the pretty things bouquets of barbed wire

Not being ones to have got our grubby hands on the boxset of the complete works of The Pretty Things here's the opening from Phil Alexander's review at Mojo mag who actually has opened the limited edition package.

"As you open this lavish box set you chance upon a thick, vanilla-coloured envelope.
It contains paper-clipped reproductions of legal papers documenting two court cases fought by Mark St John, the Pretty Things manager of three decades, in order to reclaim the bands copyrights in lieu of unpaid royalties.
These document make forr remarkable reading, most specifically a 1994 fax to Roger Ames, the then-chief executive of Polygram UK, The first paragraph of which outlines guitarist Dick Taylor;s "unstable" financial position before explaining that Taylor's modest Isle Of EWight home (inherited from his mother) is subject to a compulsory purchase order for a meagre £2,500."

And that might as well be the symbolic story of the The Pretty Things. The ingredients of which were "bad luck, self destruction and record company shafting". It's unbelievable these guys are still playing today and this boxset marks the tumultuous journey from the raw garage r&b of the early 60's, through the bleary haze of psychedelia in the late 60's and on into the 70's. The 11 studio albums are all here, plus all this other stuff. 2 DVD's, 2 Rarities CD's, a 10″ replica acetate, 100 page hardback book, family tree with posters.
And the Pretty Things story is as much a part of rock and roll history as the Stones, only without the empire of wealth at the end of it. At last this box-set puts it all into context.

“David Bowie worshipped Phil (May) – Phil had to write his telephone number in David Bowie’s book, and it was under ‘G’ for God!” Dick Taylor, The Pretty Things
“The Pretty Things made the Stones look tame.” David Gilmour (Pink Floyd)
“The Pretty Things were the biggest influence on us… they invented garage bands.” Joey Ramone
“The Pretty Things completely bent my head.” Noel Gallacher

A full break down of the contents of 'Bouquets Of Barbed Wire' and pre-odering are here at Burning Shed

ian mclagan RIP

Ian Mclagan died yesterday (Dec 3rd) of a massive stroke age 69. The keyboard player for the Small Faces, The Faces, The Stones on occasions, along with his own bands was still playing and even expecting to be on stage the day he died. Living in Austin, Texas for the last years of his life, and still playing with his band in local bars and clubs in probably much the same way as he'd begun his young music life. Although the huge success in the UK and eventually the US with The Small Faces brought international fame it was one also of the cautionary tales a rock and pop musician could find themselves sucked into -

In 1965, he (McLagan) was hired, for the princely sum of £30 a week, to join Small Faces by their manager, Don Arden, replacing Jimmy Winston. Once the 'probation' period ended, his pay was reduced to £20 a week, which was what the other band members were getting. They never received more than that because Don Arden collected all the proceeds of their hard-earned work, and it wasn't until 1997 that they started receiving any royalties.
WIKI ARTICLE

His interview for the documentary - Small Faces : All Or Nothing 1965-1968 (The British Invasion Series) he explains much of the story behind the band without any signs of being too scarred by the whole Faces/Arden business.
When he's asked about which Small Faces song was his favourite. In that familiar affable London manner of his he replies -

"The Small Faces finest moment was when we cut Tin Soldier. I don't think we cut a better track, a better tune, a better performance from all of us. It's the best thing we ever did as a collective, as a band, song, everything."

And who can argue with that.. here's the video of 'Tin Soldier' with Steve Marriot in outrageous form, PP Arnold having real fun with the backing vocals and Mclagan's keyboard driving the song along with that 60's mod swagger.
As one YouTube commenter said "The happiest guy in Austin has left town".
So long Ian.

paul revere RIP

1967 Image: Associated Press/Associated Press.

So long to one of the names of 60's US beat groups, Paul Revere, who passed away on Saturday 4th October.
Hugely succesful in the States during the mid 60's beat boom, 'Paul Revere and the Raiders' first made their early R&B garage sound to their own home audience on the back of the British beat groups invasion in the previous year or so. Unusually given Revere was the headline name for the group he was the organist not the lead singer.
They appeared a flamboyant act on TV at the time dressed in uniforms of American Revolutionary War (presumably it was the British beat invasion being comically repelled)

"Playing on Revere's name, the group wore American Revolutionary War soldier uniforms and performed slapstick comedy and synchronized dance steps while the ponytailed Lindsay lip synced to their music. This farcical, cartoon-like image obscured the proto-hard rock sound their music often displayed.." WIKI ARTICLE

Apart from a couple of years in the mid seventies they played on to the present with a long list of musicians who came and went over the years. Revere himself still performing into his last year.

