So far our discussion to the American response to the British Invasion and the
music of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and other British artists in the
mid1960s. So far our discussion has really focused
on the way the music industry responded and the way professional musicians
responded to, to the threat, or the market incursion.
of the British bands, on the charts and, and having all kinds of popularity.
But, when the Beatles first performed on February the 9th, 1964, on the Ed
Sullivan Show. There were kids all across the country
who saw the Beatles and wanted to be just like them.
Now not everybody who wants to play music is going to end up having a hit record
and a career in music. But, so there's, there's always a much,
much larger number of people who play music for fun and, and for recreation,
than who do it professionally. In many ways the ,the scene that was
called the Garage Band or the garage rock kind of scene that arouse in the 60's was
a direct consequence of kids all of a sudden who maybe already played guitar.
Because during the folk revival they've been humming and strumming to Kingston
Trio songs or Peter, Paul and Mary you know hanging out by the beach camp fire
singing these kinds of songs. And when the Beatles came along it turned
out they could use a lot of those same chords and if they just got an electric
guitar and a drummer and a bass player why they could all of a sudden have a
band. And of course they're called garage bands
because the first place they could find to re, rehearse was probably in a garage
if it wasn't in a basement somewhere. And so you get, what, what, what garage
bands, that, that the term has come to characterize is a kind of a raw rough and
ready full of, full of enthusiasm but maybe not so full of skill and musical
prowess kind of music. that has a kind of charm because of it's,
of it's the cheer energy of it. So these groups, these garage band groups
spring up all around the country and some of them get awfully good but like, like
doo-wop, a lot of them are also a lot of one hit wonders.
because they got this one song that they, that they can really do really well.
And so they'll have a regional hit with that song but then it's very difficult
for them to, to follow up. so the records themselves were only maybe
ever released regionally. So among record collectors it used to be
finding these various hits by these relatively unknown groups was great sport
at record collector shows and that kind of thing.
Well, in 1972 a guy by the name of Lenny Kaye came along and put together a double
album called Nuggets. This double album Nuggets really focused
on the garage band sound and pulled together a lot of records that had been
previously very, very difficult to, to to find by groups that weren't so famous.
I mean on Lenny Kaye your not going to find, you know, much Birds or Paul Revere
and the Raiders or that kind of thing. Your going to find things by other groups
that they're sort of a little bit more obscure.
That album it turns out, this garage band collection, Nuggets ended up being very
influential on the Punk musicians. Especially in the New York scene, who
would later become The Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, those kinds of
groups. Lenny Kaye himself would end up playing
for Patti Smith. So, this, this, the, the, the resurgence
of interest just a few laters, few years later in garageband music is helped
immeasurably by this Nuggets collection. In fact, when it was transferred to CD,
the Nuggets collection, they went from everything that was one the original
Nuggets collection fits on the first CD but they expanded it to be a four CD set.
So now when you buy the box set Nuggets, it's just tons and tons of stuff.
It really gives you a good idea of all the variety of stuff that was happening
in this garage band scene, in this period between about sixty four, sixty six,
sixty seven in that window there. The most important garage band for us to
talk about, or group associated with the garage band sound is a group called the
Kingsmen out of Portland Oregon. And in many ways, the Pacific Northwest
is often seen as a sort of hot bed of garage band activities in the, in the, in
the mid 1960's. Anyway, their hit, their big hit, their
infamous hit was Louie, Louie which was a number two hit in late 1963, early 1964.
So just before the Beatles still on the charts at the same time when the Beatles
came along. The song Louie, Louie was enormously
controversial. it was controversial because it was said
that there was profanity in the lyrics that somebody in there was saying you
know swear words, talking about sexual activities or something like that but
nobody could really tell In fact anybody who wanted to know what
the lyrics were could have gone to the original recording by Richard Berry who
had written song and recorded it with the The Fairs in 1957.
It's kind of calypso flavored R&B which was sort of big at that time in 57.
And the lyrics are very, very clear. And once you know what the lyrics are,
you can pretty much make out that they're, what they are on the Kingsmen
record. But, of course, nobody bothered to check
that. and so they, there was this idea that
Louis Louis contained bad words. It contained swearing.
In fact it was, it was such a big controversy that both the FCC and the FBI
were called in. The FBI using their highest tech
uh,equipment to you know, look at the sound scans or whatever of his lyrics and
see if they figure out whether that, those swear words were actually there,
and in the end They decided that they really couldn't tell.
But, for the Kingsmen and Louie, Louie, it made the song, you know, the middle of
a big controversy for awhile and it was very very good for business.
Louie, Louie is if you're going to look at one song that is the sort of
controversy song, sort of prototype, Louie, Louie was that song.
In fact music journalist Dave Marsh wrote an entire book about Louie, Louie.
And all of the shenanigans and, and episodes and, and scandal sort of
associated with it. It's a fascinating kind of study.
But when we think about, for example, the Rolling Stones' Can't Get No
Satisfaction, and the, and the controversy that began to swirl around
that, that was only about a year after all this controversy with Louie, Louie.
You think about The Byrds' Eight Miles High and the controversy around that
being a drug song. Again, this whole controversy around
songs is something that we see again and again.
Louie, Louie the prime example. As far as The Kingsmen were concerned,
they went out in 1964 to have a hit with the song called Money and then in 1965
with a song called The Jolly Green Giant. And then to and then there that was about
it for them. other notable hits on that nuggets CD the
CD's now are the original album, these those hits from the original album that
you might find interesting are tuned by The Electric Pru, Prunes out of LA
called, I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night.
That was a number 11 hit in 1966. Of cour, of course, the lyric, I Had Too
Much to Dream (Last Night) was a play on I had too much to drink last night,
right? But during these sort of, you know, heady
days of Sort of pre-psychedelic, I had too much to dream last night.
Oh, wow, that's very groovy. The Standells from LA, had a toon called
Dirty Water, an number 11 hit in 1965. so a pretty big hit there, but sa-, sa-,
sa-, song with a Boston theme. That has as, you know, the dirty water
apparently is the water in the Charles River in Boston.
And now it's become the dirty water sound has become a sort of a big, a big theme
song for a lot of Boston sports themes. So, it's usually associated with Boston.
Even though The Standells themselves were originally from Los Angeles.
The best duplicate of a Beatles record not actually by the Beatles is probably
by a group from New Jersey called The Knickerbockers, and their song "Lies,"
which was a number 20 hit from 1966. That song sounds so much like the Beatles
that for years, I thought it was a Beatles song, and I couldn't figure out
which album it was on. and then, finally it's probably it's
worth pointing out that the song by The Seeds, from Los Angeles called You're
Pushin' Too Hard. It was a number 36 hit for them in 1967
although it had originally been released in 1965, a song written.
By the lead singer of the group who apparently wrote the entire song while he
was waiting for his girlfriend while she was shopping in the grocery store.
interestingly fans of Frank Zappa will know "You're Pushin' Too Hard" is
satirized a little bit in the Frank Zappa album Joe's Garage.
So, the Garage Bands scene and the, the, a, a very interesting kind of phenomenon.
One that is embraced later as I say by punk musicians.
The music, the music was okay popular, but not nearly as big as a lot of the
other stuff that we're talking about in the '60s.
But, it was idolized by musicians in the '70s who wanted to get away from what
they thought was the overproduction of music at that time and get back to
something that was a little more rootsy. A little bit more authentic, a lot less
produced so the garage bands became the heroes.
Nuggets was the album was helped make that happen.
in the next video, we'll turn to television and talk about TV rock.