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Confessions of a Garage Rock Junky
How Rock’s Underground Revival is Quietly Saving My Generation
“It just seems like when rock and roll is dead the whole world’s gonna explode.”
— Kurdt Kobain
Rock and Roll is the only redeeming invention America has thrown together in its short and bloody history. The antithesis to the atom bomb. I detail my feelings on why that is in a piece I wrote, Bob Dylan Lays Down What Really Killed Rock ’n’ Roll. I’ll be furthering the sentiment in what follows.
What’s often taken for granted in music history is garage rock — what arose out of rock and roll’s 1959 spiritual demise due to big money payola bullshit. Songs like “You’re Gonna Miss Me” by The Thirteenth Floor Elevators signaled a new, weird era that only the tuned-in saw coming. Garage was a primitive answer to the commercial interests taking over: pick up a shoddy guitar, plug it into a janky amp, and start pissing off your neighbors. Stomp that fuzzbox ’til lightning strikes.
Most wouldn’t associate 2018 America with rock, certainly not garage rock. Fact is, whether its starting a band or sucking down carbon monoxide, the garage is the alpha and omega of American life. This is lost on us. In this social media-saturated and anxietized moment where reality TV stars are running the…