Here's one of the tracks "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone" from their first album "Midnight Ride."
With their visual puns and clowning they could easily have been the template for The Monkees and their manufactured production for the mainstream with this very song a year later. Otherwise not to be confused with 'Paul Revere and the Raiders' garage rock version.

chessman caught

Occasionally you'll come across a video from rock and rolls distant pass that captures the very soul of a generation from a long gone age. It's also just very occasionally you might just find in the comments an addition from one of the original members of that actual rock and roll past. It sort of makes the circle round in a way that would have been impossible to complete before the huge dumpng ground of videos began.

So here we have The Chessmen and a piece of garage beat punk set to a freakbeat video clip of a bunch of hipsters doing the twist on some remote beach in.. well it looks cold enough to be England, that after all these years is still a cool enough track to do 120.000 hits.
And had it not been for some rube to comment about the "moog" being played on the track we'd have never heard a rather miffed reply from 'Steve', who had the real insider detail only a member of the group could have, to set us all straight.

"I'm not too sure what you mean by "that moog", but in this record, Kevin used a Farfisa Combo Compact organ, Chuck used a Fender Precision Bass through a Fender Bassman amp, Steve (me) used a Fender Stratocaster guitar through a Fender Super Reverb amp and a Gibson Maestro Fuzz Tone, Phil used a Hagstrom solid body guitar through a Fender Princeton amp, and John played Gretsch drums."

In the picture above there is seated left to right in the 1967 photo: "Steve Griebel, Jon Finchum, Kevin Evans, ..." and that's where it ends because the original article can't be read as the server can't be found.
And today that's how close rock and rolls past comes to never being seen or heard at all. Unless you've got the record of course. Here is the Chessmen "You Can't Catch Me" (1966), in all it'a fuzzy tripped out glory.

os noctàmbulos and the obscure world of paris rock and roll

So we don't get to hear of many rock bands that came out of Paris in the 1960's. There should be given it's bohemian backstreets were at the heart of so much European culture then. Film directors, actors, singers, artists, poets, jazz clubs, and then there were the student rally's and riots ! Now if that isn't a breeding ground for raw rock and roll nothing is.
Actually after all that the most obvious name to spring out when 1960's Paris is mentioned is Jim Morrison, although he moved there just after the decade was over, along with Jim's interest in rock and roll and his life. No, it has to be said the age of Paris beat groups are filed under 'obscure' in rock history.

Today many major cities in Europe, like Paris are suffering from the financial meltdown that arrived at the end of the last decade and now those Paris backstreets are looking rather worn. There is unrest too, There are undercurrents of some unpleasant political views in the air. These are tough times for Paris.
So maybe that's why Os Noctàmbulos have appeared with their raw 60′s garage psych. It's a sound that should have been bred out of the 60's backstreets but here it is alive today.
Just listen to this surf rock and roll guitar matched with the vocal style backed with a classic 60's farfisa organ or something near and you can very nearly hear the riots going on in the background. What a record this is, and least Parissienne of all it's sung in English. Blimey m'sieur what's happening over there.
Even more oddly their record label 'Evil Hoodoo' are in Sheffield, UK.
Os Noctàmbulos and their superbly named 'Corsican Garden' album is on limted edition vinyl out in September. Advance orders from The Evil Hoodoo website only. But you can hear it all right now.

the human expression

What a name to conjure with. The Human Expression. There must have been a hundred ways they imagined subjects for their songs back in 1966 when these 4 guys formed in Orange County, California.
And just to compound that idea the original 'B' side of their first single was called "Readin' Your Will".
No, surely they couldn't have written something about actually reading your will.
Well they did and guess what it was later dropped as such by the record company.
This original piece of lyric writing was actually a cautionary tale about a friend who indulged in too much illicit sex and drugs.
So, a little preaching going on here to the hedonistic lifestylers of the 60's.
What a vocal delivery it is too. Definitely 11 on the garage rock sneer meter.

By 1967 the band had evolved from the garage rock and now rather than condemning the drug culture that there friend had participated in on "Readin' Your Will" they were now thoroughly embracing the psychedelic experience with the single "Optical Sound". That being a tale where the singer is collecting his thoughts after a drug experience. How times have changed in only a year.
The rarity of the single on original vinyl today would have then kept their stash topped for the rest of 60's with a recent sale going on Ebay for $2,300.

