Down & Dirty Garage Band Sounds of Yesteryear

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

The grungy, scratchy garage band sound is a beautiful thing.  Generally heavy on cymbals, fuzzy guitars and enthusiasm, and often (but not always) short on musical skill, garage band songs are just pure fun.

I'm going to start with this Kelly Osbourne cover of a Madonna song, Papa Don't Preach, because I think it's greatly under appreciated. Is she a great singer? No, of course not. Would she have been able to do this album if she didn't have a famous dad? Probably not. But she has the right attitude, and she did it out of pure love of rocking out. And I can't fault anyone for that.  

Next up: The White Stripes. Fell In Love With A Girl is the first White Stripes song I ever heard. I was in the shower, and I risked electrocution to turn the radio up. This was back before Shazam existed, so I turned off the water and waited to hear if the DJ was going to give the name of the artist. I was smitten, and I ran out and got the album the next day.  I still love this song, but it gets little to no airplay. But my hatred for radio station programmers/iHeart Radio is a topic for another day. 

God, I love this song. Little did I know then just what Jack White had in store for us. But even if this had been his only contribution to music, it would have been enough. 

The Hives. There was a brief period when garage bands were getting airplay on terrestrial radio, and The Hives were part of that. It was a glorious time to be alive.  Here's Hate To Say I Told You So.

Around the same time as the Hives showed up (at least in my memory), the Strokes also hit the airwaves. It was a wonderful time to be alive and in possession of a radio! These guys really perfected the whole "Doing our best to look like we're too cool to give a shit about anything" vibe.  Here's Last Nite. 

Can't do a post on garage band songs without including the Arctic Monkeys. And supposedly the singer turned down Kate Moss, which is about as much street cred as you can get. I guess he didn't think she looked good on the dance floor. Ok, that was too easy, but nonetheless, I'm segueing right into I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor. 

This next one will surprise most people - The Goo Goo Dolls. Known mostly for songs like Iris, the first song I was aware of was Only One.  Not quite as grungy and fuzzy as some of the others, it still has the cymbals and the energy.  

Now for something fairly obscure.  Longer ago than I'd care to remember, I worked at Toys R Us with a bunch of recent high school grads who were all musicians.  One of them, Dimitri, ended up in a band called The Flaming Groovies. I remember he was so excited that they had come up with such a cool band name. (My own band at the time was named The Wham Bam Thank You Band. These were heady times!) No more than a week later, I was going through the bins at a record store, and there in the used albums section I came across one by a band called, you guessed it, The Flamin' Groovies. I had to buy it, and lo and behold, I really loved a few of the songs. This one, Teenage Head, is my favorite. The lyrics are pretty amazing as well. Unfortunately, most of their songs sound nothing like this one. They were pretty volatile, and had personnel changes and band fights and the usual drama going on, and I believe the singer on this song was only around for two or three tracks. At least, the album I have has another singer on most of the songs.  Which is a damn shame, because this is glorious. 

Update: There's apparently a Flamin' Groovies documentary! Haven't found anyplace I can watch it yet, but here's a trailer: 

 

Finally, I couldn't end this post without paying tribute to the greatest garage band of all time, The Ramones. It's really hard to pick one song, but I finally decided to go with their cover of Do You Wanna Dance. If this doesn't get your butt wiggling, you need medical attention. Hey! Ho! let's go! 

So there you have it. I could go on for hours, but I'll save it for another post. Now it's your turn - who did I forget? What are your favorite garage bands or songs? Do you know any new garage bands you want to tell the world about? How did you find out about them?