PuNk RoCk Pre-history

Pre-history

[edit] Garage rock and mod

For more details on this topic, see Garage rock and Mod (subculture).

In the early and mid-1960s, garage rock bands that came to be recognized as punk rock's progenitors began springing up in many different locations around North America. The Kingsmen, a garage band from Portland, Oregon, had a breakout hit with their 1963 cover of "Louie, Louie", cited as "punk rock's defining ur-text".^[50] The minimalist sound of many garage rock bands was influenced by the harder-edged wing of the British Invasion. The Kinks' hit singles of 1964, "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night", have been described as "predecessors of the whole three-chord genre—the Ramones' 1978 'I Don't Want You,' for instance, was pure Kinks-by-proxy".^[51] In 1965, The Who quickly progressed from their debut single, "I Can't Explain", a virtual Kinks clone, to "My Generation". Though it had little impact on the American charts, The Who's mod anthem presaged a more cerebral mix of musical ferocity and rebellious posture that characterized much early British punk rock: John Reed describes The Clash's emergence as a "tight ball of energy with both an image and rhetoric reminiscent of a young Pete Townshend—speed obsession, pop-art clothing, art school ambition".^[52] The Who and fellow mods The Small Faces were among the few rock elders acknowledged by the Sex Pistols.^[53] By 1966, mod was already in decline. U.S. garage rock began to lose steam within a couple of years, but the raw sound and outsider attitude of "garage psych" bands like The Seeds presaged the style of bands that would become known as the archetypal figures of protopunk.^[54]