The continuing slow sales of their records might have explained why the manager, and also one of the members Dads (aagh.. never do it), brought demos of two songs by then-unknown songwriter Mars Bonfire, with the band rejecting one of the songs that then went on to be Steppenwolf's monster hit "Born to be Wild,"
"Doh!"
It just wasn't mean to be. The Human Condition was over.

Here is the raw garage rock of "Readin' Your Will" and below that the psychedelic "Optical Sound".

pink floyd before pink floyd

Here's an excellent piece of 1965 garage psyche by Pink Floyd before they were Pink Floyd.
The band were then performing under the name The Tea Set, it's members being Syd Barrett, Bob Klose, Roger Waters, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason.
Actually you wonder whether what appeared as a rather daft name 'Tea Set ' was in fact disguised slang for the growing popularity of 'weed' in the 60's, "Tea" was certainly used as a synonym in the 50's by a beatnik generation. Then again it wouldn't be unlikely the imaginative world of Syd Barrett had actually been doing a parody to the idea of Englishness, they being preoccupied with the drink for most occasions.

The song "Lucy Leave" written by Barret is one of five songs recorded in early 1965 by The Tea Set and hasn't had an official release to this day although a bootleg did appear with the song and is still circulating on the web (like here).
The song itself has since grown a further reputation by Floyd freaks in suggesting that Syd had written it about LSD. "Lucy" being another name for 'LSD' goes back to 1967 and Lennon's 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds', despite his vigorous claims it wasn't anything to do with the hallucinogenic.
Unlikely then that Syd had intended the song to be about acid when "Lucy Leave" had been written 2 years before Lennon's song appeared on Sgt Pepper's. Furthermore the song was originally known as "Lucy Lea in Blue Tights" so unless Syd liked his trips dressed up in them one can assume it was more likely about a demanding girlfriend.
But some folk claim it was about a bad trip and they will pursue the LSD link because well... it's Syd.
Judge the lyrics for yourself -
.
Leave, when I ask you to leave, Lucy
Please, far away from me, Lucy
Oh, go little girl
Seen, is (oh so) broken up about you, Lucy
Mean, treat me and done me harm, Lucy
Been, in love with you and your charms, Lucy
Oh, go little girl
I'm in love with you, Lucy

You got my heart
You got my heart, oh no!
You tear me apart
You just won't let me go
You hold on so tight, so tight I just can't breath
Now Lucy leave, Lucy

So regardless of all the innuendo what you do get is great piece of early garage psyche in "Lucy Leave" with the added bonus of the B side "(I'm a) King Bee" which was written by blues musician Slim Harpo where The Tea Set set about it in a most unusual way for 1965. This copy of the recording is regarded as the clearest out there, and that includes the bootleg.

the electric banana

The 2010 British film noir 'London Boulevard' is the story of a man (Colin Farrel) newly released from prison who falls in love with a reclusive young movie star (Keira Knightley) and finds himself in a duel with a vicious gangster (Ray "git aht-a Lundan" Winstone), that's "get out of London" for those not used to hearing the delicate tones of East London.
It's a film with less than gentlemanly behavior as you might predict. Although what you wouldn't predict as the soundtrack is a rather splendid mix of garage rock and psyche classics that's had a fare few viewers going in search of what they heard. Comments abound of the found tracks "London Boulevard brought me here" and from others stumbling on the track "WTF is London Boulevard".
Here's a pick of some of what awaits the movie goers ears.

The Yardbirds - Heart Full Of Soul
The Rolling Stones - Sray Cat Blues
22-20s - Devil In Me
The Pretty Things - Come See Me
The Electric Banana - Street Girl
The Box Tops - The Letter
The Knickerbockers - One Track Mind
The Electric Banana - It'll Never Be Me
Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues
The YardBirds - Train Kept A-Rollin

'Electric Banana', you'll notice appearing twice, one track alongside The Pretty Things - "Come See Me", were actually the same band.
The Pretty Things who'd been going since 1963 had by the late 60's become somewhat hard up and made some extra money by recording for music library company DeWolfe. Some of these songs ended up in low-budget films. The initial releases featured one side of vocal and one side of instrumental tracks. Subsequent releases of these albums generally keep the true identity of the band secret, a reasonably good idea as The Pretty Things were to continually reinvent themselves over the following decades.

