Garage rock | |
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Stylistic origins | |
Cultural origins | Early 1960s, United States and Canada |
Typical instruments | |
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Frat rock | |
Fusion genres | |
Garage punk (fusion genre) | |
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Other topics | |
Blues rock |
Garage rock (sometimes called '60s punk or garage punk) is a raw and energetic style of rock and roll that flourished in the mid-1960s, most notably in the United States and Canada. The style is characterized by basic chord structures played on electric guitars and other instruments, sometimes distorted through a fuzzbox, as well as often unsophisticated and occasionally aggressive lyrics and delivery. The term "garage rock" derives from the perception that groups were often made up of young amateurs who rehearsed in the family garage, although many were professional.
In the US and Canada, surf rock—and later the Beatles and other beat groups of the British Invasion—motivated thousands of young people to form bands between 1963 and 1968. Hundreds of acts produced regional hits, and some had national hits. Though largely associated with North America, counterparts were present elsewhere as part of the worldwide "beat boom" of the era. With the advent of psychedelia, a number of garage bands incorporated exotic elements into the genre's primitive stylistic framework, but after 1968, as more elaborate forms of rock music overtook the marketplace, garage rock records largely disappeared from national and regional charts, and the garage band movement faded.
During the 1960s the music was not recognized as a distinct genre and had no specific name, but critical hindsight in the early 1970s—and particularly the release of the 1972 compilation album Nuggets—did much to define and memorialize the style. Certain rock critics from 1971 to 1973 began to retroactively identify garage music as a genre and for a time used the term "punk rock", making it the first form of music to bear this description. Since then, the genre has sometimes been referred to as "garage punk", as well as later labels such as "'60s punk" or "proto-punk", which distinguish it from the more commonly known punk movement of the mid- to late-1970s that it influenced. The term "garage rock" came into favor in the early 1980s.