified by the White Stripes, the Hives, and the Strokes.