Back in 1969, The Electric Banana's - "It'll Never Be Me" was originally used in the film 'What's Good For the Goose' which had comic/clown actor Norman Wisdom in a failed attempt to popularise himself with a new swinging 60's generation which by 1969 was looking every bit 3 years too late to the trends of that year.
Even though it still has a wonderful moment of The Electric Banana (or Pretty Things) appearing in a scene as a 'band in the club' performing the psychedelic "It'll Never Be Me" with it should be mentioned, the rare site of fellow sky pilot Twink of 'The Pink Fairies' on drums.
Who would have guessed, certainly not the band, that 'The Electric Banana' (geddit.. Prunes, Banana) and their invented pastiche name would appear over 4 decades in two films entirely at odds with one another. Whether the band get any of the royalties from the films or revenue of the inevitable YT ad you'll see is doubtful. Library music is usually payed for and then owned by, as in this case DeWolfe Music.
The Pretty Things still perform. They never did get that big payday.

reg presley and the troggs

And so another of the 1960's beat group era pop stars has gone.
Reg Presley of The Troggs will always be cast as the singer and writer of 'Wild Thing' and 'Love Is All Around' both hits all over the world.
'Wild Thing' was the first Troggs hit that took Reg from his full time job as a bricklayer into a fully fledged pop star and many a young rock band has had the song on their set list since.
Even Jimi Hendrix adopted it in his incendiary performance at Monterey in 1967.
Reg Presley's fans have included Iggy Pop and Bob Dylan who first met him as The Troggs recorded in the adjoining studio. The music writer Lester Bangs named them "godfathers of punk".
Which is completely incongruous to his persona and his appearance. On 60's TV pop shows his round faced features and their white with black pinstripe stripe suits set the Troggs apart in the way you'd expect them to be appearing at some seaside resort and not the sweating rock clubs of the 60's. The Troggs could ignite those audiences too in those small club performances.
The band must have never forgotten how that felt and embraced the new punk era unlike many of their contemporaries and performed at the infamous Max's Kansas City in New York, in 1978.

And years later his song 'Love Is All Around' was covered by 90's pop group Wet,Wet,Wet, and the royalties poured in once more for Reg, which he once again incongruously and totally out of character to his rock star image invested by funding his research on the subject such as alien spacecraft, lost civilisations, alchemy and crop circles.
He was often interviewed for short television documentaries in the UK when it came to crop circle season. His seriousness on the matter was always... well, serious.

Here's 'Wild Thing' recorded at Max's Kansas City. A perfect example of Reg Presley's classic Garage Punk vocal tone and as he talks to the audience the sound of his country Hampshire accent. Again completely incongruous to what he is about to perform.
There really was only one Reg Presley. RIP.

the tripped out world of cosmic michael

"Cosmic Michael was by no means a career musician or even remotely concerned with professionalism in music. This innocence and oblivion are largely what makes these very odd songs such a breath of fresh air".
Quote from All Music.com

It's also the very few records that have survived from the limited original pressing that have made Cosmic Michael a highly sort after commodity by records collectors.
And Cosmic Michael was indeed a limited edition himself. Unusually for the late 60's psychedelia era he played piano and organ in a series of songs set very much in his own trippy world. His albums were a haphazard design done by himself and included a poster similarly homemade.
Below clip of Cosmic Michael Theme is proof enough (sings about himself in the third person.. and also about frying his brain on LSD).
One Youtube commenter remarked on Michael's open market approach to his albums.
I bought a copy of this LP from the man himself, Cosmic Michael, in San Bernardino before a J.Geils Band/KISS/ZZ Top concert in 1974. Dude had an armful of copies of this album; I think I gave him three bucks for one.
His second and last album was his last. It's believed Cosmic Michael may still be alive.
(The video has the uploaders name Didirock later in the clip.)

vinyl scratch: jefferson airplane

The first Jefferson Airplane album 'Let Me In' was a garage classic and one of the seminal records to begin the psychedelic era in 1966. The record was repressed after its initial run after RCA thought the lyric "fantastic trips" on the track 'Runnin' Round The World' had made reference to LSD and the song was removed for a new second pressing.
A few of these original versions managed to avoid the shredder and after nearly 50 years since the first "controversial" pressing was made it's since become one of the rarest records any collector can find reaching an eye watering $10,000* for one of three stereo albums that have since surfaced, and half that for one of the five mono versions.

The albums re-pressings didn't end there though, with RCA being further consumed with puritan jitters over what they thought as explicit content to a couple of lines in the lyrics, "staying here with me" and one as banal as "don't tell me its funny" they had the lines replaced in the song for what was to be the final repressing. RCA proving the 1960's were far from the hedonistic free for all that is assumed from the psychedelic free-love era.
The version 2 of Airplanes re-pressings has a slightly more modest collectors value of up to $1000* for a stereo and $700* for mono. In 1966 far more people still had mono record players than stereo so fewer would have been pressed.
*Source: Record Collector. Jan 2013

The YouTube videos for all of Jefferson Airplane tracks are tattooed with the ever present advert so they won't be shown here, but the whole album has been uploaded (search : Jefferson Airplane Let Me In)
There were also three singles taken from 'Let Me In' so pleasingly, and far more fittingly the A side 'Bringing Me Down' and the B side 'Let Me In' of one those singles is played for us all here by uploader 'lelapincosmic' who obviously has the original in all its crackly mono glory.
Got to be worth a few bucks don't you think?

the strypes - beat music returns

You're going to hear a lot more of these young beatsters in 2013. The Strypes have rewound the clock and are playing a raw mix of R&B and blues songs that has all the energy of a beat group coming straight out of a youth club in the early 1960's, and with an average age of 15 it'll make most bands out there feel like their parents generation.
The talent is also more than obvious when you hear them take on songs that were the staple diet of artists from the 60's, The Yardbirds, The Who, The Beatles (OMG, they even do George Harrison's 'Taxman') , Hooker blues, Slim Harpo etc,etc, the song list is precocious and daring given the heritage.

The bands homeland and the good people of Ireland are obviously glowing with pride, they haven't heard this stuff since the days of Them and Van Morrison's 'Gloria'.
With advice on how to handle themselves coming from all corners of the music business you just have to hope these young guns are going to be able to take what's around the corner for them.
2013 will be some year for the Strypes as they take this firebrand sound to the rest of the world.

Here they do Slim Harpo's Got Love If You Want It. And with some style. It's even filmed in black and white... (will someone pass the Black Bombers?)

the factory

You can be sure when three groups appear with same name inside of 3 years no one is going to exactly be a winner.
It happened between 1967 and 1970 and sure enough no one was the winner, they all came and went in short time.
The three Surrey teenagers originally formed as Souvenir Badge Factory and possibly had the best reason for the ownership of the name released their single "Path Through The Forest" in 1968. It has since become a psychedelic classic with the original vinyl reaching 4 figure prices.
Fortunately to hear this priceless artifact today we don't need to pay the sort of price that would have kept the group in a veritable mountain of trips in the late 60's.

morning dew

"The Morning Dew's body of work provides a compelling object lesson in how far into the ether the average American rock dude would drift over the course of the 1960s." AllMusic.com
From the early days of sneering garage rock in 1966 within a year or two they become a psychedelic fuzz.
The American cities must have been heaving with now ex-high school bands or their members following the progress of their favourite bands as the last 5 years of 1960's music seemed to be changing overnight. Very often to the pace of the Beatles ever evolving rock kaleidoscope plus the changes in recording technology with its newly discovered effects in stereo. Occasionally a band would hit lucky and rise above the mass, others sunk with at best an undiscovered classic waiting for another generation to discover, and all be it with the slightly confusing name of 'Morning Dew' which was obviously taken from the then contemporary song of the same name, achieved an album and a few singles before they packed it all in by 1970.
But their effort was not in vain, the single 'Young Man' is as good a piece of garage psyche as you'll hear. Oddly, in the lyrics these young men were looking back at being young men in a sort of before and after event. Maybe it was before and after the psychedelic experience? Either way the tripped out rumble they set up on the single with it's feedback intro, phased vocal and panned guitar solo is a great track to leave us with.

the seeds

The sneering energy of The Seeds and their "flower powerised" garage sound was driven to success by Englishman Tim Hudson who took over their management.
Hudson had self titled himself 'Lord' and had been a disc jockey in LA in the early 60's and had made some kudos for himself by having contact with Brian Epstein (real or imagined). The English accent and Liverpudlian connection had hyped up his image enough to get himself ensconced in the LA scene where at that time any connection with The Beatles no matter how tenuous could be used to get a reputation.
As wiki notes -
"..on their (The Beatles) 1965 North American concert tour, radio station KCBQ employed Hudson, who described himself as a record producer..."
(again, real or imagined).
The Seeds had previously released a single that hadn't found much attention but were considered one of the top underground bands in LA when Hudson picked them up and with his instinct for hyped promotion the group achieved their biggest success in 1966 with Pushin' Too Hard.
The teen punk lyric capturing their mood perfectly -
"So if you don't think I'm gonna try, better ask yourself that reason why."
10 years later this 2 min 30 secs of pure garage punk was played by John Peel on his first ever punk show and a whole new generation connected.
The Seeds first two albums are today considered classics of '60s garage.
Here's Pushin' Too Hard filmed in 67.

shadows of knight

After the British beat invasion of the States in the early 60's so many of the young groups there were taking the sound and finding their own version of it.
"Performing in and around Chicago's northwest suburbs in 1964 and 1965, the Shadows of Knight became the house band at The Cellar in Arlington Heights, Illinois. They attracted over 500 teenagers every Saturday and Sunday at the "Cellar" for over six months". The place must have been buzzing.
John Peel played this in his first ever punk show in Nov 1976. It was a revelation to many that heard it for the first time. Here's "Light Bulb Blues" released in 1966. A superb outburst of garage punk angst.

the wheels

A mid 60's garage band from Belfast is rare. Van Morrison's 'Them' have always been the show stealer's as their single success in the 60's with the garage classic "Gloria" has had bands playing the number ever since.
But there was one other group that came from the same 60's Belfast scene and their name has been lost except to the select fans of the early garage bands.
The Wheels moved out of Belfast and began a residency in a Blackpool in 1964 and a year later EMI signed them to a singles deal. Their first single was their version of "Gloria" that didn't trouble the charts and a year later the second single "Bad Little Woman" backed with "Road Block" has now achieved classic status.
The sound on these two recordings is pure garage. Tape saturated distortion. Guitars and vocals taken to the maximum over-driven sound.
The Wheels 1960's recordings have just been released on CD which really amounts to the first album by the band. It just took 45 years to get there.
The Wheels "Road Block" CD is released by Big Beat.

Now hear the glorious "Road Block"

the electric prunes

1967 psychedelic garage rock -
"a calculatedly commercial organisation they would later go on to have a follow up hit "Get Me To The World On Time", do radio spots for Vox wah wah pedals and turn out the first religiously orientated rock concept album the eternal "Mass in F Minor"
Lenny Kaye. Nuggets
"Come forth Electric Prunes,and move from the shallows and venture forth into the deep"
Dave Hassinger. Producer for Electric Prunes

..and so the Electric Prunes did and the earth shook.

"I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night"

the leaves

So by the early-mid 1960's the British Beat Boom had hit the USA and was fully integrated into the minds of the young American wanting to form a rock and roll band. They had their own take on it and produced a succession of groups all termed in retrospect as Garage Rock which also overlapped into Blues and Psychedelic bands. Also later to become Garage Punk because of it's influence to punk rock's origins but that's normally claimed by the critics rather than a conscious act by the bands at the time, although it could be said the first American punk bands were more likely to have that as an influence then the UK ones.
Then in the early 2000's a revival of the Garage sound was evident in the White Stripes, The Strokes, Black Keys and others.
They do have a common denominator going back to the 60's. They're raw, heavy beat, short songs. And that we can definitely have more of..
Here is the earliest known version of "Hey Joe" by The Leaves (1966).
You feel Hendrix would most definitely have heard this.

the sonics

Any discerning American garage rock fan will tell you The Sonics are top of the list when it comes to influencing punk and modern garage. They've had an influence on many.. White Stripes, Black Keys, The Cramps, Flaming Lips, the list is long. In the UK they were lesser known but punk band The Fall were playing a Sonic number for years live.
They just about have the perfect garage sound in the mid 60's. Their legendary first album in 1965 "Here Are The Sonics"..
"It was recorded on a two-track tape recorder, with only one microphone to pick up the whole drum kit. It was here that they began to pioneer some of their infamously reckless recording techniques. The next album, Boom followed in February 1966. During the recording, The Sonics ripped the soundproofing off the walls at the country and western-oriented Wiley/Griffith studio in Tacoma, WA, to "get a live-er sound."
Have Love, Will Travel - The Sonics